So, you want a website. Part 1: WTF is the Internet?

Eric Cecchi

•November 6, 2013•7 min read

I make websites for a living. Contrary to popular belief, nothing magical happens when my fingers press down on my keyboard. Making a basic website is a remarkably simple process based on following some rules. I am convinced that anyone over the age of 10 can learn enough about web technology to create a personal blog or update an existing website.¹ All you need is 20 minutes and a good teacher. I can’t do anything about your available time, but I can recommend to you a good teacher. His name is Steve Stevenson. You can email him at stevestevenson@stevesteveson.com.

J/K! I bet you whipped out your email program and started composing a passionate letter requesting Steve’s services. Before you start feeling shame over your foolishness, I’m going to make your day. In a few articles, I’m going to explain in normal-people language how I taught my great aunt Bethany to build a website (and how you can do it, too).

The Internet Is a Series of Tubes

Kinda. There is actually some truth in Senator Stevens’ infamous rant, which you can conveniently dance to. Let me show you by explaining what the Internet actually is.

You have a computer, don’t you? (Psst—it’s the thing you’re using to read this blog.) I love computers. They’re the greatest way to watch cat videos, among a few other things. But computers used to be really boring. Back in the day, you could use them to, um, compute things, but that was about it.

The world of computing changed when somebody figured out that you connect a few computers together. That was a very good idea.

The Internet is just a bunch of computers connected together, and it’s the one thing that makes my MacBook more than just a beautifully designed calculator or typewriter. The computers that make up the Internet do many different jobs, and if you’re going to set up a website, it’s important to understand what each computer’s job is.

The Client

Let’s start with the one you know most intimately: your computer. Yes, it’s part of the Internet, too. It’s commonly called the “client” because it receives files, namely all the wonderful cat videos you’re watching now. The client becomes part of the Internet when it connects to a “network” that already has access to all the other computers on the Internet. This is where those tubes come in. While you may be connecting wirelessly to a network via wifi, 89.4%² of the computers are connected via cables, like ethernet cables (those fat phone cables) and many (much fatter, fiber-optic) underground cables, a.k.a. tubes. This worldwide network of cables is how information gets sent back and forth between your computer and all the others on the World Wide Web. Cool beans.

The Router

When you connect to a network, whether it’s via wifi or ethernet, your computer has to distinguish itself from all the other computers on the Internet. It needs a name. Unfortunately, you can’t just make one up. Your computer has to get its name from another computer, the first one you connect to in the giant worldwide network. This computer, whose job is to direct traffic between computers and give names to other computers, is called a “router.” Sadly, routers are really bad at naming. You’d think they’d be good because it’s one of their only jobs, but they always come up with the most boring names. However, the names they give are very unique, so they prevent your computer from getting mixed up with all the others on the Internet. The name your computer gets is called its “Internet provider address,” or IP address. It’s a set of numbers with a few decimal points, like 192.168.0.5. Yawn.

The Server

Now that your computer has an IP address, it can start talking to other computers on the Internet. Open up a new tab in your browser and type in the IP address of another computer into the location bar:

162.243.56.151

Huh? What just happened? (You should be seeing the homepage for this blog, BTW.) You just connected to another kind of computer of the Internet. It’s called a “server,” and it’s job is to send files. The server with the IP address of 162.243.56.151 is the computer that’s storing all the files for my blog.

When you typed 162.243.56.151 into your location bar and hit enter, your computer sent a message to the router to which you’re directly connected saying “Connect me to the computer whose name is 162.243.56.151.” The router then relays the message to the router it’s connect to, which sends it to the router it’s connected to, and so on until the message reaches the router the server is connected to. That router says “Hey! 162.243.56.151 is connected to me! I’ll give it the message.” After my server receives your message (or a message from any computer, for that matter), it’s programmed to automatically send the files for my website back to your computer. The files work their way through all the tubes from router to router until they reach your computer. Then your browser processes all the files you just got, and it shows you the result: my beautiful blog!

That’s how the Internet has worked since it was created: a client (you), through a series of routers, sends a message to a server, which sends information back to the client. There’s just one more important type of computer on the Internet you should know about if you’re going to set up a website.

The Domain Name Server

You just connected to my blog’s server by putting it’s IP address into into your browser’s location bar. I bet you’ve never done this before, and you probably never will again. That’s because computer names are boring and hard to remember. Sure, you could find the power to change your life at 67.201.60.89, but going to richardsimmons.com is a bit more convenient.

“How does the Internet work the magic of connecting you to Richard’s server at 67.201.60.89 by putting richardsimmons.com in your location bar?” asked Great Aunt Bethany.

Why, I’m glad you asked.

When you put a domain name into your location bar, your computer has to figure out what server’s IP address matches up with the domain name richardsimmons.com. To do this, your computer has to talk to another server first. This server is called a “domain name server,” or DNS. A DNS has a very simple database, basically a two-column spreadsheet, that pairs together IP addresses and domain names. It kind of looks like this, except with many, many more rows:

The router you’re connected to doesn’t know all the IP address and domain name pairs out there, but it does know the IP address of at least one DNS. So when you send your router a message directed at a domain name, it first sends a message to a DNS asking, “What IP address matches richardsimmons.com?” If the DNS doesn’t know the IP address for richardsimmons.com, it parlays the message to a bunch of other DNS’s until it finds the IP address.

Eventually, your router discovers that the server for richardsimmons.com is 67.201.60.89, and it then sends your message (through other routers) to 67.201.60.89. After the Richard’s server receives the message, the process then works in reverse, with the server sending files back to the client through a series of routers and tubes.

In Summary

“OK, so what’s the deal? Why do I need to know all this anyway? You’d better not be wasting my time, or right hand to God I will grab my switch and give you a good, ol’-fashioned whoopin’.”

Great Aunt Bethany can be quite the feisty one at times. I promise this read wasn’t a waste of your time. Find out next time in So, you want a website. Part 2: The 3 Things Everyone Needs to Do to Get a Website.