What is the internet?

The internet is a network of interconnected computers that communicate with each other to share information. It is a global system of connected devices, like phones, laptops, tablets etc. that enable them to store, send and receive data.

Parts of the internet.

The internet is made up of different parts that makes communication between devices possible and easy. Below are the main parts:

Devices (Clients)

These are devices people use to access the internet. They send requests and receive responses across the internet, e.g, opening a website will request and receive the content of that website from the server. They are called clients because they request services from the servers. Example of these devices are:

• Smartphones
• Laptops
• Tablets etc.

Servers

A server is a computer that stores data and provides information to other computers across a network or over the internet. It stores and processes these data to provide them when requested by clients.
When your phone sends a request, say you want to google about something, google servers receives the request and sends back the webpage to you.

When you open a website.

When you open a website, things happens behind the scenes in just milliseconds. Say you type the web address, e.g google.com into the browser, the browser first checks its cache to see if it has visited this website before and if it already has the IP address, if true it uses it immediately, if false DNS lookup begins.

DNS means Domain Name System (will explain in the next post), computers don't understand names like google.com or iorsenge.site, they understand IP addresses, the browser asks DNS, what is the IP address of google.com, it replies with the IP address. The browser then connects to Google servers with the IP address. After this happens, HTTPS security check is carried out, SSL certificate is verified, your data is encrypted and a secure connection is been established.