HOW ELECTRONICS STUFFS WORK

How to Make a Website From Scratch Using that Your Mobile Phone for Java Phones, Symbian, Android, Smartphones

2014-11-18T11:56:00.001-08:00

Believe me if you are used to computer and may be something happened you lost it or it got damaged, and you are not the type that love staying without looking at Electronic devices and playing with it, at the same time you don’t have the money to buy a new one, but you have a mobile phone, most of the things that would be coming into your mind would be how to convert that your phone to a PC. Even if you have a computer there will be sometimes where you just wish your phone has some features in Desktop platform. To be sincere I have been into this and Google will tell you that most of my search keywords then looks like (How to download youtube videos with Phone, How to read PDF files with phones, How to open MSWORD files .doc(x), How to open HTML files on phone, e.t.c) and even silly searches like (How to install Photoshop in my phone, How to make video calls with my phone, How to play PlayStation Games in my phone, even How to install windows XP in my phone, e.t.c)…lolz..Well you don’t have to blame me then because I know am not the only person in that business…You might have thought or even done something worst than mine…hehehe… I learnt something anywhere. I was able to figure out one of the good questions I asked Google then and will be very happy to share it with you guys. But come to think of it, I could have solved most of the other funny side of the questions I asked Google then if am still broke… True/False…false abeg … I love talking please forgive me but in this tutorial I will be showing you how to design a website from scratch with just your mobile phone.
Requirements:
Mobile Phone – (Any Symbian phone(S60), Smart Phones, android phones) mine was Nokia E63

Preferred: phones with Querty Keypad like E63, E72, N92, even java phones like Asha series. E.t.c.

Applications –(Lightnotepad or any mobile text editor with “SAVE AS” feature, X-plorer or any other file manager of your choice)

*Role(s) of each application in this tutorial :*
App Name	Screenshot	Function in this tutorial
*LightNotePad:*	This is just a mobile version of notepad so you can write anything in it and save it with custom file extension. So we use it to write the code.
*X-Plorer:*	This app does so many things but for this tutorial we just need it to get the file path of our Webpage in the phone.
Browser	Any phone that has GPRS hads this by default . so we use it to view the webpage. i.e the main work(website)

Note: This tutorial is about how to design website using your mobile phone and not how to write the HTML so I will assume you know how to write the HTML so that you are just looking for a way to do it on mobile platform. If Not you can click here to Learn How to write the HTML. But you can still do that later even if you don’t know HTML yet.
Then we get down to the business:
STEP 1: download the apps listed above i.e Lightnotepad and Xplorer and install in your phone.
STEP 2: Open your application manager and launch (click and open ) the LightNotePad app.
3: Write your Html, css, javascript e.t.c and once you are done select the Save As and type the file name but with the extension .htm or .html just the same files are created on the Desktop platform.
4. Now are done with the webpage is now time to view it. Launch X-plorer and locate the file you just saved with Lightnotepad.
Once you are there just lie down in your bed because you are close to the gate but don’t sleep because we are not yet done.
5. Look at the title bar of the explorer I.e at the top of the X-plorer app window or screen. You will see something that looks like “C:/something/something/” that is the address of your webpage you wrote with lightnotepad copy it down because we will need later when we want to view the webpage. You can now close the X-plorer we are done with it. Remember I said X-plorer in this tutorial is just to get the file path.
6. Now in your mobile phone “Menu” select your browser Nokia phones has it as “Web” or “Internet” . Whatever just launch your default phone browser.
7. Now paste or write the path(address) you copied from X-plorer in STEP 5 above into the address bar (the same place you will write www.facebook.com if you want to facebook) and immediately after the trailing slash “/” wirte the filename i.e the name you saved your file as in LightNotePad and Hit Enter or Send…Vuela….If you have been taken this smooth ride with me up to this point then your should be looking at your webpage on your Phone screen now.
You can leave both the Lightnotepad and the Browser open since Symbian phones and smart phones support multi- function/tasking that is to say you can switch Applications by press and holding the “application switch button” to select the app to view. So with this functionality you can edit in LightNotePad and switch back to the Browser and view the changes made. This is exactly how sites are designed on Desktop Computers.
Don’t Forget: on each update you make in LightNotepad, you must refresh the browser for the changes to take effect.
Enjoy...
source : http://www.newsniga.com/HowTo/How-to-Make-a-Website-From-Scratch-Using-that-Your-Mobile-Phone-for-Java-Phones-Symbian-Android-Smartphones-463

HOW THE COMPUTER MONITOR/TELEVISION WORKS

2011-02-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

Most desktop displays use cathode ray tube (CRT) or liquid crystal display (LCD) technology, while nearly all portable computing devices such as laptops incorporate LCD technology. Because of their slimmer design and lower energy consumption, monitors using LCD technology (also called flat panel or flat screen displays) are replacing the venerable CRT on most desktops.

