The Internet (originally ARPAnet – the Advanced Research Project Association) was designed by the U.S. military in the 1960s as a communication network that could survive in the event of a nuclear attack. Before this point, any network connections were linear; like Christmas lights, if one in the chain went down, the whole string went out.

The ARPAnet was designed as a distributed network. Instead of relying on one network connection to transmit data, this network worked like a spider web, with several possible paths leading from one point to the other. Information in this model is transmitted in hops – one computer makes a request to one of several other computers it is connected to, and the request is passed onto one of several other possible computers, and so on until it reaches its destination. To direct traffic on this network, a common protocol was needed. This protocol called the Internet Protocol (IP) uses a string of numbers in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (i.e. 209.207.200.1) to direct traffic to the correct site. But remembering a string of numbers isn’t very useful for the common user. To solve this dilemma, an agency called the InterNIC (http://www.internic.net) was created. InterNIC’s job is to direct traffic to the correct place. InterNIC maintains a database with records of all domain names that end with .com, .org, and .net (there are similar organizations that handle names that end with different suffixes, but the process is similar for these, so we’ll focus on InterNIC for simplicity).

When you enter a uniform resource locator (URL, also called domain name or web address - like http://www.perfect Web Hosting) into a browser like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, it doesn’t automatically know where to find the address that you’ve entered. Instead, the process works like this:

• You connect to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) using your modem, ISDN, etc.

• Your browser (Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer) sends a request through your modem to your ISP’s computer, is connected to the Internet.

• Your ISP passes this request through several possible hops onto an Inter-NIC database, which keeps a record of all domain names, and the name servers that they’re supposed to go to. This database is mirrored world-wide, and is updated every 24 hours.

• Your browser then goes through several possible hops to the name server (a computer used by Perfect Web Hosting to match domain names to IP numbers) that is indicated in the InterNIC record. The name server in turn keeps a record of your domain name and the matching IP address, and points the browser to the correct server that is hosting your site.

Though this process can happen in milliseconds, it can actually travel through several hundred computers in different locations over the world. This method of hopping information is great because it maximizes reliability of the system. The downside is that, because information doesn’t travel in a straight line, it isn’t maximized for speed.