Today’s networks have changed unimaginably; in just a few years, their limitations have evolved on a large scale. The first data networks could only exchange character-based information. Today they can transmit text, graphics, voice, and video between different devices regardless of geographic distance.
In today’s world, we are connected as never before, thanks to the use of networks. News and discoveries are known around the world in a matter of seconds. Thanks to advances in network technologies, we can create a world where national borders, geographic distances, and physical limitations become less critical and more and more easily circumvented.
The Internet has changed social, commercial, political, and personal interactions. The creation of the cloud allows us to store documents and images and access them anywhere, anytime.
Have you ever been curious to know how a service or application on the Internet works? For this, first, we must take into account that the Internet is a decentralized set of communication networks, in itself is a network of interconnected networks between them in a global scope. The word Internet derives from Interconnected Networks. The Internet’s reach today is enormous and has been of great help to the private sector, government, education, and health, which use this medium through different services to inform and meet the demands of the global market and society.
Some services or applications provided through the Internet are:
- World Wide Web (WWW)
- Electronic mail
- Social networking
- Weblogs or blogs
- P2P sharing applications
- Online games
- Streaming platforms (Youtube, Netflix, HBO Go, Disney Plus)
- Remote administration of a device such as Telnet and SSH
- Among others.
The existence and massive adoption of the Internet opened the way to new forms of communication that allowed people to create information that a global audience could consult.
Today, even the most minor organization has access to the Internet, not to mention homes, where almost most families also have their connection.
It is worth mentioning that the Internet is a convergent network because it allows the unifying of different networks into a common one, regardless of the technology or the brand of the devices. This point is thanks to the standardization of the different elements of the network because it allows the operation of equipment and devices created by other companies.
If we mention a little about the characteristics or important points of the Internet, we should mention the following:
- To have redundant links to have a fault-tolerant network, that is, to have more than one equipment to fulfill the same function in case one fails, this implementation is usually expensive, and it is necessary to consider the cost-benefit balance.
- It is a scalable network to expand quickly, without affecting the performance of its hosted services, and transparently to the customer or user.
- QoS, to provide quality of service for specific applications that need to maintain a fixed availability within the network, such as voice and video. In other words, the network must be intelligent to distinguish the different types of traffic and prioritize network resources for each of them.
- Security, with the passage of time and the evolution of networks, it was also necessary to cover the area of confidentiality in this architecture, for which different tools and procedures were implemented to protect against intrusions. When the Internet began with the protocols we use today, it was never imagined that it would be used to send invoices, commercial and banking transactions. For this reason, it was decided to give security to the protocols because they are vulnerable and can be used for theft, etc.
The above points are essential to ensure adequate service over the Internet; a term used to refer to a network that meets these characteristics is called “resilient network”.
However, these are points that we must consider within our network because we will be part of the Internet, maybe only as a simple user or service provider.
At this moment, the exact functioning of the technologies that are used for communication on the Internet will be complex and not very understandable; for this reason, we will begin to understand a simple network of computers. With the passage of time, we will understand more in detail the functioning of the Internet.
I can only tell you that you are entering an incredible world of knowledge about telecommunications technologies, no doubt spectacular. Let’s start!
