I set my browser up myself

The internet relies on an information protocol called TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). You probably saw that term when you configured your network or TCP/IP control panel to hook up to your internet service provider. Actually, you probably saw it over and over again while you hung out with tech support on the phone trying to get it all to work right, after you waited days for the phone company to show up, but we won't go into that.

All the information flying around on the internet is broken down into packets: little byte-sized <grin> pieces of the total message you're sending or receiving. Each packet knows who sent it, and where it's going. All along the way, "routers," well... they route. They figure out which of the outgoing channels they have access to is the best one for the packets. They get sent out over many chanels until another router confirms the reception. It's like one of those fire brigades where everyone passes buckets of water in a line.

Except for one thing: the whole thing about the internet is that it's a big tangled web, so there are an infinite number of possible paths for a packet to take (this is how the internet can survive the a nuclear war). So there's no real guarantee in what order the packets will arrive. And all along the way, routers have to process the info surrounding each packet, along with jillions (roughly) of other packets - so it takes a lot of processing time and power to get messages back and forth safely.

In all cases, one computer is requesting information, and the other is supplying it. The requester is called the client and the supplier is called the server. That's why you see the term client/server thrown around a lot. Generally, there's no direct connection between you and the server - the files for this web page are still on my server - you're looking at a "cached" copy of the file that's been stored on your machine, and been rendered by your browser.

The internet is comprised of layers of protocols, one on top of the other. Sitting on top of TCP/IP is HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). Hypertext is text that's also a link. You see that ever time you type a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) -- such as http://neil.verplank.org/tech/. Now pictures can be links too, but there was a time, many moons ago (1993) when the internet was text-only. Frightening, isn't it? HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the language that defines what this page looks like so that browsers (like Netscape) can format the information in the way you're seeing right now. If you go to your "view" menu, and choose "view page source," you'll see the HTML for this page.

So the whole thing stacks up like this:

WEB PAGE
HTML
HTTP
TCP
IP
copper and silicon

 

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