Question about the internets

Sakebomb

Hypothetical question that provoked some deep thought this morning:

Before the age of wifi, could you theoretically, trace an actual physical connection from the cat5 cable coming out the back of my laptop, to my router, to the cable modem, to the wall jack, out the building, over the cable lines and eventually to the websever in Korea that I’m browsing?

wunderbar

they can still trace the connection to the IP of the source, which is the IP your ISP gives you. If you're behind a router it's really hard to get the physical PC, but even today they can still trace it, using logs from the ISP, exactly to which customer it was that went to a specific website at a specific time.

Sakebomb

wunderbar wrote: »

they can still trace the connection to the IP of the source, which is the IP your ISP gives you. If you're behind a router it's really hard to get the physical PC, but even today they can still trace it, using logs from the ISP, exactly to which customer it was that went to a specific website at a specific time.

No, no, no, thats not what I meant, I shouldve clarified:

Is there an actual physical connection (nothing wireless) from my computer at home all the way across the globe to the webserver?
Could you theoretically, run your finger across the cat5, cable lines, and undersea cables all the way to the actual physical computer hosting the webserver?

MichaelLC

I suppose. Of course when it got to your ISP, it would be more like, the line from the junction box goes in here, and the backbone line comes out here. Same as it went to one of the main distrubution nodes, like the one Kevin Rose went to.

How was that? Did it sound like I knew what I was talking about? 8-)

Doc

the traceroute command will show you all routers/machines between you and your destination.

Doc

Sakebomb wrote: »

wunderbar wrote: »

they can still trace the connection to the IP of the source, which is the IP your ISP gives you. If you're behind a router it's really hard to get the physical PC, but even today they can still trace it, using logs from the ISP, exactly to which customer it was that went to a specific website at a specific time.

No, no, no, thats not what I meant, I shouldve clarified:

Is there an actual physical connection (nothing wireless) from my computer at home all the way across the globe to the webserver?
Could you theoretically, run your finger across the cat5, cable lines, and undersea cables all the way to the actual physical computer hosting the webserver?

Usually, yes.

wunderbar

there is a physical connection.

Think of it like driving a car on a road. I live in western Canada. I can take a road all the way to Orlando. It's not a straight line, there are a bunch of stops, turns, and interchanges all the way, but I can drive all the way there on a road.

It's like an information superhighway, if you will.

Sakebomb

wunderbar wrote: »

there is a physical connection.

Think of it like driving a car on a road. I live in western Canada. I can take a road all the way to Orlando. It's not a straight line, there are a bunch of stops, turns, and interchanges all the way, but I can drive all the way there on a road.

It's like an information superhighway, if you will.

wow

Daedalus

Doc wrote: »

Sakebomb wrote: »

wunderbar wrote: »

they can still trace the connection to the IP of the source, which is the IP your ISP gives you. If you're behind a router it's really hard to get the physical PC, but even today they can still trace it, using logs from the ISP, exactly to which customer it was that went to a specific website at a specific time.

No, no, no, thats not what I meant, I shouldve clarified:

Is there an actual physical connection (nothing wireless) from my computer at home all the way across the globe to the webserver?
Could you theoretically, run your finger across the cat5, cable lines, and undersea cables all the way to the actual physical computer hosting the webserver?

Usually, yes.

If you live in some remote location, your ISP might have some kind of sattelite wireless hookup instead of a physical connection, but that's an edge case.

Chalkbot

wunderbar wrote: »

It's like an information superhighway, if you will.

I like to think of it as a series of tubes myself.

Terrendos

The internet was specifically developed by the military to have a network that could still function at high efficiency if as much as 80% of it were wiped out during a nuclear attack.

It is much, much easier to accomplish this kind of thing with wires than to go wireless, and even if it weren't, there's so much cable that would have to be replaced it would take $texas to replace. Ergo it is a pretty safe bet that you can trace a line from your PC at least to the router of almost any computer today.

see317

Chalkbot wrote: »

wunderbar wrote: »

It's like an information superhighway, if you will.

I like to think of it as a series of tubes myself.

So long as we can all agree that it's not a truck.

Sevorak

I'd be careful about using the term 'connection' here, since it can imply a dedicated line between the two machines. As in, there is one wire that carries all the communication, ie it is a circuit switched network. This is how the old telephone network worked, but the internet is a packet switched network. There is no single dedicated connection that you can trace between two computers communicating. Every packet sent between two endpoints can take a different route through the network depending on how each router in between decides to route it.

You could trace the route of each packet though, and it's going to be almost entirely over wires. The only wireless part would be your home network, most likely.