How the Internet Works

'Your home town connection to the world'

Return to Home Page | Search the Web

How the Internet Works

OcoeeNET Help Guide:

History of the Internet

Who Owns the Internet

How the Internet Works

Glossary of Net Terms

Smart Searching

Interpret the Address

How it all Works:

Web pages are constructed using a coding language called Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The HTML code is a text based code that travels 'Net connections quickly and is deciphered by your browser. HTML itself doesn't do much for the eye, but once it has put your browser to work colors, backgrounds, images and text are skillfully displayed to make the Web-site visually appealing. To see what HTML looks like click the button below and see the source code written for this page.

Your request for a page from somewhere on the World Wide Web travels through a labyrinth that is generally referred to as the Internet "infrastructure." For our tour, let's define it as your particular ISP (OcoeeNET Online) and all the wires and routing to the ISP for the server where the Web page you're requesting is located.

After travelling through your phone line and through the telephone company's central office, your Web page request then travels through:

Your Internet service provider (ISP) server.

The regional network your ISP is connected to. In the United States, the regional networks link to the national commercial backbone links at four major network access points (NAPs) in close proximity to New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco.

If necessary, through one of the four major network access points (NAPs) in the U.S.

Then through the national commercial backbone.

And then once again through the NAP, regional network, and ISP at the other end.

Still confused heh? Don't worry! You don't have to know this information to use the Internet effectively. It does, however, show your connection isn't as direct as just connecting to OcoeeNET Online and it's understandable why sometimes it doesn't always run a smoothly as we'd all like it to.

What is really amazing is the speed to which all this happens! With millions of users online at one given moment, the Net does experience the occasional bottle neck, yet over all it flows relatively smoothly.