How+the+Web+Works


 * __How the Web Works__ **

To put it simply, the web  physically consists of your personal computing device, web browser software such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Opera, a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP), computers called servers that host digital data, and routers and switches that direct the flow of digital traffic. 1 This arrangement typically is referred to as a "client-server system." __2__ Your computing device is the client and the remote computers that store the digital data are the servers. The web works on three standards that are generally recognized by all companies that make products that work with the World Wide Web. Those standards are Universal Resource Locator (URL), Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). __3__ The URL is what you see when you look in the address bar of your browser. It is formatted like this: “ :// / ”__ 4 __. The protocol is the how, telling your computer which conventions to use when communicating with the server that holds the requested page. The protocol for web browsing is “http”. The server is the where, telling your computing device the name of the computer serving the request page. Finally, the path is the what, indicating which page you are interested in on the requested website. 5 The web works much like how a package is delivered using physical addresses, transportation vehicles, and our highway system. Just as our highway system is considered infrastructure, the web sits on an electronic infrastructure of copper and fiber optic wires, switches and routers, and computers. Let's look in more detail as to how the electronic “packages” used to communicate over the web get delivered.

In order for the web to work, every computing device connected to the Internet must have a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address, just as every building must have a street address. When you connect to the Internet through your Internet Service Provider (ISP), you are immediately assigned a temporary IP address that identifies you uniquely. Now that you are connected to the Internet with a unique address are the alphabetic characters that you type into your browser translated into electronic signals through the use of a protocol stack. The protocol stack used on the Internet is called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). 6

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If your computing device had an IP address of 1.2.3.4 and was trying to communicate with server 5.6.7.8, here is the path it would take through the protocol stack. Again, you can see how this might be much like what you would do to prepare a package for delivery.

You can see how this is similar to sending a package to someone.
 * 1) The message would start at the top of the protocol stack on your computing device and work downward.
 * 2) The message will be broken into chunks called "packets ."
 * 3) Each packet will receive a port number that allows the receiving computer to know what application to use with the packet.
 * 4) The packets will get a destination IP address.
 * 5) The hardware now turns the packets containing our alphabetic information into electronic data for transmission through your ISP.
 * 6) The ISP's router looks at the IP address packet to know where to send it.
 * 7) The packet eventually gets to the receiving server and makes its way up through the protocol stack where all of the delivery information is stripped away leaving on the content.


 * 1) You have an item you want to send, you find a box, you wrap it.
 * 2) You put an address on the box.
 * 3) You take the box to a delivery service.
 * 4) The delivery service looks at the address and puts it on the proper truck going to that area.
 * 5) Your box rides on the truck over the highway system to a distribution center.
 * 6) The distribution center again looks at the address and puts it on the proper truck for final delivery to the street address.
 * 7) The person you sent the package to receives it and removes the packaging material to finally reveal the item shipped.

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Since only physical equipment exists on the web to look at an IP address to determine where a packet needs to go, how does that packet find the correct receiving computer? This is where routers and Domain Name Servers (DNS) come into play. When your packet gets to your ISP, it is sent to a router. The router examines the IP address. It checks its routing table to see if the network containing that IP address is found. If it is in the routing table, the router sends it on to that router and the packet is delivered. If the IP address is not in the routing table, the router sends the packet on to another router that might have the correct address. This process continues until a router recognizes the IP address. At this point you probably are saying: "Wait a minute, I don't type IP address into my computing device, I use words like www.anothercomputer.com to tell my computing device's web browser where I want to go." How does your web browser know which IP address belongs to www.anothercomputer.com? The answer is the Domain Name Server (DNS). There are many DNS servers on the web that keep a distributed database of which IP address goes with which URL. So when you type www.anothercomputer.com into your browser's address bar, a DNS server will be asked to match that name with the proper IP address. Much like the routers mentioned previously, if the first DNS does not recognize the name, it will be sent on to one that does have the IP address in its database.

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**References**

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 * 1) ["How the Web Works", learnthenet.com, available from
 * 1) Ibid
 * 2) [Lawrence Abrams, "How the Web Works", bleedingcomputer.com, available from
 * 1) Ibid
 * 2) [Marc, "How the Web Works - In one Easy Lesson", mkcohen.com, available from [], accessed 5 November 2011.]
 * 3) Ibid
 * 4) [Rus Shuler, "How Does the Internet Work", theshulers.com, available from[] , accessed 5 November 2011.]
 * 5) [leelefever, "World Wide Web in Plain English", YouTube.com, available from
 * 1) [Aarontitus, "How the Internet Works in 5 Minutes", YouTube.com, available from