Now lets take a look on how cathode ray tube (CRT) works.

-The CRT Monitor that is most likely on your desktop is a cousin of your TV set. Of course they have come a long way since the TV as far as resolution is concerned offering 800X600 or better. Now you may think well why haven't TV's moved up to a better resolution if a computer has such good resolution? TV's are restricted to 525X700 and defined by NTSC (North American Television Standards Commission), surprised? Seems as if everything is made a standard and some bogus organization will make sure they make a buck on it. Well, now how does your monitor make the picture on the screen and do it fast?

In CRT Monitors, the beginning process of the monitor starts with a electron gun. This gun has the job of spraying a focused beam on the glass of the CRT tube, the tube is also in a vacuum. The inside of the glass tube that you are looking at is lined with a phosphorescent material that glows a specific color when excited by the electron gun. Now when the electron gun is firing it is usually through a aperture grill or mask. This mask insures the electron's from the gun hit precise points and make the picture sharper and look great. Now we know when the gun hits the material on the glass it will turn a certain color. We are working with (RGB) red, blue, and green colors that make up individual pixels. If the electron gun hits one pixel with just the right frequency of electrons we will have say a red pixel, little more frequency of electrons we move into a blue and so on. Making all these pixels match up into a image is a big task. So you are probably thinking how does this electron gun go across the screen and does it move this much?

-The electron gun has to update these pixels as much as 70 times a second. This has to be done to keep the phosphors lit. They do burn out if not updated and refreshed often. We need a faster gun then Jesse James for this action. Now, the process of updating the screen is called refresh. You probably have heard that term a few times and is in Hertz on a computer such as 75Hz. This means the monitor refreshes 75 times a second. Remember MHz in CPU's which can calculate information 500 million times a second? Not to slow is it.. Now when the monitor has to refresh a row of pixels we start on the left top side of screen. This is done from the left then goes to the right side, only to be turned off and start all over again at the next row. Now when you have a 800X600 resolution the electron ray gun has to spray 800 pixels per row and do 600 rows. Now do this 75 times a second or more. Kind cool huh? So does this gun just move back and forth from the back of the computer to paint our screen? No, usually for higher rates such as 75Hz and upwards magnetic fields are used to guide the electrons to there pixels more precisely.

Resolution refers to the number of individual dots of color, known as pixels, contained on a display. Resolution is expressed by identifying the number of pixels on the horizontal axis (rows) and the number on the vertical axis (columns), such as 800x600. Resolution is affected by a number of factors, including the size of the screen.
pixel is the smallest element of an image.

As monitor sizes have increased over the years, display standards and resolutions have changed. In addition, some manufacturers offer widescreen displays designed for viewing DVD movies.

How the LCD works

LCD monitor

We learned in school that there are three common states of matter: solid, liquid or gaseous. Solids act the way they do because their molecules always maintain their orientation and stay in the same position with respect to one another. The molecules in liquids are just the opposite: They can change their orientation and move anywhere in the liquid. But there are some substances that can exist in an odd state that is sort of like a liquid and sort of like a solid. When they are in this state, their molecules tend to maintain their orientation, like the molecules in a solid, but also move around to different positions, like the molecules in a liquid. This means that liquid crystals are neither a solid nor a liquid. That's how they ended up with their seemingly contradictory name.

So, do liquid crystals act like solids or liquids or something else? It turns out that liquid crystals are closer to a liquid state than a solid. It takes a fair amount of heat to change a suitable substance from a solid into a liquid crystal, and it only takes a little more heat to turn that same liquid crystal into a real liquid. This explains why liquid crystals are very sensitive to temperature and why they are used to make thermometers and mood rings. It also explains why a laptop computer display may act funny in cold weather or during a hot day at the beach.

