The Internet and the Web
The internet and the web
Tell the internet apart from the web, and say what has to happen between two machines before a page appears on your screen.
The internet is machinery: an enormous number of computers joined up by cables, radio links and the boxes that pass messages between them. It carries whatever anyone wants to send. The web is one of the things it carries — the pages people write, kept on machines that hand them out to anyone who asks. Messages, calls and file transfers are other things it carries, and none of them are web pages.
Nothing you read is on your device to begin with
A browser is a program on your own device whose job is to ask for pages and show them. A machine whose job is to keep pages and hand them out when they are asked for is called a server. So reading a page always involves two machines and a journey between them: you ask, and a copy comes back. The original stays where it was, which is why a million people can read the same page without using it up.
Worked example
You open a page and nothing appears at all — not even a message saying the page is missing. What can you work out from that?
Notice what did not happen: no reply arrived, not even an unhelpful one.
A missing-page message is itself a reply, so getting no reply at all is a different symptom.
Try it together
Now think this one through: a friend says the internet is down because one particular site will not open.
Test the claim against what you know about the two ends of a journey.
1.Every other site they try opens perfectly. Does that fit with the machinery being down? Answer yes or no.
Have a go
Have a go on your own. A page you read yesterday opens instantly today, even though your device was switched off overnight. What does that show?
Ready to practice?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.