Cyber Conflicts: Internet Infrastructure

Greetings, so let us first understand what the Internet infrastructure looks like. The reason you need to understand this is because a lot of the issues of the Internet today are based on its basic architecture. Things like security, cyber crime, anonymity, censorship. Once we understand the infrastructure better, it will help you understand the basic cause and the origin of a lot of the issues that we have on the Internet and a lot of conflicts that we have.

So what is Internet? The Internet really is a network of networks. We had a lot of networks before and all of them got connected into a gigantic network through backbones. And that is called the Internet today. So it is basically a collection of thousands of interconnected devices which allow for communication among millions of devices and people around the world.
The Internet is thus a collection of networks and means of communication for individual machines to send and receive data amongst each other.  And communication over the Internet happens by a process called packet-switching. Which is in contrast to something we called circuit-switching, which has been used for many, many, many years in telecommunications, such as with the telephones.

So what is the difference?

In circuit-switching the communication is happening through a dedicated connection between two points. Again, it could be any medium. It could be a wire, it could be wireless. It could be any medium at all. However, whatever bandwidth you have is dedicated.

So you may have been familiar with the image of telephone operators managing switchboards and phone plugs. This was necessary because the connection was made by creating a dedicated connection between two devices of the communication.
Now let's contrast this with packet-switching. What happens in this case? You take a large message, you break it down into small pieces or packets, and you basically release them on the Internet. They basically hop from place to place of the sender and only the listed destination of the receiver. They can take any of different paths that come on their way.

The packet has the smallest unit or the amount of data that can be interpreted. The smallest sequence of zeroes and one that the Internet communication will understand.


If you're sending an email from one computer to somebody, received at the other computer, the email is broken down into several packets. Each packet has a piece of email. The packet travels through the network separately and then re-assembled at the other end and composed back into the email. So again, at the sender's side, they're broken into pieces and reassembled on the receiver's side.

And when the packets travel they don't have to go through any dedicated path. They go through different paths wherever they have the least resistance. Whatever the protocols tell them and they take a different journey and they may it to the same destination. And once they get to the final destination, then again they're the same message that appeared initially okay. The connection and communication through the Internet uses standard protocols.

Why does it use standard protocols? Because by standardizing the protocols they're able to manage the complexity.

And what is a protocol? It's just like a language, it establishes rules for the computers to understand and rules that device makers must follow for them to be compatible with the Internet.

So, as we strive to understand what these protocols mean, we need to make sure that we know that the standard protocols for the Internet is the TCP/IP. Which is basically implemented in all the devices that are connected to the Internet.

It can be any device, a desktop computer, a laptop, it could be a smartphone. And all of them have very similar processes and similar protocols which they are able to connect to the Internet.

Now, the connection to the Internet requires a particular kind of hardware that can support communication with the Internet Protocol. The Internet Protocol is a set of protocols suite called a TCP/IP suite. Which is again a set of instructions on how data is to be sent and interpreted by communicating devices in the Internet. And one of the main components of IPs in the addressing scheme.

Why do we need the addressing scheme? Because each device that is connected to the Internet has a unique address for information to travel from one place to another. It goes from one address to another address, just like a postal address.

And if you're looking at the framework of the Internet, the format of each unique address is called the IP address. The IP address is simply a number, like a phone number and it is structured in a format which is called a dotted decimal notation which is like 169.226.221.9. Now again, this is a short form for a 32-bit binary number broken down into four 8-bit segments. Now since we are running out of addresses, a new version of hybrid addresses with a high number of possible addresses has been in deployment since 2006. It's called the IPv-6.


Since IP addresses are difficult to remember, an alternate naming system, called the domain name system (DNS) has been developed. This system allows each device to have a unique mnemonic address such as amazon.com or dating.com instead of a number like 72.21.214.144. The domains name system allows for organizational computers to translate the dotted decimal number into the real domain name. So, the domain name system is essentially a database that stores the phone numbers, the IP address of each computer and the domain name and allows people to translate back and forth. For instance amazon.com is 72.21.214.144, the database also stores the hierarchy or how the levels of the naming system are organized. That makes it easy to navigate and easy to search and find.