Computer Networking | Part-2: Structure of Network

Structure of the Network 🌐

The Structure of the Network basically tells us how do the things work internally.
It tells us about the protocols, the internal workings of an internet system, etc.

Let us take an example of a situation from our real lives.
For e.g:- you order something online.
Let us say that a person is living in India. He/She orders something from the US via an online shopping site.

How does the shipment of the order take place?

The online shopping site will send the ordered item to a delivery company in the US. It is now the duty of that delivery company to get the item transported from the ordered location (US here) to the destination (which is India here).

The delivery company's US branch will transport the ordered item from US to it's branch in India.
We can now say that the item has been transported. And the process is known as transportation.

After coming to the destination (India), the item will be handed over to the online shopping site's vendor, in the destination location, for delivery.

The online shopping site will then deliver the order to the person's doorstep.

Now the item is received.

The internet also follows a similar working system.

The layer from where we order and received the item, i.e, the layer from which a person is interacting is called the Application Layer.
E.g: WhatsApp
It is an application. Users interact with the app but how it works internally is not known to the users.

Follow Up ⚡

This was just about the overall working of the internet. That is, the Structure of the Network. Here we have seen and understood how the Application Layer is different from the internal workings of the internet.
There are several other layers present inside the block, which works differently from the application layer(refer the diagram above).
There are different networking models which describes the architecture, components, and design used to establish communication between the source and destination systems

There exists predominantly two types of networking model-

• Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Model.
• Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Model.

More light on these layers and models will be given in the upcoming posts. 💡
Thank you for reading :)