I wanted to write a 🧵 today talking about the internet as we know it. There's a lot of people I find who spend a significant amount of their time online but are not overly familiar with how it works. So I've set out to talk about that, but on a surface, theoretical level. I also want to talk about why this design is important in the world today. If you don't know a thing about the internet, this thread is for you!
1/23
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First, there's a few fundamental concepts we need to cover: Packets, IP Addresses & Networks, and Routing. This will be more focused on the actual infrastructure of the internet - how it's built and how it facilitates communication.
I will do my best to avoid any three-letter-acronyms (TLA's) or needlessly long winded explanations, but there will be some depth needed here for proper context. As such, some technical aspects will be omitted, but not forgotten!
2/23
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Packets and You
Whenever we talk about the internet, essentially, we're talking about communication between computers (or, more accurately "devices"). That communication - more accurately defined as traffic - is made up of smaller pieces of data referred to as "packets". Packets contain small pieces of key information that indicate how it's to be handled, where it's heading, and what it contains. It's being sent rapidly at light speeds in same cases, multiple times, over and over and over
3/23
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Imagine a post office: if I want to send you a letter, I'd first grab some paper, choose how I write it, how long the letter is, what kind of paper, what kind of envelope, then seal it. I'd then mail it. That letter essentially is a "packet" in this case. I send it to you, you open and read it, and voila. We have communicated. Now imagine this happening continuously per second with thousands of letters.
4/23
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There's a lot to this process, in terms of how we process the packet for both delivery and response, which is referred to as ENCAPSULATION. Some aspects of encapsulation define WHO the packet is for, WHERE it's from, and if it requires any kind of proof of identity to view it.
The key takeaway is this: Traffic on the internet is comprised of small pieces of data called "packets". The overall transmission and reception of packets is the core of what is actually happening on the internet.
5/23
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Which leads me to IP Addresses & networks!
How do we actually get these packets moving from the source to their destination? This is where IP addresses come in. IP stands for "Internet Protocol". There is a whole methodology on its own for determining how an IP address communicates with others and all of it's intricacies, but for now, the important bit to know is that every single device connected to the internet has an IP address.
6/23
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That's all fine and dandy, but you'll note you can't send a print job from your computer to my printer in my office, or vice versa. This is because we're not on the same NETWORK. And yet, we can both access Mastodon! How can that be?
Networks determine who can speak to whom, and to what degree. Networks are defined by their GATEWAY, which allows traffic to enter and exit the network and also connects networks together.
7/23
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In most cases, the gateway for a network is the router itself, but not always. The term "router" and "gateway" are often used interchangeably, depending on the context. Whats important to note is that the entire internet is made up of different networks (more on that below)!
To help illustrate what exactly a network is, imagine a power bar: the power bar connects to an outlet, which allows multiple devices to be connected to it.
8/23
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In this case, the outlet the power bar connects to is the internet, while the power bar itself serves as the gateway. In this case, the network is also intrinsically defined by the power bar itself by virtue of it's outlet capacity, any built in features, etc.
Ultimately, it allows for the devices to actually be connected, while also helping facilitate power exchange between them.
9/23
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Your router often can do this wirelessly (Wifi) too with what is called a Wireless Access Point (often built in to the router - but you can purchase them separately!)
You may have heard the term LAN before, which stands for "Local Area Network". In this example, of all the devices plugged into the power bar are all connected to the same gateway, so we'd say "They're all on the same LAN". You are most likely attached to one too if you're reading this on your PC.
10/23
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You may be thinking "Wait, I just connect everything to the box with blinking lights my internet provider gave me", and if that's the case, it's likely you have an all-in-one combination: it serves as both the modem (the device that receives the internet signal from your internet provider), a gateway, and most likely, a wireless access point.
11/23
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You may also be thinking "Okay, but I don't ever indicate the IP address of anything I want to connect to, like a website. I just type in the website name itself". You can imagine that trying to remember billions of IP addresses is difficult - that's where a service called "Domain Name Service" (DNS) comes into play. DNS, at its core, translates IP addresses to names (kind of similar to how a phone book works). DNS is a huge technology of its own that I won't go into here, but may later!
12/X
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The key take-away is this: your IP address allows your device to determine who it is on the internet (This can also be traced back to you - you can use a VPN to help hide your identity - though they are not foolproof).
The gateway makes the connections happen by defining who has access to what network. Gateways & networks are super important, as we'll discuss next!
13/23
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Routing - This is Where the Fun Begins
Now that we have our packets ready to send, we need a way to get it to our destination. I'll go back to my post office analogy: I drop my letter at the post office, but now we need a way to actually send it. If you're my neighbor, I could just hand it to you directly (as we'd be on the same network), but most of the time, there's a few places my letter needs to go before it ultimately gets to you. This is where routing comes in.
14/23
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Routing is the process of determining which packets go where, and how they get there. Like it's namesake, it's associated with routers (remember gateways and networks?) There is a lot to this, but let's stick with the post office analogy:
When you send a letter, you essentially hand it off to your post office. The post office in turn, hands it off to the next post office. This process either ends there, or repeats several more times. Eventually, your letter arrives at the destination.
15/23
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A major mail distribution center in Buenos Aires doesn't need to know every address in Toronto - it just knows where to send the letter to get it one step closer to its destination.
Each router keeps this knowledge about other routers (its "neighbors") in what is called a Routing Table. Routing tables are constantly being updated real time as routers constantly share information with each other as networks become available or unavailable.
16/23
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The entries in the routing table are referred to as routes, and most of the key distribution routers know several routes to several different locations to provide redundancy (a backup). Your computer and your device have a routing table too, but much smaller: they simply know where to send traffic to access the internet, which is typically your closest and immediate gateway.
17/23
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To tie all of this together, every time you connect to the internet, you're actually being passed through a series of networks (determined by routers) that dictate where your traffic is heading to, based on the current routers routing table. These routers are owned by some private corporations (usually the ones for your actual destination, think of a few popular websites), but the key and vital ones are typically publicly funded or exist in military installations or universities, etc.
18/23
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It's important to note that due to the design, the internet is decentralized. There is no internet that can be "shut off" in the sense of, say, a water faucet - there are only networks that can be blocked from accessing other networks. This makes the internet incredibly resilient, as it has a near organic resilience to it as one network is put offline, another can take its place.
19/23
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It also makes it significantly more secure, as any attempts to take entire networks offline requires multiple networks to be attacked and isolated, which is significantly more difficult than a centralized location, which typically only requires one singular overall target.
The decentralized nature of the internet also means that there is no real way to currently control it or police it singularly from a infrastructure standpoint. It's an organic, ambiguous blob of networks.
20/23
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Which is why decentralized services like Fedi are so important for communication and collaboration and sharing truly dank memes. And large corporations are certainly trying to circumvent this problem by laying their own cables to create their own "private internet". This should concern even the most casual users of the internet, as the existence of this decentralized nature has largely been responsible for big corporations inability to cut off large chunks of the internet...
21/23
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