HOW CALCULATORS WORK

2010-12-11T11:48:00.000-08:00

The calculator has had a profound impact on the world, making computations quicker and more exact. In the classroom, calculators have given many students the ability to learn about and put complex formulas and concepts into practice more easily.
Before the invention of the modern calculator, people used some other tools for computation. The abacus, for example, is one ancestor of the calculator. Probably of Babylonian origin, early abaci are believed to have been boards on which the position of counters stood for numerical values. However, the modern abacus -- which some people still use today in China, Japan and the Middle East -- works by moving beads along wires that are strung on a frame.

HOW THE CALCULATOR CALCULATES

Most calculators depends on integrated circuits, commonly known as chips. These circuits use transistors to add and subtract, as well as to perform computations on logarithms in order to accomplish multiplication, division and more complicated operations such as using exponents and finding square roots. Basically, the more transistors an integrated circuit has, the more advanced its functions may be. Most standard pocket calculators have identical, or very similar, integrated circuitry.

Like any electronic device, the chips inside a calculator work by reducing any information you give it to its binary equivalent. Binary numbers translate our numbers in a base-two system, in which we represent each digit by a 1 or a 0, doubling each time we move up a digit. By "turning on" each of the positions -- in other words, by putting a 1 in it -- we can say that that digit is included in our overall number.

Microchips use binary logic by turning transistors on and off literally, with electricity. So, for example, if you wanted to add 2 + 2, your calculator would convert each "2" to binary (which looks like this: 10) and then add them together. Adding the "ones" column (the two 0s), gives you 0: The chip can see that there is nothing in the first position. When it adds the digits in the "tens" column, the chip gets 1+1. It sees that both are positive, and -- since there are no 2's in binary notation -- moves the positive reply one digit to the left, getting a sum of 100 -- which, in binary terms, equals 4 [source: Wright].

This sum is routed through the input/output chip in our integrated circuit, which applies the same logic to the display itself. Have you ever noticed the way the numbers on a calculator or alarm clock are made up of segmented lines? Each one of those parts of the numerals can be turned on or off using this same binary logic. So, the processor takes that "100" and translates it by lighting up or turning on certain segments of the lines in the display to create the numeral 4.

CALCULATOR COMPONENTS

Many modern calculators have a durable plastic casing, with simple openings in the front that allow rubber to push through, just like a television remote. By pressing a button, you complete a circuit underneath the rubber, which sends electrical impulses through a circuit board below. Those impulses are routed through the microprocessor, which interprets the information and sends a readout to the calculator's display screen.

The displays of most early electronic calculators were made up of LEDs( light-emitting diodes). Newer models that use less power incorporate the liquid crystal display, or LCD. Rather than producing light, LCDs rearrange light molecules to create a pattern on the display and ultimately don't require as much electricity.

Early calculators also had to be plugged in or used bulky battery power. But by the late 1970s, solar cell technology had become cheap and efficient enough to use in consumer electronics. A solar cell creates electricity when the photons of sunlight are absorbed by semiconductors, such as silicon, in the cell. This knocks loose electrons, and the electric field of the solar cell keeps them all traveling in the same direction, thus creating an electric current. (Something like an LCD calculator would only need a low-level current, which explains why their solar cells are so small.) By the 1980s, most manufacturers of simple calculators were taking advantage of solar cell technology. More powerful scientific and graphing calculators, however, still use battery power.

THE PROCESS OF MAKING RUBBER

2010-12-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

Rubber is a specific type of polymer called an elastomer: a large molecule that can be stretched to at least twice its original length and returned to its original shape. Early forms of rubber had many gluelike properties, especially in hot weather. In cold temperatures, rubber became hard and brittle. It was only after an accidental discovery by Charles Goodyear in 1839 that modern rubber became possible.

Since that time, rubber has become an important natural polymer in society. We make rubber from rubber trees (natural latex) and from oil (synthetic rubber). We use both types of rubber in many products. Like the Mesoamericans (Aztecs and Mayans) before them, athletes and children today play with rubber balls. Of course, the most common use for rubber is in automotive tires. But pencil erasers, shoes, gloves, dental dams and condoms contain the ubiquitous substance, too. In many products, rubber is added as a protective coating for either weatherproofing or shockproofing.
In this article, we'll look at the chemistry of this stretchy substance, where and how it's produced, and what Charles Goodyear's remarkable discovery was. We'll also look at the different types of rubber, some of your favorite products made from it and the industry responsible for producing it.

