The Internet
How Information is Sent and Received
by Sharlee Plett
When you get your driver's license, you learn the system of rules and procedures for driving on the roads and freeways. The Internet has a similar set of rules and procedures for moving information around. On the Internet, this system is referred to as protocols.
The Internet protocols describe a set of rules for encoding and decoding data so that messages may be exchanged between computers. It lays out how the information has to be organized and sent so that the computers can accept and decipher the information.
The rules that goven the Internet are called TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol. TCP/IP is used to refer to a group of protocols. One of them is HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), which is used by your browser software (Internet Explorer, Firefox) to get and receive information over the world wide web. Another is FTP ( File Transfer Protocol), which is used to transfer files between computers over the Internet.
Since files are too big to move through telephone and cable lines, they are broken down into tiny packets when they leave a computer to go on the Internet. Each tiny packet contains information that says where it came from, where it is going, what file it belongs to and where it belongs in the file.
Once the file is broken down into packets, each one is sent out to its destination computer separately. Each packet travels by itself along different Internet lines and backbones, depending on how much traffic is traveling on each one. When all of the packets get to their destination computer, they are gathered up and recombined into the original file.
