When you're at home watching YouTube, Netflix, or getting your news from TechBlog, do you ever wonder how the webpage or video you are looking at gets to your computer? Yes, you probably know it's the internet, but what is the internet
doing? I will Show you.
First, you have to drop any other basic knowledge of the internet. You need to think of it as a swimming pool or a cloud full of water drops (or another analogy). These water drops are webpages, coded with HTML, PHP, JavaScript, etc.
Next, you need to know what type of internet you have. I will sum up the types of:
Dial-Up –– Very slow, usually not more than 300 kb/s (about 0.3 mb/s). Makes beeping sounds while connecting. Connects over the ISP's phone number.
DSL –– Not the fastest, but can get up to about 25 mb/s. Connects over telephone wires, like Dial-Up, but connects to the Central Office (a little box usually within a mile of your house that connects to the ISP with fiber cables), not the ISP itself.
Satellite –– Fairly fast download and upload, up to about 20 mb/s. The only downside is the massive ping, or latency. The ping is how long it takes to connect you to a server (in ms). A 'good' ping for online gaming is 50 or below, but a 'playable' ping would be anything below 150. With Satellite, your ping would be 800 on a good day, making gaming difficult or impossible.
Fiber Optic –– The Superman of the internet types. Fiber Optic runs over, you guessed it, fiber optic cables! You experience downloads speed up to 1000 mb/s (about 1 GB/s) and pings of 10 on a bad day. Google has created a program to give Fiber Optic internet to everyone. It's called Google Fiber. They have currently helped 3 cities, but are planning for many more, including Phoenix and Atlanta.
Internet in the U.S is a terrible failure. Over in some parts of Europe, they get 2 GB/s internet service. The U.S has fallen back in terms of the internet and needs to catch back up to the worldwide internet necessities. Mayors all want their city to be the next on Google Fiber's list, but the truth is, it probably won't be. The U.S needs to make its own Google Fiber, and provide it to everyone. Not the 'just people who pay $1000' everyone, but the 'everyone' everyone.
