How does the internet work?

The internet works using "internet protocol", based on packet switching. That's like sending someone a book by tearing it up and mailing each page in a separate envelope. Then they reassemble all the pages back into a book. The postal carriers don't all have to know how to find your friend's house. They just know that all mail to New York goes on the plane to JFK. Only the guy on the last leg has to read the house number. The internet does not use phone lines (well, nowadays the phone service uses the Internet). The old phone system built an end-to-end wire connection right across the country while you were talking, then tore it down. If a wire broke while you were talking, end of conversation. Packet-based systems send each packet separately and there is no fixed route. In theory, if a wire breaks, the packet will be retransmitted down a different wire and you'll never know there was a problem.

The internet was based on a military system called ARPANET - it basically joins all computers via the phone network using IP ADDRESSES which are a unique set of numbers for each computer - binary data is fed down the phone system in MODULATED form - these days using BROADBAND. The data is processed at INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS or WEB HOSTS and webpages are fed back to computers making the requests from their SERVERS. Look up some of the terms in uppercase on Google - which will help.

Well, For example Search Engines work like this - lets say you search '' How to grow a tree '' It will key search. So , You will get anything that has ''How'' ''To' will come up . Its basically called keytags . You wont exactly get what you searched you will get anything that has ''How To'' Etc... Hope i helped with search engins :D