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how is stuff stored for the interwebs?

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caddi daddi

Godzilla to ant hills
Joined
Jan 10, 2012
lets say I go to a site on the interwebs, they make funny little vids for me to watch, it might be called funnylittleinterwebs.com.
I click on a video link to watch it, when I hover my curser over the link I might see ftp.funny.little.interwebs.ftp
is that another site?
is it an ftp site?
what is an ftp?
 
most sites have multiple datacenters all across the country of which all have seperate url's depending where the data is stored. ftp is file transfer protocol pretty common network protocol for transfering files
think http (hyper text transfer protocol)
 
so, when I click the link a lot of stuff has to happen.
let's say the video is recorded in a format called .flv, first something has to find out if I have something to play an flv file, correct? or does it download the file to a temp file and then try to find a player for it?
 
The Http address is what your browsers sends out the DNS server, then it is translated to numbers then there is commination to the server on the net with the information or software you want, then it is retrieved and translated by your browser with the extension.
 
so the stuff that I watch on his site, http/funnyinterwebs.com is stored on a server that he pays to store his stuff on.
so I click the link for the vid and it goes and checks ftp.paymemoneytostoreyourstuff/funnyinterwebs/nameofstuff.ftp and finds out what type of file it is, then checks my machine to see if I have something to play the flv file, if it finds a thing to play the vid, it opens the player and then begins to download and play the vid?
 
Yes, if you don't have a flash player for YouTube the website server would show you need a flash player in your browser. What you see or do is directly from the server on the net, if the sever is not working you get a blank page.
 
it really does take a lot going on in the background, that we don't see going on, to perform what we see sitting at home as a simple task.
 
absolutely. it's pretty incredible how the internet and websites work, especially more complicated ones that aren't just displaying a bit of text for you to read.

Just keep this in mind -- the best IT departments are generally never really noticed.
 
If you REALLY want to have your mind blown, research how TCP/IP routing works...tosses it out onto the internet...the routers do the routing...end up at the server...they toss the response back...routers do the routing...end up on your PC.

And no...Al Gore DID NOT invent the internet! :rofl:
 
and all the little bits and bytes all go through more than one route and router to get back to me and then they are shown to me in order!!!! that's MAGICAL!!!!!
 
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