The internet is the name we give to the physical connections that allow us to transfer data to anywhere in the world.

All over the world, cables run over our heads, under our feet and even across the sea bed in order to allow everyone to be connected, to be able to access everything and communicate with anyone regardless of your location, as long as you are connected to the internet.

The World Wide Web is what we call all of the web pages which can be accessed thanks to the internet.

Think of the internet like all of the water pipes that connect everyone's houses to fresh running water. all they do is transport water, but you can use that to do a huge variety of tasks, from filling a paddling pool, to making a soup, to washing your pets.

The internet is just like the water pipes, it allows data to travel from one place to another. What we do with that can vary wildly, from streaming videos or downloading music, to shopping or playing games.

In order to access a website, your device needs to be able to communicate across the internet, which in turn means it needs to be able to connect to the internet in some way. There are a few different ways to do this.

Lets go back to the mid 90s. Before smart phones, YouTube, iPads and Flappy Bird. Dark times.

If you wanted to connect to the internet, you would have to use a device called a "modem". The modem had two cables coming out of it:

• one cable that plugged into your computer

• another cable that plugged into your home phone socket.

In order to connect to the internet the modem would literally dial a number in order to form a connection, much like you would dial a number in order to be connected to a friend's phone. Hence the name "Dial-up".

I have included the full sound of a Dial-up modem making its connection to the right. Everytime you turned your computer on at home, you would have to sit through this 30 seconds of beeping and wailing.

The modem's job is to know how to communicate over the internet, and how to translate anything that is sent to it into something that your computer understands.

A "Digital Subscriber Line" (DSL) connection works by making use of the unused copper wires in telephone lines in order to transmit signals. You do not need to upgrade your telephone line to use it and you can use your telephone at the same time without any interference.

ADSL

An "Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line" (ADSL) connection is just one of many types of DSL connections. ADSL gives much more bandwidth (speed) for downloading than uploading, as the typical internet user spends more of their time downloading than uploading.

Cable works a lot like DSL, but instead of using the existing phone lines to transmit data, it makes use of existing "Cable Television" networks.

Just like with ADSL, the download speed for cable is much faster than the upload speed, though cable tends to be faster than ADSL.

Fiber is typically the most expensive type of connection, as it is not common for a house to have a fiber connection. This means that in order to get one, you have to pay for them to specially come and lay a cable to your house which is fiber optic (see below for explanation of fiber optic cables).

Fiber comes in two main types, fiber to box, and fiber to house. In fiber to box, the connection from the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to the box on your street (see picture) is a fiber optic cable, and then you have standard copper cables running from the houses on the street to the box.

Fiber to house means you have a fiber optic cable running all the way to your house, which means you can get huge speeds.

This is a photo of a cellular tower. Become familiar with how this looks and you won't be able to help noticing them everywhere you go.

A cellular tower is one point on a very large cellular network. The towers broadcast wireless signals which overlap with nearby towers, allowing your device to stay connected even as you travel from one place to another.

All of the towers are normally joined together underground by cables, such as copper or fiber, and allow you access to the internet by connecting to the wireless modules situated on the tower from any device which is able to have a sim card.

Having a sim card is important for connecting to a cellular network, as you will have to pay for your access to the network. Cellular network technology is currently on it's fourth generation (4G), with the fifth generation (5G) of cellular network technology currently being implemented.

WiFi is a form of connecting to a network, not an internet connection method. People often make the mistake in thinking that a WiFi connection is the same as an internet connection, however you can connect to a WiFi network without being able to connect to the internet.

A WiFi connection will make use of a some form of wired broadband connection, such as DSL or Cable.

Due to its fantastic conductive properties, Copper is humanity's go to material for transferring electricity. We can use electrical pulses to represent data, and we can send these pulses from one computer to another in order to exchange information. This is the basis for a lot of communication systems, such as:

• Phone lines

• Cable TV

• Ethernet Cables

• Coaxial Cables

Have you ever seen a fiber optic Christmas tree?

It is made of lots of transparent plastic tubes which all start at a light at the bottom of the tree. This light is carried up to the end of the plastic tube.

This concept is also used for transferring data across the internet.

Without this, using American services like Instagram, or Chinese services like Tik Tok would be a painful experience, as it would take a very long time for the data to be transferred.

So why is fiber optic so fast?

Instead of using electrical pulses like copper, fiber optic transfers data by pulses of light, which move at the SPEED OF LIGHT. Literally the fastest speed something can move at without tearing the universe apart.