Where does the internet come from?

Well the signal that gets you to where you want to go comes from that domain. Like others have said in that respect the Internet is a massive inter connecting web of computers and devices. As far as where that ability to traverse this massive web. I.E our internet connection. There really are physical lines that run all across the world including under oceans, not just one line mind you. These are what are known as the backbone lines, there massive bandwidth capabilities allow the trillions of bits of data that are flowing constantly to get to where they are going. Then we have tier 1 providers that collectively help manage the traffic in these lines and are all in contact with eachother. They are the ones that sell the signal/bandwidth to your ISP for you to use. Keep in mind that some of the tier 1 providers are ISPs themselves. For instance in the U.S AT&T and Verizon are both tier 1 providers. Some helpful search terms you might want to Google would be "internet backbone" "tier 1 providers" "tier 1 backbone line" I'm not sure if this answered your question exactly but for the very least if your wondering where your ISP gets internet from then these tier 1 providers are as high as the chain of command goes. As others posted though nothing is centralized none of these providers own the Internet or any sort of thing like that and they have nothing to do with the content within the web, it's more about routing all that data. In the same way the road you take to get the grocery store has nothing to do with what they are selling but you needed the road to drive on for you to get there.
Either I'm not making myself clear enough or perhaps I'm not wording it correctly, but if you unplug your router, you can't visit TS because you have no signal. Have a good day :)
 
Think of it as the chain-of-command, in order to get to the top you have to work through the chain of command. In order for you to receive a command from the top, the command must first pass through all the links along the way. The guest above was trying to explain the chain of command so to speak.

You get your signal from the ISP (whether it be a tier one or not). The ISP receives their signal from other ISP's. There may be several junction boxes between you and the ISP. You would have to call your local ISP and ask a technician if there are in your location. Your signal may come straight from the ISP or one of the junction boxes. But make no mistake that is not the originating source, it is only a switch box repeating the signal to it's next stop (aka: Internet Node).
 
Think of it as the chain-of-command, in order to get to the top you have to work through the chain of command. In order for you to receive a command from the top, the command must first pass through all the links along the way. The guest above was trying to explain the chain of command so to speak.

You get your signal from the ISP (whether it be a tier one or not). The ISP receives their signal from other ISP's. There may be several junction boxes between you and the ISP. You would have to call your local ISP and ask a technician if there are in your location. Your signal may come straight from the ISP or one of the junction boxes. But make no mistake that is not the originating source, it is only a switch box repeating the signal to it's next stop (aka: Internet Node).
Thanks, I'm just interested in the source. I (we) know it comes from someplace. I'll ask my ISP.Maybe I'll be left with ??????marks :)
 
Where do the 1's & 0's come from?


Take an analog clock for example. It's nothing but hands set to react at 1 second which after moving sixty times turn another set of hands (minute) once which turn the hour hand once every sixty rotations and then the whole thing repeats every 12 hours with just mechanical cog wheels connected to a power source.

Now take an analogue clock. You will see that instead of moving hands, you now have led's which are connected to wires to a power source (battery) and an integrated circuit.
This integrated circuit acts exactly like your mechanical clock with cogs. But instead of moving a hand, it allows electricity to pass through in impulses. Now let's consider each impulse passed as 1. And it prevents impulses or does not pass electricity at some points. Lets call this 0. So if you see those dots blinking between the hours and minutes, you will now know that the IC is passing electricity and stopping intermittently. 10101010 about sixty times. After 60 ones have been passed, the electricity is bypassed once through another point in the very same IC and goes to change the minutes and so on. Just like the analog clock. But this time with led's.

And so in the most basic form, this is your bit. Which is an electric pulse or electrical potential difference. Just make the chip smaller and smaller and give it more functions, or algorithms (coding) and you can control the timing, intensity, function and so on.

This is where the ones and zeros come from. Internet comes much later.
 
Either I'm not making myself clear enough or perhaps I'm not wording it correctly, but if you unplug your router, you can't visit TS because you have no signal. Have a good day :)

Alrighty - I know what you're asking. You want to know where those 1's and 0's come from, how they go to one place to another (and so on and so forth), yes?

Binary (those 1's and 0's) comes from computers (phones are also mini-computers) -
take this as an example:
Your computer runs on software - this software is made by programmers using a programming language (close to English, but not quite) - when a program is made (from a programming language), the source (code) gets compiled to some neat instructions, known as op-codes. Upon running your software, the OS converts these op-codes to binary - something that your computer can understand.
An example of what an op-code looks like: 0A
An example of what binary looks like: 1010
Code -> op-code -> binary (this is so your PC can understand it).

One cannot explain what a modem does by comparing it to a house - nor can it explain an ISP by comparing it to a mountain.
A modem receives information from your computer (either from a wired or non-wired connection) - from there, the modem attempts to send the request "over-the-wire" (the power lines, usually) - your ISP receives this request, and searchers for the server you are looking for - if it finds a match it will give the server you want to contact the request, and then the server submits data back to you (called a response), in the inverse order.

Key Words:
Request = data your computer wants
Response = data received from a server

If you have any more questions, or want more info, feel free to ask me more.
 
What he's asking is like a tier system of where the Internet ultimately comes from. The user gets the Internet from and Internet company (I.E. Verizon), and they get their connection from so and so. Continue using this method until you reach the source. Start thinking about countries with highest Internet speed and why? It's crazy when you see how fast other countries are by using fiber optics. I think he may be thinking about a higher power source...aliens...
 
What he's asking is like a tier system of where the Internet ultimately comes from. The user gets the Internet from and Internet company (I.E. Verizon), and they get their connection from so and so. Continue using this method until you reach the source. Start thinking about countries with highest Internet speed and why? It's crazy when you see how fast other countries are by using fiber optics. I think he may be thinking about a higher power source...aliens...
I'll find out one of these days :)
 
The data of all the domain in all over the world is stored in a server. Internet is just a connection to connect with that server and browse data from there. Internet basically is the connection.
 
I suspect you need to go further back for the understanding you seek, this will require work on your part, not merely someone explaining things in 5 minutes or in a post. Perhaps the following will give you a starting place for your explorations.
Idea one: notion of a Turing machine, an abstract mathematical idea of how problems can be solved by implementing them in a binomial system (e.g. zero and one).
Idea two: the algorithm, the idea of a procedure that will solve any problem that can be solved by going through a precisely stated, finite series of steps.
Three: Church's thesis (Church/Turing thesis): the idea that ANY algorithm at all can be implemented on a Turing machine. Now by following the steps of the algorithm and using simple operations/manipulations of ones and zeros we can solve ANY problem that can be solved by an algorithm (which is surprisingly large).
Four: Turing theorem: the idea of a universal Turing machine that can simulate the behaviour of any other Turing machine.
I'm getting tired of writing, but you will also want to look up John von Neumann. By this time of study you will know where you want to go with this. The end of this journey will actually end up with the internet, where we are now with computers, where we might go (A.I., Quantum computing etc)
Hope this helps, even if not explaining, you need to do the investigating
 
So I just came across this post. I know it's pretty old but I've had the same question myself and I think I know what your asking. not what is the Internet but where does the company you pay for it get it, where does it all start, is it created somewhere or is it just there. basically the company your paying for "internet" doesn't get it from anywhere they are charging you to use the lines that they have run to connect to something that already exists. it is not generated somewhere, there is no starting point, the "internet" is just an interconnected network of many servers so whether it's data from a cell phone or a hard line your isp are merely providing a way for you to connect to a network that is already out there. they monitor how much data flows through their lines or theyre towers and charge based off that.
 
not what is the Internet but where does the company you pay for it get it, where does it all start, is it created somewhere or is it just there
Initially the Internet was created over the Telephone infrastructure. The infrastructure was already there, and then was upgraded to meet bandwidth needs. So technically the Internet came from an existing infrastructure. And if you want to know the true beginning, you would need to study up on Telegraphy/Telegraphs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph
 
Networking is NOT about zeros and ones, but the intelligent routing of information from one system to a specific addressee - - today that's known as TCP/IP. The current name is "the Internet", which began as ARPANET.

