WHAT IS THE INTERNET?
This giant network can seem almost ethereal. For the most part we connect to it without wires, sending and receiving data as if from thin air. We can scroll through cat pictures in the middle of a field and stream movies straight from the cloud. But despite that airy feeling, the nuts and bolts of the internet are very solid and very down to Earth. At its core, it’s a network of billions of miles of wires end-to-end, and millions of computers.
Your internet connection begins at the modem that’s set up in your house. It connects via a wire to a socket in the wall, which links to a box outside. That box connects via still more wires to a network of cables under the ground. Together they convert radio waves to electrical signals to fibre-optic pulses and back again.