GETTING NATURAL RUBBER FROM TREES

The Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Mayans and the Aztecs, first tapped rubber from one of several trees found in Central and South America:get recent news here newsniga.com

Hevea braziliensis: the most common commercial rubber tree from Brazil
Hevea guyanensis: originally found in French Guyana
Castilla elastica: sometimes called the Mexican rubber tree or the Panama rubber tree

Explorers and colonists brought samples of these trees when they headed back to Europe. Eventually, seeds from these trees were transported to rubber plantations in other tropical climates during the era of European colonialism.
Currently, most natural rubber comes from Latin American-derived trees transplanted to Southeast Asia (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia), as well as India, Sri Lanka and Africa. In these areas, you can find other rubber-producing trees including:

Ficus elastica: found in Java and Malaysia. This species is also a common tropical houseplant.
Funtumia elastica: grows in West Africa
Landolphia owariensis located in the Congo basin

Of all of these trees, the best rubber-producing tree is H. braziliensis.
It takes about six years for a rubber tree to grow to a point where it's economical to harvest the sap, which is called latex. Here's how you tap one: The collector makes a thin, diagonal cut to remove a sliver of bark. The milky-white latex fluid runs out of the bark, much as blood would run out of a small superficial wound on your skin. The fluid runs down the cut and is collected in a bucket. After about six hours, the fluid stops flowing. In that six-hour period, a tree can usually fill a gallon bucket. The tree can be tapped again with another fresh cut, usually the next day.
The Mesoamericans would dry the collected rubber latex and make balls and other things, like shoes. They would dip their feet in the latex and allow it to dry. After several dips and dryings, they could peel a shoe from their feet. Next, they smoked their new rubber shoes to harden them. The Mesoamericans also waterproofed fabrics by coating them with latex and allowing it to dry. This process was used to make rubber items until around the 1800s.
Columbus brought back rubber balls with him upon returning from his second voyage to the New World, and in the early 1700s, rubber samples and trees were brought back to Europe. At that time, rubber was still a novelty. Rubber made in the Mesoamerican way resembled a pencil eraser. It was soft and pliable. In 1770, the chemist Joseph Priestley was the first to use rubber to erase lead marks. He coined the word "rubber" because he could remove the lead marks by rubbing the material on them.
While it was useful for waterproofing fabrics and making homemade shoes, rubber had its problems. You can see these problems for yourself with a simple rubber pencil eraser. Take that eraser and place it under intense heat for several minutes. What do you see? The eraser should get very soft and sticky. Next, do the opposite -- place the eraser on ice or in a freezer for several minutes. What do you see? The eraser should get hard and brittle. The same thing happened to early rubber. Imagine what it would be like to walk around in your rubber shoes on a hot or cold day back then. The shoes wouldn't wear well. Likewise, your rubberized clothing might stick to your chair while you were sitting, especially on a warm day.

