What Is the Internet? Explained in 2 Minutes (Netflix Example)
Klaas Senamela
Software Engineer
You sit on the couch and press play on Netflix. A few seconds later, a movie fills your screen.
It feels like magic. By the end of this post, you'll be able to explain exactly what happened in those few seconds, using the same words technical people use.
Prefer to watch? Here's the 2-minute version
Mastizee and Newbee explain the internet in 2 minutes. Prefer reading? Keep scrolling.
What is the internet?
The internet is billions of computers, phones and TVs around the world, all connected so they can send things to each other.
Nobody owns it, and you can't point at it. It's the connections themselves: cables under streets and oceans, and mobile towers on hills, linking device to device.
When you press play, your TV uses those connections to ask Netflix for a movie. Netflix uses the same connections to send it back. That trip, out and back, is what this whole post follows.
How does the internet get into your home?
Think about the water in your house. A water company pumps it through pipes to your home, and you open a tap when you need some.
The internet reaches you the same way:
Your internet company is the water company. It brings the internet to your home through a cable, or through a nearby mobile tower. Technical people call it your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
A small box in your home is the tap. It takes the internet coming in and shares it with your phone, laptop and TV. That box is called a router.
Wi-Fi is the router sharing the internet through the air, so your devices don't need a cable.
Myth: "Wi-Fi is the internet"
It isn't, and this one trips up almost everyone.
Wi-Fi only covers the last few metres, from the router to your device. The internet is everything beyond the router.
That's why your phone can say "Wi-Fi connected" while nothing loads. The tap is working fine. The water company isn't sending anything. Restarting the router helps sometimes, but if your ISP has a problem, only they can fix it.
Where does the movie come from?
Netflix doesn't live on your TV. Your TV is a screen that shows what it receives.
The movies are stored in buildings full of powerful computers that never switch off. Their only job is to keep movies safe and send them to anyone who asks. A computer whose job is to serve things to other devices is called a server.
Netflix also keeps copies of popular shows on servers in your own region, so your movie doesn't have to cross an ocean to reach you.
Many companies don't own their servers at all. They rent them from companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. That rented computer power is what people mean by the cloud.
How does a whole movie fit through?
It doesn't, not in one go. A movie is far too big to send as one piece.
So the server cuts it into thousands of tiny pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle posted in many small envelopes. Each piece travels on its own. When they arrive, your TV puts them back together in the right order. These pieces are called packets.
This is why a movie can start playing before all of it has arrived. Your TV plays the first pieces while the rest are still on their way.
It's also why a movie sometimes freezes and shows a spinning circle. The pieces are arriving slower than the movie plays, so your TV has to wait for the next ones. That waiting is called buffering.
Pressing play, step by step
Here's the whole trip in one picture. Follow the solid arrows out, then the dashed arrows back:
You press play. The Netflix app on your TV sends a request for the movie.
The request goes through your router, then out to your ISP.
It travels across the internet to a Netflix server, which finds your movie.
The movie comes back the same way as packets, and your TV puts them together.
All of that happens in less than a second.
The picture shows that your request and the movie take the same route, in opposite directions.
What you now know
You can now explain what happens when you press play, and you know the six words technical people use for it:
Internet: the world's devices, all connected.
ISP: the company that brings the internet to your home.
Router: the box that shares it inside your home.
Wi-Fi: the router sharing it through the air. Not the internet itself.
Server: a computer that sends things, like movies, to other devices.
Packets and buffering: the small pieces everything travels in, and the wait when they're slow.
Next time someone says "the server is down" or "restart the router", you'll know exactly what they mean.
Next up: Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G and Fibre — What's the Difference? and why your internet slows down when everyone's home.
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