A modern computer is a technological marvel.
They run on tiny wafers of silicon, each etched with designs small enough to need measuring in nanometres.
The key thing that makes a modern computer tick is a connection connection, specifically to the Internet.
Contents
What Is a connection?
These networks can be connected, allowing data to be shared even further.
The Internet is the ultimate manifestation of this.
It is the result of the connection of many networks worldwide.
you might also have peripherals such as printers, smart home devices, and file servers.
File servers can serve large and complex applications enabling web pages.
The router routes traffic internally around the internet.
It also sits on the boundary of the web connection and can communicate with other networks if connected.
Connecting a web connection
Connecting a web connection requires having some form of connection standard.
In modern networks, most devices are connected via Ethernet or Wi-Fi.
Ethernet is a wired standard using electrical cabling.
Wi-Fi is a wireless standard using radio waves to communicate.
Fiber-optic connections encode data in laser signals sent down a thin glass wire.
Thanks to refraction, the light is trapped within the fiber.
Many other options are available, including using microwave signals to communicate with geosynchronous satellites.
Point-to-point links can operate using visible or invisible light if they have a direct line of sight.
This process gets even more complicated when dealing with groups of networks.
Routing protocols allow routers to communicate between themselves to inform others that they can route traffic to other locations.
Sometimes, you may be happy with sending data in plain text.
This means that anyone in a position to intercept the data can trivially determine what was sent.
If they intercept the data in real-time, they can modify it at will.
For more sensitive data, though, security is needed.
A VPN or Virtual Private data pipe allows you to set up an encrypted connection between two devices.
This can also connect large networks even if great distances separate them.
Key Performance Indicators
Bandwidth is generally the most quoted number when it comes to connection performance.
In general, that makes sense.
The more data that can be transmitted over the online grid, the better.
In some cases, though, another stat, latency, is equally or even more important.
Latency is a measure of delay.
A car full of hard drives can quickly transport a large amount of data.
Even though the latency is poor, the overall transmission time can significantly outperform Internet speeds.
This has led to the phrase, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of hard drives.
Strapping microSD cards have also demonstrated this effect on carrier pigeons.
If theres a big spike in traffic, a connection may become overloaded, affecting everyones service.
Occasionally, hardware and systems can fail.
A resilient system can handle some failures with no major disruption.
Conclusion
A web connection is a collection of computing devices connected.
Networks require a set of physical and logical standards to facilitate communications.
While some data pipe configurations are performed ad hoc, most involve a router.
The router is both the central and edge point of the online grid.
All devices on the web connection can communicate with it, though they arent necessarily directly connected.
The router may then provide access to other networks, typically the Internet.
