How Internet Works - Mechanism Of A Web Page Request

Posted on: Sunday, April 6th, 2008 | Written by Wakish

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While checking my email late night, I got a request to write something about “how internet works”. This reaction resulted from my previous article on Uses And Limitations Of The Internet - At Glance

This email was from a Mauritian and I was amazed since I rarely find any Mauritian interacting on my blog considering that I’m a Mauritian too. I thank “this guy” for his time and consideration to contact me and I hope to get more requests about topics to write about.

From the information that I read from the email, I guess I will go straight into technical details.. So, here we go for a small explanation on our subject:

how internet works

exclamation mark NOTE: As you can see from the picture above, each arrow are numbered. This is important since they denote ordered steps as detailed below:

Consider for instance that you want to access the site http://wakish.info which resides on a server, just as any website or object that you want to access on the net.

1) The Browser, for example firefox, (from your pc - aka client pc) contacts a DNS Server to get the required IP address of the domain name wakish.info
(recall that all address names are stored as numbers (IP). These numbers are given names for humans to be able to read and remember them)

2) The DNS Server* searches for the IP address and returns it back to your browser

3) The Browser can then contact the Web Server where wakish.info resides to get access to that website

4) The Web Server, in turn, locates the requested page of wakish.info on its storage space

5) Once found, the Web Server returns the web page to the browser

6) The browser assembles the response and displays the page in a human readable format so that you can undertand it ;)

bulb Additional Remark:
* The DNS system in its own, forms a network of its alikes. So, if one DNS server does not know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one and so on, until the correct IP address is returned

That’s it ;) Feel to add and comment on what I have been explaining above..

star What’s Next:

=> Upload your own image on the Internet, can you?
=> Domain transfer, did you know how this is actually done?
=> robots.txt - why it this simple file still so widely used?
=> Website Customization: What can you do to improve the layout of your blog or website?
=> How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers / Web Spiders

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Posted in: Technology At Glance

  (4) Comments made - Say your part!

  1. 1
    From TomasNo Gravatar   on April 7th, 2008 at 10:39 am

    Dear Wakish,
    thank you for visiting my blog and your wonderful feedback. Your words have made my day! I hope your friends too will enjoy my artworks. My best wishes to you all.

    The joy I got was the best medicine, and therefore I became interested in its technicalities. Wow, you explained them so pictorially that they became clear even to me, who is the total dummy in that area. Thank you. It was very beneficial to grasp the principle of “how internet works”

    Thanks once again,
    Tomas

  2. 2
    From WakishNo Gravatar   on April 7th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    Thanks a lot Tomas..
    Cheers!

  3. 3
    From Discount CodesNo Gravatar   on April 10th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    Considering that we, as net users, do this lots of times a day it’s good to know exactly how the website you are looking at actually appears on your screen. Good blog entry, easy to follow and explains what you need to know clearly..

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