how the web works: the super quick and dirty version with tons of links for you to come back to

here's what we're doing today

the big picture: internet infrastructure
the tiny picture: what's in a packet?
two useful terminal commands
dodge the alt-right with alt-browsing
think bad, do good

1. the big picture: internet infrastructure

submarine cable map "depicts active and planned submarine cable systems and their landing stations"
ingrid burrington's 2015-16 writing for the atlantic
tactical tech's internet infrastructure cards
neal stephenson's 1996 article, "mother earth, mother board"
peter garritano's stunning photos of where the internet lives
my own experiment (that you could theoretically try too!): packet sniffing in the subway

2. the tiny picture: what's in a data packet?

your router's IP address
the website host's IP address
website content
a bunch of other stuff

data packets make up the requests that your browser makes to a server
you can look at your browser's network requests by going here (this is for firefox, but all browsers have some version of "developer tools" that let you look at these):

3. two useful terminal commands

traceroute tells you the IP addresses your packet hops to on the way to the server.
whois tells you information about the website host. you can do whois [IP address] or whois [host name] since host IP and host name are just different versions of the same information.

man traceroute

man whois

4. dodge the alt-right with alt-browsing

the electronic frontier foundation's overview of tor and https
another good explainer: tor vs. vpn vs. proxy (by a company that sells VPNs, full disclosure)
free browser extension, https everywhere
not-free but well-regarded VPN with a free trial, cloak VPN
an important thing for those of us with talking refrigerators, teapots, other internet-of-things things, little snitch network monitor

5. think bad, do good -samy kamkar

free network analyzer tools, wireshark and debookee
samy kamkar, your friendly neighborhood do-gooder hacker

thanks

everyone who builds free, open source tools for us to learn and play with,
tom igoe for teaching me 90% of what i know about networks, &
surya mattu for teaching me the other half