How Do Protocols Travel Over The Internet - Tech-inmotion/VPNTechguy GitHub Wiki

Today thousands of protocols traverse the internet inside TCP/IP packets which are part of the internet’s most used protocol. As there are so many different nodes on the internet (nodes = devices), many of them use different languages (protocols) to communicate.

Now the meaning of protocol is to follow a specific set of rules so when a computer receives these ‘rules’ then it must process them for the receiving device. Let’s take for example when you are trying to load a web page onto your browser. This is something we expect to happen instantaneously, but the amount of processing that goes into delivering that web page in just a few milliseconds is mind-blowing.

For the internet protocol to understand what it is you are looking for when you type a web address into your web browser, you need to type in HTTP or https. This tells it that you are trying to open a web page on a particular server.

For instance, you send your request, it gets wrapped up inside a TCP packet. That TCP packet asks a DNS (Domain Naming Server) what the web address’s IP address is. The DNS server, which is a massive database that holds the IP address records to multiple domains like website addresses, will then return the IP address for let’s say Microsoft’s WWW server. The RCP packet then goes on its way.

When the TCP packet arrives at the correct IP address, it will deliver the HTTP request to the network dealing with the Microsoft domain. This domain recognized the HTTP request is access the web page on Microsoft’s website.

This is the same process used from your smartphone, through a VPN tunnel, sending an email, or any other device, and this is just an oversimplified explanation. Yet, all this happens in a split second!