How Do Computer Networks Work?

Series Summary

Browsing the World Wide Web doesn't require much beyond a thirst for information, but knowing how to use Web sites such as Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Facebook, Gmail and Craigslist takes a little know-how. The Internet provides more than e-mail and social networking, however, and shopping online can make the Christmas to-do list much shorter. Paying bills online is an easy fix to forgetting due dates or misplacing paper bills, and many banks and companies now prefer electronic payments. In this free video series on basic Internet and e-mail skills, computer specialist and business owner Chris Cook covers the basics of using the Internet from home. Cook takes a look at how networks and e-mail work, why Internet safety is so important and how to start using the Internet and e-mail right away. He also demonstrates how to open e-mail accounts with popular providers such as Yahoo! and how to post an ad the popular site Craigslist.org. Cook teaches viewers many Internet skills, including etiquette, and he reminds us that forwarding e-mails should be done responsibly.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Chris Cook with Security Awareness Incorporated. So you want to know how a computer network works. Any computers that need to communicate with each other have to do so over a network. A network is a wire, such as an Ethernet cable like this, or a wireless adapter. Now, the computers that are on the network will be connected to what's called a router or a hub. This is kind of like the traffic cop of the network. It will manage the traffic back and forth between the different computers. It can also then send them out to other networks, such as a corporate network or the Internet. Now, every computer on a network has an individual address. Every computer on the Internet also has an individual address. This is called an IP or Internet Protocol address. It is a group of four numbers separated by periods, such as 29.57.85.255. This would be a unique IP address to a computer or a Internet location. Now, when your computer sends information packets to another computer, it prefaces them with the Internet address of where they're going to, as called the destination address. It then envelopes that with the information that you're sending, and the information of the computer that it's coming from, being your origination IP address. That is how information is routed around a network, and also on the Internet. I'm Chris Cook, and in case you wanted to know how your information gets to where it's going, that's how it is."