A Quibble's Guide to REALLY BASIC Networking Concepts

> smh cuz you don't know what the internet is.

> tfw you can just browse the quibble's guides

> tfw sir quibloo of Quiblon is just like you

> tfw sir quibloo is not responsible for the accuracy or use of the information provided herein

You've been surfing the internet highway for years. You grew up with the gameboy, ds, playstation 2, and searched for cheat codes on neoseeker.com for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. Maybe you got an ipod touch and downloaded your first app (temple run or doodle jump or something). Maybe you're a young'n and your first time using the internet was on your iPhone XXL Max Pro with AI (Apple Intelligence) browsing mindless brainrot content on tiktok. Or maybe, it was a humble family computer that you got yelled at by your parents for not only hosing up the phone line each time you dialed in, but also for the bill that came at the end of the month.

Whichever generation, whatever circumstances, you are at least accessing this article through an internet connection right now! So like, what even is the internet anyways?

I'm gonna assume you're already somewhat proficient with computers and know the gist of why they are cool. But if you don't here are the basics:

This is highly simplified, in the incorrect order, and is not exactly how computers actually work, but still it goes a little into what they are. The MOST important fact about them in the context of this article is that they work with binary data (0s and 1s).

Anyways, let's go back to networking. Here's a scenario: I want to tell you something. But since it's a secret, i don't want to say it aloud. I would write it down but I'm LAZY, and don't wanna get up off my ass to hand it to you. So I open up x dot com the everything app and send you a DM. You then go to x dot com the everything app yourself and see the message.

"WTF HOW DID IT GET THERE? HOLY SHIT THIS IS MAGIC!" - you think to yourself.

well, you just used the internet SUPER HIGHWAY!

to figure out how the hell you are accessing x dot com, or viewing my message you must ask yourself the following question:

are you paying your telephone company, your cable company, or someone else for your internet?

if your telco: you likely sent that message over twisted pair copper wire until it hit the telco's central office and got converted into fiber.

if your cable company: it's likely that it was a combo of coax (copper) and fiber lines.

if someone else: you are either on a fiber to the home provider or satellite internet like starlink or hughes net (lol).

telephone companies (telcos) were the first to lay down lines to people's homes. When companies began offering residential internet access they sent you a device called a modem and a number to dial. You would set up the modem which converts back and forth between digital bits and audible 'beeps' and 'boops'. It would send these 'beeps' and 'boops' over existing telephone ifrastructure and on the other end the company (ISP) would convert those 'beeps' and 'boops' back into digital signals. Finally, they'd hook that digital signal into their local internet connection and hooray! You now have internet access. It wasn't until later that the goofs realized you could transmit both telephone signals (voice) and data over the SAME telephone line at the SAME time by sending data over a higher frequency. High frequencies aren't audible (read: silent) to humans. By splitting voice, upstream, and downstream data into different electromagnetic frequencies on the same line telcos could then begin to offer DSL. The realization (and technology developed to support it) was called broadband, and if you subscribed to a package you became a digital subscriber over their digital subscriber line (DSL).

This was good enough for many, but another realization hit people like a ton of bricks. Cable television lines (a combo of coaxial and fiber) were being laid to let people watch their soap operas and local news stations. What if we (hear me out) sent the internet over these higher bandwidth lines? HOLY SHIT AN EPIPHANY. (quib hindsight bias...). Anyways, cable companies started offering cable internet in much the same way that telcos offered it, by splitting up the frequencies of data up, data down, and television.

THEN SOME MAD LAD realized farmers in the MIDDLE OF GODDAMN NOWHERE would never have telephone, cable, much less fiber lines run to them and was like: I wonder if we could use satellites or something. And satellite internet like hughes net was created. These satellites originally just connected ground stations together but if you just throw a dish on someone's property it sorta works so whatever. The satellites used for this are called geostationary satellites, geo = earth, stationary = stays in the same place: stays in the same place relative to earth. Another type of satellite is the low-earth orbit satellite. These don't get to stay stationary cuz of physics and stuff, so you need a lot of them to ensure the subscriber (who is assumed to be stationary) will always have a satellite to connect to.

Fast forward: It wasn't until our boi elon made starlink that a reliable LEO satellite ISP could exist (and now it does very cool kudos to him and the engineers).

THEN SOME MAD LAD thought a heinous thought. What if we idk... just sent everything over fiber? i mean, it's fast. And thus Verizon FIOS was born.

In short: we can send data using sound (dial-up), high-frequency electromagnetic signals (dsl, cable), light (fiber), radio waves (wifi, 3g, 4g, lte, satellite).

We send sounds using electricity over twisted-pair copper wire (no wonder that shit was slow).

We send high-frequency electromagentic signals over copper wire, either twisted-pair, or coaxial.

We send light over fiber-optic wires.

We send radio waves of varying frequencies by emitting them through the atmosphere, e.g. satellites use microwaves.

This is it for intro-networking 101 w/ your favorite quibble from Quiblon, Quibloo!

Addendum this was supposed to be an example but I couldn't really fit it anywhere so here it is because it took a while but it doesn't really fit anywhere.

So I either write it down, or speak it aloud. But that's lame, and I don't want anyone to overhear us. What if I want the message on my computer to show up on yours. Here's a brief overview of sorta what we are trying to accomplish: