Understanding The Internet

Understanding the Internet

By: Madison Brule

Technology is what keeps us, as a community connected but more importantly, the internet is what keeps the world connected. To locate information, a person may visit a website, which has a URL. To access a website via a URL there are 4 steps that it goes through to get one to that website. First, the computer finds the website code from a server and finds the IP address and this progress to step 2. Now that the IP address is resolved, the browser then makes a request to another server with that IP address. The browser then gathers a bunch of information and sends that to the IP address. A response is then sent back to the browser. Then, step 3 occurs when the browser decides what to do with the response (that contains data) based on what the data is. Lastly, step 4 entails the website being displayed. The browser went through the HTML data by the server that then displays the website’s structure. CSS then adds the styling of the website. And this is how people are able to get access to different websites and information on the internet. 

Gaining access to the internet is one thing, but learning how to optimize your search is key to having access to information efficiently and effectively. The first thing one may do is changing a term or adding in more terms to effectively get to a source and eliminate the chances of getting sources that aren’t necessary. One may also try different variations of the same subject. In other words, rephrasing. Another tip is to use quotation marks around the phrase, this way the search engine will only find resources that contain that phrase in the exact order the words are displayed. There are a lot of other ways to efficiently search the internet but these are just a couple of examples. 

In my personal experience, I have always grown up with the internet at my fingertips. I personally, did not exactly know how the internet truly works but after seeking out this information it has become apparent that the internet is much more complex than I thought. I have had the privilege of working on different social media platforms and even using photo and video editing software including those on Adobe Creative Cloud. Lastly, I have taken online courses and utilize the internet of my college education every day. Access to the internet has overall made me more information literate and prepares me for the future of technology, where ever it may lead us.