How many of you have seen images of the Internet being explained like this:

WOW…that’s informational.

The easiest way to explain the Internet would be to describe it like a bunch of bicycle wheels. Now take these bicycle wheels and arrange them next to each other flat on the floor (if you really want to get crazy then go to a bicycle store and buy the wheels but I suggest just imagining this.) Now connect the wheels that are touching with a piece of wire. Congratulations, you just created a network where each end of a wheel spoke is a computer and where the wheels themselves connect are the connections to other networks. Your image should look like this:

That is the basic concept of the Internet. If you wanted to build a larger network then you would simply add more wheels and when you run out of floor space, stack them vertically. Now that you understand that the Internet is simply a network and have a basic understanding of how a network works, your next question should be: how does my computer know where to find web pages?

When you go to a web site, for example www.cbsoftware.com, your computer is actually asking for information from another computer. The information returned to your computer contains directions that enable you to see the requested web page. Your web browser takes these directions and performs them, kind of like following the directions on how to put together an entertainment center. If the directions are followed correctly, or better yet given to you in your own language, then the entertainment center should be assembled correctly.

But I still have not answered the question on how your computer knows to go to the computer that contains the physical web pages for www.cbsoftware.com on the Internet network. The best way to think about this is to consider what happens when you place a pizza delivery order. You call the delivery company and order your pizza, give them your address and wait for delivery. Normally if all goes well, a delivery person arrives at your front door with a pizza, hopefully the correct one. The Internet is similar. What your computer does is find the address of the “delivery company” and sends them a message, something along the lines of “give me your web page and deliver it to this address.” The best part is, that it doesn’t take 30 minutes to get the web page you want, it can happen as fast as 2 seconds.

Some of you may be thinking, “I don’t have a www.address.com, how does the www.cbsoftware.com computer know my location?” It’s actually quite simple, your home computer actually has something called an IP address. That is the address that you gave the “delivery company.”

IP addresses are actually how the Internet works behind-the-scenes. Every computer on the Internet has an IP address. The www.cbsoftware.com domain name that you typed in actually means very little to a computer, it’s just an easy way for you to remember which site is which. An IP address looks something like the following: 64.48.186.239. The Internet (currently) has IP addresses that go from 1.0.0.1 through 220.255.255.255 and every web site you visit has a different combination of number, kind of like your social security number. Can you imagine having to remember a web site by IP address instead of by name?

So to summarize what happens, you open your browser and type in www.cbsoftware.com. You computer figures out that the IP address of www.cbsoftware.com is 66.132.232.17. Your computer then goes out on the Internet and asks 66.132.232.17 for a web page. 66.132.232.17 then sends the web page to your computer. You computer looks at the information and displays the web page as intended. For the fun of it, type this in your web browsers address area http://66.132.232.17. It will show the same thing as www.cbsoftware.com.

That is a basic outline of how the Internet works. There are other things involved of course, however, it would take a book to tell you every little action that happens.