Almost everybody uses the Internet, but how many people know how it works? If you want to learn how the Internet works and what those strange abbreviations TCP/IP and DNS are, this article is perfect for you.
What is the Internet?
Simply put, the Internet is a global network of networks. It connects multiple sub-networks together with long cables that go under the seas and reach each of the continents. Yes, the connection could be wireless too, but the big transfers happen through wires.
As you can imagine, there are billions of connected devices out there. To have a common network like the Internet, we need to have standards. Each device must obey the same rules, receive and send standardized messages, and understand them. Here comes the TCP/IP.
What is TCP/IP?
TCP/IP is an Internet protocol, the most used one, and it combines different rules for communication. These rules are used by everybody on the network, both servers, and clients.
You can imagine it as a common language everybody needs to know to communicate.
The TCP/IP protocol uses rules from both TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet protocol).
The TCP part marks the framework for communication—all the rules for senders and receivers of data. The information in TCP/IP is sent as data packets. Thanks to it, there are limits to how long a packet lives (TTL), the packet size, data structure, and more.
The IP is used to set unique identifiers for servers and clients. Every device needs to have a unique IP address. Imagine if the IP address of a receiver is missing, the sender won’t know where to send the packets to. The IP addresses can be 32-bit (IPv4 address) or the newer 128-bit (IPv6 address).
Suggested article: Contrasts between IPv4 and IPv6
What is DNS?
The DNS (Domain Name System) is the service that matches domain names like yoursite.com to their IP addresses like 1.2.3.4. We already mentioned that every device, including web servers, have its unique IP address. But, as you can imagine, remembering countless IP addresses of every web server of popular sites is really hard. This is why the DNS was invented. To make it really easy for us humans.
The DNS is a universal translator that understands the domain names that people write and searches for their translations to IP addresses that computers understand.
The DNS is not a single service on one device. There are many DNS servers all around the globe, and they have different hierarchy levels. Root, Top-Level Domain, domain name, subdomain, and so on. At each level, there are authoritative servers that can give you an answer for a particular part of the domain name.
The Root will tell you where the Top-Level Domain servers like (.com, fr, de, etc.) are, the Top-Level will tell you the authoritative server for the particular name, and you can finally get the IP address of a site from there.
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Conclusion
Now you know how the Internet, TCP/IP and DNS work, and you can better understand the complex processes behind. Yes, it is a fascinating system. A true miracle of engineering!