What Is the Internet?
Every time you watch a video, play a game, or message a friend online, your computer is sending and receiving information across a giant network of connected computers — the internet.
What Is the Internet, Exactly?
The internet is a giant network — like a highway system that connects computers all over the world. These computers "talk" to each other by sending information back and forth: pictures, words, videos, and more.
How Does the Internet Work?
Think of it like a postal service, but for information. When you want to see a website, your computer sends a request. Here’s how it roughly works:
- You type in a website address (like a street address).
- Your computer sends a message to a special computer that knows where the website lives.
- That special computer finds the website and sends the information back to your computer.
- Your computer shows you the website so you can see pictures, read words, and play games.
Check yourself
You type an address and press enter. Where does your computer's message go first?
- Straight to the website itself
- To a computer that knows where the website lives
- To every computer on the internet at once
The internet stays working because there is rarely just one path between any two computers. So what happens when one of them breaks?
Seven routers, eleven links, and one packet that has to get from A to G. You choose every hop. There is never only one way across, which is the whole point: part way through, a link snaps, and the packet carries on from where it is instead of going back to the start. At the end you get to try to break the network yourself, one link at a time.