How does the internet work?

Question

Is it like a "set of tubes"? lol, jk, but really, how does it work?

Answer 1

Well...basically there are special computers called "servers" that just have tons of HTML content on them. These servers are interconnected to basically the whole Internet, so anyone can access the files on them (with proper permission).

Yeah, I used to wonder if it was possible to destroy the Internet... I guess you'd just blow up lots of servers and nothing would exist on the Internet anymore. =)

Uh, what else...oh I know that the Internet exists because the USA was afraid of falling behind the Russians in technology. I'll just rip part of an article here:

The Internet started in 1969 as the ARPAnet. Funded by the U.S. government, the ARPAnet became a series of high-speed links between major supercomputer sites and educational and research institutions worldwide, although mostly in the U.S. A major part of its backbone was the National Science Foundation's NFSNet. Along the way, it became known as the "Internet" or simply "the Net." By the 1990s, so many networks had become part of it and so much traffic was not educational or pure research that it became obvious that the Internet was on its way to becoming a commercial venture."

But yeah, no one can really answer your question...perfectly.

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I've noticed that you ask a lot of "How does this work?" kinda questions. Try: http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Answer 2

Answering this question would take an insane amount of work! But at its core, the Internet is really a set of computers that connect to each other physically (a "network"), and route a whole bunch of data (information) through the network.

Here is a great explanation:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm

No tubes involved.

Answer 3

The internet is pretty much just the connection of computers. That's why you only get viruses online, because your connected to another computer technically. But these computers are called servers, in internet world, or whatever you wanna call it. So everytime you input a web address you are connected to that particular server, which displays the information inside of it. Your ISP is the one who can direct you to the servers.

Answer 4

Why don't you try to contact Bill Gates??