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Previous episode DNS: how your phone finds the IP address of a website it never visited

What happens when you type a web address and press Enter

Routers: how a packet crosses the internet with no map of the whole road

A message from your phone passes through many machines on its way to a website. Not one of those machines knows the whole road. Yet the message arrives.

  1. 1 Before the request itself, your phone sends the server one short first message, a knock on the door. Like everything on the internet, it travels as a packet: a small message with a "to" line and a "from" line.to:198511007from:203011325example numbersa packetyou

    Before the request itself, your phone sends the server one short first message, a knock on the door. Like everything on the internet, it travels as a packet: a small message with a "to" line and a "from" line.

  2. 2 The first machine on the way is a router: every machine on the way you met before has this name. Its whole job is to pass packets on, and it decides in an instant.a router198.51.100.7?That cable!

    The first machine on the way is a router: every machine on the way you met before has this name. Its whole job is to pass packets on, and it decides in an instant.

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Next episode TCP: how a whole web page gets through a road that loses packets

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