The primitives involved the development of standards and equipment like:
  • modems: Modulator - Demodulator to put signals across an analog phone line
  • common encoding techniques: like ASCII, Unicode to give meaning to specific sequences of 0's & 1's
  • switching hardware: to read the codes and route the data to the correct machine (today's routers &switches)
  • protocols: to imply mean to what the transmission was intended to DO, like email or FTP
  • a Domain Name Server, to map a name into an IP address
  • software to achieve the intended protocol, like SEND the email, Receive an email, GET a file or PUT a file.
What we are seeing here (formatted HTTP) came much later when Burners-Lee developed the http protocol and the first web server.

The FIRST form of an Internet per say is described by the following:

Aparanet WiKi is available
.

Originally, The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was an early packet switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. ARPANET was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense.[1][2][3][4][5]

The initial ARPANET consisted of four IMPs:[31]

The first successful message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 pm on 29 October 1969, from Boelter Hall 3420.[32] Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word login; on an earlier attempt the l and the o letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was lo. About an hour later, after the programmers repaired the code that caused the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full login. The first permanent ARPANET link was established on 21 November 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By 5 December 1969, the entire four-node network was established.[33]

Today, there are more than 10^23 internet nodes and to manage all those connections, A Tree topology was created to allow traffic to pass thru the minimum number to systems to arrive at the correct correspondent (aka Backbone).
 
Perhaps I should of worded it differently in the first place. Whether its verizon, frontier or ??? where do they get the signal from & whomever that is, where do they get it from & where do they get it from etc,etc,etc.
I haven't read thru ALL of the replies, but thank you anyhow :) :)
 
Perhaps I should of worded it differently in the first place. Whether its verizon, frontier or ??? where do they get the signal from & whomever that is, where do they get it from & where do they get it from etc,etc,etc.
I haven't read thru ALL of the replies, but thank you anyhow :) :)
Maybe visualize it like an outlay of a road traffic system. In this case the Tier 1 providers would be the interstates. So where do they get their cars from? From smaller roads, follow that back to individual houses or parking lots. The Tier 1 guys get their information from smaller guys and on down the chain. It goes both ways, the Tier 1 are just the big roads that allow the traffic. You could get there by smaller roads, maybe, but it would likely be slower and more hops (stopsigns, turns, whatever).
 
If I am reading this correctly....the "signal" starts at your NIC. When you request a website to look at.

If there is no cable or they are past 5 miles of the telephone companies hut they will not get "high-speed internet".
 
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In 1969, the scientist in US work for ARPA( Advanced Research Projects Agency) and hence the connected network system developed. In 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee proposed the “World Wide Web”, in which “hypertext” documents would be linked together for users to browse. The first web page was published in 1991, and the idea grew into the web we know today.
 
For your information:

If you want to see what all your computer connects to when connecting to a domain (website), you can use the tracert command.

Open the command prompt or the power shell (only in Windows 10) and type:

tracert google.com
tracert Amazon.com
tracert-any other site name you wish and it’ll show the route it took. It’ll show all of the servers it went through to get there.

tracert is also known as “trace route”.
 
For your information:

If you want to see what all your computer connects to when connecting to a domain (website), you can use the tracert command.

Open the command prompt or the power shell (only in Windows 10) and type:

tracert google.com
tracert Amazon.com
tracert-any other site name you wish and it’ll show the route it took. It’ll show all of the servers it went through to get there.

tracert is also known as “trace route”
For your information:

If you want to see what all your computer connects to when connecting to a domain (website), you can use the tracert command.

Open the command prompt or the power shell (only in Windows 10) and type:

tracert google.com
tracert Amazon.com
tracert-any other site name you wish and it’ll show the route it took. It’ll show all of the servers it went through to get there.

tracert is also known as “trace route”.
Did you by chance notice the original date this thread was started? Thanks & have a great day :)
 
It should be helpful to read about TCP/IP first.

