In message <A71A4D42-3FA7-4A9E-9A77-C57574885140@gmail.com>, at 21:29:44 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014, Gordon Lennox <gordon.lennox.13@gmail.com> writes

"For most of us, the internet is what you’re looking at right now—what you see on your web browser.

Which is fine for content on a web page, but you and I are looking at emails "right now".

But the internet itself is comprised of the fiber optic cables, the servers, the proverbial series of tubes, all owned by the companies that built it. The content we access online is stored on servers and transmitted through networks owned by lots of different groups, but the magic of the internet protocol lets it all function as the integrated experience we know and, from time to time, love."

http://qz.com/187034/how-the-internet-works-and-why-its-impossible-to-know-w...

Well maybe sort of...

It's more of a "where might the bottlenecks be", and focusses too much on a US-Centric view of national connectivity architecture. And the whole idea of "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" is so 1990's. One part they leave out is contention (or under-capacity) *inside* the ISP at the end of the 'last mile'. Here in the UK it's that bit of the network which matters too. My connectivity has a 'last mile' (unusually it is about a mile, for many subscribers it's more) over legacy copper, and I can pay to have better technology applied to squeeze more data down it; but then there's a '15 miles' to a regional hub and a '50 miles' to London, both of which are still *inside* my ISP and both of which affect the speed I observe [anecdotally it's how much the ISP spends on provisioning that '15 miles' which is most crucial]. These three bottlenecks (1, 15, 50 miles) are an extra layer that affects all content of course, before we start wondering if there's a priority between that router in London and servers run by YouTube, Netflix, or BBC iPlayer. -- Roland Perry