What happens when you enter text into the web address on the internet??

What happens when you enter http://www.holycross.bc.ca into the web address field is a long list of requests and travel which happens in about 1 second. As soon as you enter the address into the address bar, it sends a request out to the DNS server for the information of the website your requesting. Somewhere along the line, you also go through your ISP’s server, and eventually you get to the IP address of the website you are requesting. Your request leaves your computer goes through your isp’s DNS, bounces through a bunch of other computers along the way, gets though the requested institutions DNS then goes through a bunch of nodes and in about 1 second you see the information your request. This all occurs in approximatley one second.

Definitions:

DNS: The Domain Name System, is a name system for resources that are participating on the internet. Its primary puprose is to change human domain names into binary. This allows quick access to many sites on the internet because of organization and simplification.

IP Adress: Any computer or other technological device that is publicly connected to the Internet is given a unique number called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. IP addresses contain four groups of numbers that are separated with periods, and each number group can feature number(s) that range anywhere from 0 – 255. An example of an IP address is 1.123.13.231.

Tracert: When computers communicate over the Internet, there are often many connections made along the way. This is because the internet is made up of a network of networks, and two different computers may be on two separate networks in different parts of the world. Therefore, if a computer is to communicate with another system on the Internet, it must send data through a series of small networks, eventually getting to the Internet backbone,  and then again traveling to a smaller network where the destination computer resides.