Communicating across the internet
GCSE COMPUTING - IP ADDRESSING AND DNS SERVERS
WHAT IS THE INTERNET ?
The internet and your data is not stored in a cloud. In reality it is actually very simple. The internet is simply a wide area network which consists of many fibre optic cables that are deep underground and connect people's device's to the servers on the internet, such as computers (clients).
Fibre optic cables around the world
This is a picture of the fibre optic cables that connect everybody around the world to the internet.
Fibre optic cables
This is a picture of the fibre optic cables that are deep underground to connect everybody to the internet.
WAN
This is a picture of a WAN network, which is what the internet is an example of as it is a network of networks.
What is the need of an IP address and what is the role of the DNS servers in this ?
An IP address is numeric address used by computer hosts to transmit and receive information over the Internet. The numerical internet address assigned to each computer on a network is there so that it can be distinguished from other computers. Expressed as four groups of numbers separated by dots. Furthermore, the DNS's role in this helps to make it easier for people to surf the web. this is because it is practically impossible to rememberer the IP address for each device or network you want to get to. Therefore, the DNS has a list of IP addresses stored in a server which is coded to that specific number such as the name of a specific website e.g. Facebook. This will then identify the the website and locate the client to the demanded website.