BUSINESS: FROM A TECHNICAL MIND Understanding Data’s Path

by Tyler Hatfield

When visiting a website, you probably do not consider how your phone or computer finds that information. While all we see is data appearing in front of us, all of that information had to travel thousands of miles and through dozens of devices and systems to reach us.

When you enter a URL into a web browser, your device first has to find where that points to since special computers, called servers, host the data you need.

Servers have an address similar to a house address, so your device needs to find it. Your device will send the request out to your internet service provider (ISP) first. Once there, it is sent off to a set of special servers designed to store and remember where every website points to or to remember another server that will know.

These special computers, called Domain Name Servers (DNS server), use the name of the website you are trying to find to look up the server's address that holds the data for it. These addresses are called internet protocol addresses (IP addresses).

Every device connected to the internet has an IP address, though your home network has one main IP address for your house that your devices share.

While this may sound complicated, an easy way to think about this process is to compare it to the postal system.

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