Hello dear lector, if you are reading this is because everything is working. What I mean by “is working”? Well, you will understand it at the end of this post. Nowadays, if you are one of those people that haven’t studied anything related to Information Technology, this would be like magic or maybe just something that works without knowing what’s going on. A great example is when you write in your web browser an URL, and in a few minutes, you get the page you are requesting. So, where this information comes from, there is someone in another computer sending back responses to this request? Too many questions, right? But don’t worry, we are here to learn.
In this opportunity, our focus will be on what happens when you type holbertonschool.com in your browser and press enter. I invite you to get comfortable and ready to learn what’s going on under the hood when you request an URL.
Beginning of magic
The communication in society and even in nature has an important role. As an example, both humans and animals use it to transmit information to their equals. The same happens in the IT world. The real power that computers have is communication between them. For this reason, since you get in touch with a computer, you probably have sent information to many others. And currently, this information transmission is done via Bluetooth, wireless connections, or optic fiber (most used).
As well as humans and animals use different languages and rules to communicate, the computer also does. In the world of computers, they use something called TCP/IP (stands for Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). In simple terms, this protocol suite is a set of standardized rules that computers use to communicate over a network (private network or Internet). That means that every computer is a node in a huge network like the Internet or a private network.
The role of TCP / IP
In detail, this suite of rules based on these two protocols have the following roles:
IP → Intenet Protocol is the system in charge of obtaining addresses where data must be sent.
TCP → Transmission Control Protocol, on the other hand, is in charge of handling error checking and packet ordering.
So, imagine you want to transfer information from computer A to computer B. This protocol suite is in charge of determining the origin from which data must be sent and the destiny that is going to receive this information (IP’s). Furthermore, once destiny and origin are known, the data is sent as packages of data over the network, having under control that information is not going to be lost or broken.
#web-infrastructure #tcp-ip #holberton-school #networking #web-development #amazon web services