RUBBER CHEMISTRY

What makes rubber so elastic? Like plastic, rubber is a polymer, which is a chain of repeating units called monomers. In rubber, the monomer is a carbon compound called isoprene that has two carbon-carbon double bonds. The latex fluid that seeps from rubber trees has many isoprene molecules. As the latex dries, the isoprene molecules crowd together and one isoprene molecule attacks a carbon-carbon double bond of a neighboring molecule. One of the double bonds breaks, and the electrons rearrange to form a bond between the two isoprene molecules.
The process continues until you have a long strands of many isoprene molecules linked like a chain. These long strands are called polyisoprene polymer. Each polyisoprene molecule contains thousands of isoprene monomers. As the drying continues, the polyisoprene strands stick together by forming electrostatic bonds, much like the attraction between opposite poles of two bar magnets. The attraction between these strands holds the rubber fibers together and allows them to stretch and to recover.
However, temperature changes can affect the electrostatic interactions between the polyisoprene strands in latex rubber. Hot temperatures reduce the interactions and make the rubber more fluid (sticky). Colder temperatures increase the interactions and make the rubber more solid (hard, brittle).
In the early 1800s, several scientists and inventors set out to make rubber more durable. One famous inventor, Charles Goodyear, reasoned that you could reduce rubber's stickiness by mixing it with various dry powders. He experimented by combining talcum and other powders with rubber. In 1838, Goodyear met Nathaniel Hayward, who had made progress in treating rubber sheets with a solution of sulfur and turpentine and then drying them in the sun. Hayward's sun-dried rubber was harder and more durable, so he patented the process, which he called solarization.
Goodyear purchased the patent rights to solarization and began experimenting with sulfur compounds. By trial and error, the inventor mixed latex rubber with sulfur and lead oxide. Legend has it that some of the mixture fell onto a hot stove, and the resulting rubber was hard, flexible and durable. Goodyear's accidental process eventually became known as vulcanization. He also found that changing the amount of sulfur changed the rubber's characteristics. The more sulfur used, the harder the rubber became. So what happens when rubber is vulcanized?
When polyisoprene strands are heated with sulfur and lead oxide, the sulfur atoms attack the double bonds in the polyisoprene strands and bind to the carbon atoms. Sulfur atoms also can form bonds among themselves (disulfide bonds) and cross-link adjacent polyisoprene strands to form a netlike structure in the rubber.
This cross-linking strengthens the polyisoprene to make it harder, flexible and more durable. As Goodyear found, the more sulfur used, the more cross-links can form, and the harder the rubber gets. Goodyear's vulcanization process involved combining latex rubber, sulfur and lead oxide in high-pressure steam for up to 6 hours to achieve the best results.

SYNTHETIC RUBBER

The rubber industry really started booming with the invention of the automobile. All those tires created and still create a huge market for vulcanized rubber. In the early 20th century, most tires were made from vulcanized latex rubber, which was derived from trees. The United States was a leading producer of automobiles and a big consumer of world rubber, which was controlled by British plantations throughout Asia.
It was only a matter of time before scientists asked if rubber could be made artificially. As early as 1860, they had already worked out the chemistry of rubber and its vulcanization process. Chemists had heated rubber to break it apart and found that it produced isoprene, oil and tar. They could make isoprene from oil and then combine isoprene artificially to make rubber. It seemed the stuff of pencil erasers and automotive tires could be made from petroleum products.
You've probably heard of a few of these synthetic rubbers. For example, neoprene is a soft, foamy, insulating rubber that's often used in wet suits. Scuba divers and surfers have DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers, who turned a polymer of chloroprene into polychloroprene in 1930, to thank for keeping them warm during their ocean adventures. Incidentally, Carothers later invented another popular polymer called nylon.
Here's another synthetic rubber we bet you've heard of: silicone. In 1945, chemists at Dow Corning developed a synthetic rubber that relied on silicone-based polymers instead of carbon-based ones. They created a light, flexible and chemically inert material that's often used in the medical device industry and that may even sit in the body in the form of breast implants.
Latex is the last synthetic rubber we'll talk about. You probably remember that latex refers to the rubber tree sap. It's also the name of a thinner, stronger synthetic rubber that retains the natural milky color of that sap, at least initially. In 1921, chemist Peter Schidrowitz discovered that you could vulcanize latex by adding polysulfides to it and heating it at lower temperatures than traditional vulcanization over a long time. Furthermore, because this type of vulcanization occurred at lower temperatures, you could add dyes to the latex to produce colors. This is the type of latex that you find in latex gloves, dental dams and condoms.

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HOW OPERATING SYSTEM WORKS

2010-12-07T04:37:00.000-08:00

One cannot understand the function of what he dont know,so windows xp,vista,windows 7,windows vienna,linux,symbian Os for phone e.t.c are all operating systems with exactly the same functions i.e controlling the softwares and hardwares.
Definition: An operating system (sometimes abbreviated as "OS") is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer by a boot program, manages all the other programs in a computer.
The other programs are called applications or application programs. The application programs make use of the operating system by making requests for services through a defined application program interface (API). In addition, users can interact directly with the operating system through a user interface such as a command language or a graphical user interface (GUI).
An operating system (OS) can also be define as a software, consisting of programs and data, that runs on computers and manages the computer hardware and provides common services for efficient execution of various application software.
Recently, operating systems have started to pop up in smaller computers as well. If you like to tinker with electronic devices, you're probably pleased that operating systems can now be found on many of the devices we use every day, from cell phones to wireless access points. The computers used in these little devices have gotten so powerful that they can
now actually run an operating system and applications. The computer in a typical modern cell phone is now more powerful than a desktop computer from 20 years ago, so this progression makes sense and is a natural development.

