The Internet – Truly Fascinating
Today I would like to talk a bit about the Internet and how your pages really get seen by your visitors. The main reason I am writing this article is because I strongly believe in foundations. You don’t need to fully understand everything I am saying but knowing just a little about the inner workings of the Internet will at least give you some degree of confidence. I will endeavor to not go into too many technical details as I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to do so either. So, I’ll try and keep it simple.
The Internet fundamentally runs on computer numbers called IP addresses. IP stands for Internet Protocol and is part of the operating system that runs the Internet. IP addresses are typically of the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Every computer that is connected to the Internet is given a number. Some of these numbers are permanent while others are temporary. For example, if you are connected to the Internet from your home, you typically use an Internet Service Provider or ISP. When you “login” to the ISP, you are assigned a temporary IP number.
Your ISP is permanently connected to the Internet via a network of computers. This gets really fascinating. The beauty of the Internet is that these machines really don’t need to be connected to ALL the computers. They just need one more computer they can “talk” to. Note this is a very simple view of the Internet and is intentionally kept so. The Internet is really a group of large networks that are interconnected with each other. Each of these large networks then sells bandwidth to smaller ISP’s who in turn, sell it to you.
So how does my computer really “know” where to go when I type www.mydomain.com?
Good question. Lets try and see how that works.
A visitor types in your domain name. This name is translated to a machine name / number. Your ISP refers to its little database that has a translation table that translates the domain number into an IP address. Note that your ISP only holds a small portion of the database. The higher you go in this chain of networks, the larger the database of domain names to IP addresses that are stored. If your ISP cannot find the IP address of the domain you types, it send it upward in its network in the hopes that some other computer will “know” what IP address to go to. Pretty fascinating, isn’t it? And it is.
Well, finally, the signal reaches the ISP that has the actual web pages of the domain you are visiting. How do you actually see these pages? All ISP’s run another software program called a web server. A web server, well, serves web pages.
What do we mean by “serving a web page”?
When you type in a domain name, the ISP will go to a directory on their computer network and locate for the filename that was requested. If no file is requested, the web server will “search” for a index.htm or index.html. Note that with advances in web languages, the extension can be something else (.php, for example).
The page is read and transmitted over the Internet to the visitor who originally requested the page. Before the “page” is displayed, the browser collects the information from the web server and formats it accordingly.
Whew! Can you believe all that takes place just because you or someone else typed in www.mydomain.com in their browser window? Fascinating, isn’t it? I get fascinated till this day.
So what language does my web page really use?
Well, at the heart of everything, a web page still uses HTML to display all of its content to the user. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. This language is fairly easy to learn for a simple page and essentially consists of “tags”. These tags get translated by the user’s browser before displaying the web page. For example, if a word is typed like Hello, the word Hello will be Hello, i.e. in bold type. There are standard tags that dictate how information is represented and presented in a browser.
With the advances made in development languages, a variety of languages have evolved over the years that perform a lot of functions on the Web server before a user even sees it. For example, if you would like to greet a user based on the time of day, this logic can be put into your web page in a specific language. This will then get translated before it makes it’s way to the users’ computer. These new languages have suddenly enabled us to create a more dynamic web site that provides a more meaningful experience for your web site visitor.
The Internet and the web have been a truly fascinating subject area for me. A day doesn’t go by where I think how businesses can truly leverage and take advantage. The primary reason I personally like it is because of the cost of transmitting your message to millions of people around the world. It’s peanuts. Compare that to any other medium (print, for example) and you will instantly know why the Internet became so popular.
Elvin Picardo
Delivering Net Results to Small Business
Author of numerous articles on web development and Internet Marketing for small business
10723 159th St, Surrey, BC V4N 3J1 Canada
NetMedian.com
Contact Elvin
The Internet fundamentally runs on computer numbers called IP addresses. IP stands for Internet Protocol and is part of the operating system that runs the Internet. IP addresses are typically of the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Every computer that is connected to the Internet is given a number. Some of these numbers are permanent while others are temporary. For example, if you are connected to the Internet from your home, you typically use an Internet Service Provider or ISP. When you “login” to the ISP, you are assigned a temporary IP number.
Your ISP is permanently connected to the Internet via a network of computers. This gets really fascinating. The beauty of the Internet is that these machines really don’t need to be connected to ALL the computers. They just need one more computer they can “talk” to. Note this is a very simple view of the Internet and is intentionally kept so. The Internet is really a group of large networks that are interconnected with each other. Each of these large networks then sells bandwidth to smaller ISP’s who in turn, sell it to you.
So how does my computer really “know” where to go when I type www.mydomain.com?
Good question. Lets try and see how that works.
A visitor types in your domain name. This name is translated to a machine name / number. Your ISP refers to its little database that has a translation table that translates the domain number into an IP address. Note that your ISP only holds a small portion of the database. The higher you go in this chain of networks, the larger the database of domain names to IP addresses that are stored. If your ISP cannot find the IP address of the domain you types, it send it upward in its network in the hopes that some other computer will “know” what IP address to go to. Pretty fascinating, isn’t it? And it is.
Well, finally, the signal reaches the ISP that has the actual web pages of the domain you are visiting. How do you actually see these pages? All ISP’s run another software program called a web server. A web server, well, serves web pages.
What do we mean by “serving a web page”?
When you type in a domain name, the ISP will go to a directory on their computer network and locate for the filename that was requested. If no file is requested, the web server will “search” for a index.htm or index.html. Note that with advances in web languages, the extension can be something else (.php, for example).
The page is read and transmitted over the Internet to the visitor who originally requested the page. Before the “page” is displayed, the browser collects the information from the web server and formats it accordingly.
Whew! Can you believe all that takes place just because you or someone else typed in www.mydomain.com in their browser window? Fascinating, isn’t it? I get fascinated till this day.
So what language does my web page really use?
Well, at the heart of everything, a web page still uses HTML to display all of its content to the user. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. This language is fairly easy to learn for a simple page and essentially consists of “tags”. These tags get translated by the user’s browser before displaying the web page. For example, if a word is typed like Hello, the word Hello will be Hello, i.e. in bold type. There are standard tags that dictate how information is represented and presented in a browser.
With the advances made in development languages, a variety of languages have evolved over the years that perform a lot of functions on the Web server before a user even sees it. For example, if you would like to greet a user based on the time of day, this logic can be put into your web page in a specific language. This will then get translated before it makes it’s way to the users’ computer. These new languages have suddenly enabled us to create a more dynamic web site that provides a more meaningful experience for your web site visitor.
The Internet and the web have been a truly fascinating subject area for me. A day doesn’t go by where I think how businesses can truly leverage and take advantage. The primary reason I personally like it is because of the cost of transmitting your message to millions of people around the world. It’s peanuts. Compare that to any other medium (print, for example) and you will instantly know why the Internet became so popular.
Elvin Picardo
Delivering Net Results to Small Business
Author of numerous articles on web development and Internet Marketing for small business
10723 159th St, Surrey, BC V4N 3J1 Canada
NetMedian.com
Contact Elvin
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