I know that the internet is made up of servers that are inter connected and you can instruct your browser to access certain servers, and that all ISPs do is provide the wiring to connect these servers to your house but where does it all meet up? If I were to start my own ISP, how do I set up my service to be able to connect everywhere else? A wholesale internet for want of a better term. Thanks.
corosuske: At that level it doesnt really work like that, there is no “central clearinghouse”
ISP’s have routers (not dissimilar to your router at home, but way way bigger and with loads more interfaces)
They also have cables that connect them to other ISP’s
instead of one up link these core routers have different links to different networks (other ISP’s) and a routing table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routing_table) to make sense of what ip’s are reachable, and via what distance
sometimes traffic for a single IP will traverse several different “ISP’s” networks before getting to its destination IP
Hosting firms (that own data centers) just count as thier own ISP’s in this model
Redshift2k5: ISPs are like roads with toll booths. The internet is a network of roads.
The stuff you want is the trucks and cars that travel on the roads; the ISPs (roads) don’t *make* the content, they only delivery it from point a to point b.
If you want your own isp you need to be able to put in the money up front to make a whole bunch of roads, including putting in wires to individual houses and providing the modems & routers they need, and then connect their traffic to the larger backbone infrastructure of networks.
krystar78: Consumer level isp’s get their upstream connection from backbone isp’s. Backbone isp’s lay down wire that connect regional or cross country and international cross ocean.
Backbone isp’s are like level3, CenturyLink, cogent. If you run a tracert command to somewhere like Europe or Asia, you’ll see these names pop up.