The purpose of an operating system is to organize and control hardware and software so that the device it lives in behaves in a flexible but predictable way. In this article, we'll tell you what a piece of software must do to be called an operating system, show you how the operating system in your desktop computer works and give you some examples of how to take control of the other operating systems around you.
WHAT IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM

Not all computers have operating systems. The computer that controls the microwave oven in your kitchen, for example, doesn't need an operating system. It has one set of tasks to perform, very straightforward input to expect (a numbered keypad and a few pre-set buttons) and simple, never-changing hardware to control. For a computer like this, an operating system would be unnecessary baggage, driving up the development and manufacturing costs significantly and adding complexity where none is required. Instead, the computer in a microwave oven simply runs a single hard-wired program all the time.

For other devices, an operating system creates the ability to:
serve a variety of purposes
interact with users in more complicated ways
keep up with needs that change over time

All desktop computers have operating systems. The most common are the Windows family of operating systems(windows xp,windows vista,windows 7) developed by Microsoft, the Macintosh operating systems developed by Apple and the UNIX family of operating systems (which have been developed by a whole history of individuals, corporations and collaborators). There are hundreds of other operating systems available for special-purpose applications, including specializations for mainframes, robotics, manufacturing, real-time control systems and so on.

In any device that has an operating system, there's usually a way to make changes to how the device works. This is far from a happy accident; one of the reasons operating systems are made out of portable code rather than permanent physical circuits is so that they can be changed or modified without having to scrap the whole device.

For a desktop computer user, this means you can add a new security update, system patch, new application or even an entirely new operating system rather than junk your computer and start again with a new one when you need to make a change. As long as you understand how an operating system works and how to get at it, in many cases you can change some of the ways it behaves. The same thing goes for your phone, too.

OPERATING SYSTEM FUNCTIONS

At the simplest level, an operating system does two things:
1.) It manages the hardware and software resources of the system. In a desktop computer, these resources include such things as the processor, memory, disk space and more (On a cell phone, they include the keypad, the screen, the address book, the phone dialer, the battery and the network connection).

2.) It provides a stable, consistent way for applications to deal with the hardware without having to know all the details of the hardware.

The first task, managing the hardware and software resources, is very important, as various programs and input methods compete for the attention of the central processing unit (CPU) and demand memory, storage and input/output (I/O) bandwidth for their own purposes. In this capacity, the operating system plays the role of the good parent, making sure that each application gets the necessary resources while playing nicely with all the other applications, as well as husbanding the limited capacity of the system to the greatest good of all the users and applications.
The second task, providing a consistent application interface, is especially important if there is to be more than one of a particular type of computer using the operating system, or if the hardware making up the computer is ever open to change. A consistent application program interface (API) allows a software developer to write an application on one computer and have a high level of confidence that it will run on another computer of the same type, even if the amount of memory or the quantity of storage is different on the two machines.

Even if a particular computer is unique, an operating system can ensure that applications continue to run when hardware upgrades and updates occur. This is because the operating system -- not the application -- is charged with managing the hardware and the distribution of its resources. One of the challenges facing developers is keeping their operating systems flexible enough to run hardware from the thousands of vendors manufacturing computer equipment. Today's systems can accommodate thousands of different printers, disk drives and special peripherals in any possible combination.

HOW DOES THE INTERNET WORK?

2010-11-19T11:12:00.000-08:00

Even though the Internet is still a young technology, it's hard to imagine life without it now. Every year, engineers create more devices to integrate with the Internet. This network of networks crisscrosses the globe and even extends into space. But what makes it work?

To understand the Internet, it helps to look at it as a system with two main components. The first of those components is hardware. That includes everything from the cables that carry terabits of information every second to the computer sitting in front of you.
Other types of hardware that support the Internet include routers, servers, cell phone towers, satellites, radios, smartphones and other devices. All these devices together create the network of networks. The Internet is a malleable system -- it changes in little ways as elements join and leave networks around the world. Some of those elements may stay fairly static and make up the backbone of the Internet
. Others are more peripheral.
These elements are connections. Some are end points -- the computer, smartphone or other device you're using to read this may count as one. We call those end points clients. Machines that store the information we seek on the Internet are servers. Other elements are nodes which serve as a connecting point along a route of traffic. And then there are the transmission lines which can be physical, as in the case of cables and fiber optics, or they can be useless signals from satellites, cell phone or 4G towers, or radios.

