Who Pays for the Internet

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COMP1260 > Understanding the Internet



Introduction

This section will go over the physical components, service providers of the Internet, and domain names. It will ultimately answer the question, who pays for the Internet? At the end some links to further reading are provided.

Figure 1: Paying for the Internet

Courtesy of flickr.com[1].

 

...by students

Who Pays for the Internet.

The content on this page is brought to you by the Internet! Personally, I wouldn't know how to do most things if it wasn't for the Internet. If there is something you need to learn like how to tie a tie, you can type it into the Google machine to get an answer.

It is very useful. You pay very little for a huge amount of data. That is a fantastic deal!

Physical Components

Figure 2: Example of a Server Computer

Courtesy of flickr.com[2].

In short, the Internet is made up of a bunch of servers and networks. It contains a lot of information because many computers can share data across networks. To set up a server, you'll need a few physical components. :

  • Server computer
  • Router
  • Modem

A server computer provides services to the other computers. It only uses about an 8 - 10 GB hard drive. The router is used to physically connect all the computers together. Routers also cache IP Addresses so that websites can be found faster. The modem is used to encode digital information. This will make messages 'smaller' and easier to transmit. [4]

Service Providers

ISPs(Internet Service Providers) physically connect individuals to the Internet. What they do is buy net access from an upstream provider (upstream ISP) and sell chunks of it to individuals. [5]

ISPs provide several ways to connect such as:

  • Dial-up
  • DSL
  • Broadband wireless access
  • Cable
  • Wi-Fi

ISPs provide these connections to the users, who usually pay a month fee.

Domain Names

Figure 3: Examples of Extensions

Courtesy of flickr.com[3].

Domain names are human-readable names for IP addresses and allow people to easily remember how to get to a website. We could use IP addresses that look like 234.208.12.129, but how nice does that look? Domain names were created for the benefit of users.

Users generally buy domain names for the following reasons:

  1. They build credibility on the web.
  2. They are portable.
  3. They give a professional feel to the website.

[6]

Governing Bodies

There are a few organizations that control the addresses of the Internet. One in particular is ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN's role is to make sure domain names are resolvable so that all users can have a valid address.

For more information, visit: Who Manages the Internet?


To Answer the Question...

The question in the beginning of this article was 'Who Pays For the Internet?' The answer is you - Either by paying a flat rate to your provider or by paying taxes to your Government. These subsidies are used to create large backbone networks for the Internet. [7]


References

Previous Page: Setting up a web page

Next Page: So you have an ISP, now what?

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