TCP/IP: is software a computers operating system has, it's shared by applications, such as a web-browser, email software, YouTube connections, Microsofts Activation servers, SSH, file and picture sharing services, social media web-site apps", everything sent over a network uses TCP/IP.

Review: A computing device connected to a network makes use of TCP/IP to send and receive data.

Info: The Internet works by using a transmission protocol. It's called TCP/IP, short for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP/IP sends and receives data by compiling packets of data and sending them to the right computer.

Internet Addresses: All computers must have an IP 'address' assigned to them to have a network PRESENCE, this presence (AKA) IP address must be up (turned on) in order to send and receive data. Think of our IP address (it's numerical only) as the computers network mailbox number. Techspot.com is a commercial domain, it was purchased (registered) on 1997-01-17 and updated 2019-03-23. The IP address for Techspot is 5nn.nnn.nnn.nnn. The IP's numerical sequence is called a 'dotted quad' for the method it's constructed - four groups of up-to three digits each.

Review: Sending and Receiving data from one computer to another requires a 'communication' language, TCP/IP comes with our Operating System and is the one we use. Physical connections between computers are required. We need an On-ramp to the internet. The on-ramp is our internet connection and our "point of presence" - our "POP" - that is located in our homes, workplaces, schools, and elsewhere.

The loop is completed by using a fast data line with devices rented/purchased from an ISP which connects our computer with THEIR network, we finally connect to the broader internet through our ISP.

Physical Connections: A computer has a hardware component called a NIC, or the Network Interface Controller. A bundle of thin wires form a cable that's called 'Ethernet' cable. That cable is connected to a computers NIC at one end, and the internet connected hardware an ISP provides, typically a 'router', at the other end. Ethernet carries traffic bi-directionally. Wireless connections forgo ethernet cable by using a Wify transceiver 'adapter', which performs network transport functions through the air.

TCP/IP: specifies how data is exchanged over the internet by providing end to end communications that identify how it should be broken into packets, addressed, transmitted, routed and received at the destination.

Data Packets: Packets are made of three different parts. A header, the payload and the trailer. Network packets can be thought of as postal packages. The header is the box/envelope, the payload is the envelope's content, and the trailer is the signature. A packet has a certain maximum size, usually 1500 bytes and a certain minimum size, usually 64 bytes.

But Really!, What make's it work??? - putting it all together:

We have a computer with an operating system and some software, including TCP/IP. Let's take a look at a packet diagram.

Ny5yOXu.gif


On the left is Your computer at 1.2.3.4
On the right is Another Computer at 5.6.7.8.
So I'm going to tell my browser to hit MusicFreedom.com (located at 5.6.7.8) and order the home page.

I just type musicfreedom.com in the address box, hit enter, then,

1.My ISP looks up the numerical IP address for musicfreedom.com and sends musicfreedom.com = 5.6.7.8 back.

2. The browser sends a message through TCP/IP, the OS sends it to Hardware, hardware passes a message to "get "https://5.6.7.8/index.html" across the internet -> to (Another Computer in this example) and (Another Computer) at 5.6.7.8 sends the files that comprise "index.html" to my computers address.

3. "index" file (and other needed files) traverse the internet to >hardware to >TCP/IP to >Application (my browser).

4. My application (the browser) reconstructs the page according to the instructions for layout sent and displays it on my screen.

5. Done!
When I order any page or file, the server at the other end simply picks it up from storage and repeats the same process.

28cd6d962e614d7944b069c3b4d142d9.png

The internet is complex, packets can be transported over many networks, in and out of order and they'll be neatly reassembled by my computer. "Streaming" is a bulls**t term to indicate we can begin playback of a media file "as it arrives", a service sending media may use a "streaming protocol" that's optimized for that purpose.

Needs more pictures! 28cd6d962e614d7944b069c3b4d142d9.png
 
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