Learn More

Fact or Fiction: The Internet
Internet Infrastructure
How did the Internet start?

All of this hardware wouldn't create a network without the second component of the Internet: the protocols. Protocols are sets of rules that machines follow to complete tasks. Without a common set of protocols that all machines connected to the Internet must follow, communication between devices couldn't happen. The various machines would be unable to understand one another or even send information in a meaningful way. The protocols provide both the method and a common language for machines to use to transmit data.

A Matter of Protocols

Jeffrey Hamilton/Lifesize/Thinkstock
The Internet is a global entity -- you could call it the largest machine on Earth.

You've probably heard of several protocols on the Internet. For example, hypertext transfer protocol is what we use to view Web sites through a browser -- that's what the http at the front of any Web address stands for. If you've ever used an FTP server, you relied on the file transfer protocol. Protocols like these and dozens more create the framework within which all devices must operate to be part of the Internet.
Two of the most important protocols are the transmission control protocol (TCP) and the Internet protocol (IP). We often group the two together -- in most discussions about Internet protocols you'll see them listed as TCP/IP.
What do these protocols do? At their most basic level, these protocols establish the rules for how information passes through the Internet. Without these rules, you would need direct connections to other computers to access the information they hold. You'd also need both your computer and the target computer to understand a common language.
You've probably heard of IP addresses. These addresses follow the Internet protocol. Each device connected to the Internet has an IP address. This is how one machine can find another through the massive network.
The version of IP most of us use today is IPv4, which is based on a 32-bit address system. There's one big problem with this system: We're running out of addresses. That's why the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) decided back in 1991 that it was necessary to develop a new version of IP to create enough addresses to meet demand. The result was IPv6, a 128-bit address system. That's enough addresses to accommodate the rising demand for Internet access for the foreseeable future [source: Opus One].
When you want to send a message or retrieve information from another computer, the TCP/IP protocols are what make the transmission possible. Your request goes out over the network, hitting domain name servers (DNS) along the way to find the target server. The DNS points the request in the right direction. Once the target server receives the request, it can send a response back to your computer. The data might travel a completely different path to get back to you. This flexible approach to data transfer is part of what makes the Internet such a powerful tool.
Let's take a closer look at how information travels across the Internet.

Packet, Packet, Who's Got the Packet?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock
The Internet infrastructure includes satellite systems.

In order to retrieve this article, your computer had to connect with the Web server containing the article's file. We'll use that as an example of how data travels across the Internet.
First, you open your Web browser and connect to our Web site. When you do this, your computer sends an electronic request over your Internet connection to your Internet service provider (ISP). The ISP routes the request to a server further up the chain on the Internet. Eventually, the request will hit a domain name server (DNS).
This server will look for a match for the domain name you've typed in (such as www.howstuffworks.com). If it finds a match, it will direct your request to the proper server's IP address. If it doesn't find a match, it will send the request further up the chain to a server that has more information.
The request will eventually come to our Web server. Our server will respond by sending the requested file in a series of packets. Packets are parts of a file that range between 1,000 and 1,500 bytes. Packets have headers and footers that tell computers what's in the packet and how the information fits with other packets to create an entire file. Each packet travels back up the network and down to your computer. Packets don't necessarily all take the same path -- they'll generally travel the path of least resistance.
That's an important feature. Because packets can travel multiple paths to get to their destination, it's possible for information to route around congested areas on the Internet. In fact, as long as some connections remain, entire sections of the Internet could go down and information could still travel from one section to another -- though it might take longer than normal.
When the packets get to you, your device arranges them according to the rules of the protocols. It's kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The end result is that you see this article.
This holds true for other kinds of files as well. When you send an e-mail, it gets broken into packets before zooming across the Internet. Phone calls over the Internet also convert conversations into packets using the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). We can thank network pioneers like Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn for these protocols -- their early work helped build a system that's both scalable and robust.
That's how the Internet works in a nutshell. As you look closer at the various devices and protocols, you'll notice that the picture is far more complex than the overview we've given. It's a fascinating subject.