The Planet Blog

Have you heard of “The Cloud”? It’s the end-all hosting solution that balances your checkbook, gives massages and keeps all the items in your kitchen cabinets alphabetized and sorted by size and category.

The term “cloud” has been around the block once or twice on the Internet – one of its first technological uses was a description of the Internet as a whole. Comparisons to “webs” or “series of tubes” have received a bit more fanfare, but the root of the metaphors is consistent: We need to be able to explain and visualize what this “Internet” thing is beyond bits and bytes and ones and zeroes.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: The Internet is everywhere and the Internet is nowhere.

The fact that we can’t point to anything tangible to define the Internet forces us to conceptualize an image that helps us understand how this paradox is possible. A lot of information is sitting around on servers somewhere out there, and when we connect to it, we have access to it all. Cloud, web, dump truck, tubes … It doesn’t matter what we call it because we’re not defining the mechanics, we’re defining the concepts.

A Cloud by Any Other Name

These days, the term “cloud” has made a resurgence in a different context: Because we’re more intimately familiar with the Internet these days, we’ve come to understand it in terms of servers and connections, but technology has forced us to break free from that interpretation as well … Instead of content being hosted on a single server somewhere, it’s theoretically floating around independent of all hardware. It’s like a grid of servers acting as one … or a cluster of servers … or cloud of servers on the Intercloud (I’m going to trademark that).

Breaking free from hardware limitations is huge. Cloud computing and cloud storage theoretically offer the ability to wave goodbye to those artificial processor and hard drive constraints and move toward a new, never-failing, infinitely scalable platform that cleans your room and pays your taxes. Wait. What?

-Kevin

Technology permeates our lives. We rely on GPS to take us to Grandma’s house; we stay up-to-date on friends we haven’t seen since high school via Facebook; and we are far more connected to the world around us than we ever thought possible. The fact that you are reading this blog, in one form or another, means you’re a part of this technology revolution. But it begs the question: Do you know how you are interacting with the world through the Internet?

I’m utterly unqualified to discuss an answer to that question metaphysically or philosophically, but I can take a crack at a crash course in hosting that will begin to answer the question literally. It’s the elephant in the room: In the simplest terms, how does the Internet work?

I’ve seen that there is steep learning curve for people outside the hosting industry when it comes to a general understanding of the technical answer to that question. The answer is not overly complicated or obscure … The sentiment is that by the time someone needs hosting, they’ll know how hosting works. The fact that you are reading this entry on The Planet’s blog would suggest you already know a fair amount about what hosting is and how the Internet works. So please bookmark this blog post as a resource to reference when your less-technically-savvy friends ask you to explain what you mean when you say you work online and host your own website.

I’m suggesting all of my friends read this post, so when anyone happens to mention Web sites, e-mail or computers, they can amaze their associates with their stellar understanding of the infrastructure and the behind-the-scenes goings-on of the Internet. Trust me: When you pass along this explanation as your own in the “real world,” everyone in earshot will be in awe.

If, as a rule, you don’t associate with non-technically-savvy people, please feel free to stop reading this post here.

The Internet: Under the Hood

1. You access a device connected in some way to the Internet. This device can be a cell phone, a computer or even a refrigerator. You are connected to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which recognizes that you will be accessing various sites and services hosted remotely. Your ISP is a network connected to the other networks on the planet (which is where we get the term “Internet” or “inter” “network”: Activity travels across multiple networks).
2. You enter a domain name or click a URL (for this example, we’ll use http://www.google.com).

3. Your ISP will see that you want to access “www.google.com” and will immediately try to find someone/something that knows what “www.google.com” means … this search is known as an NS (name server) lookup. In this case, it will find that “www.google.com” is associated with several name servers.

4. The first of these four name servers to respond with additional information about “google.com” will be used. Domains are typically required to be associated with two or three name servers to ensure if one is unreachable, requests for that domain name can be processed by another.
5. The name server has Domain Name System (DNS) information that essentially maps “www.google.com” to an Internet Protocol (IP) address. When a domain name is purchased and provisioned, the owner will associate that domain name with a specific IP address by creating DNS records. Think of DNS as a phone book that translates a name into a phone number for you.

6. When the IP address you reach sees that you requested “www.google.com,” it will find the files/content associated with that request. Multiple domains can be hosted on the same IP address, just as multiple people can live at the same street address and answer the phone. Each IP address only exists in a single place. (There are some complex network tricks that can negate that statement, but in the interest of simplicity, we’ll ignore them.)
7. Depending on what content you are accessing, the response from the server can be very simple or very complex. In some cases, the request will return a single HTML document. In other cases, the content you access may require additional information from other servers (database servers, storage servers, etc.) before the request can be completely fulfilled. This process is typically transparent to you as the end user, but it’s important to note when you are trying to understand the complexity of what seems like such a simple request.
8. When the requested content is located (and generated by other servers if necessary), it is returned to your browser in HTML code.

9. Your browser takes that code and translates the formatting and content to be displayed on your screen. Often, formatting and styling of pages will be generated from a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) referenced in the HTML code. The purpose of the style sheet is to streamline a given page’s code and consolidate the formatting to be used and referenced by multiple pages of a given website.

10. The HTML code will reference sources for media that may be hosted on other servers, so the browser will perform the necessary additional requests to get all of the media the website is trying to show. In this case, it needs to pull in the Google logo from this location: http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif

When the HTML is rendered and the media is loaded, your browser will probably note that it is “Done,” and you will have successfully navigated to “www.google.com” in 10 easy steps! I know it seems like a daunting and complex process, but it happens in a matter of milliseconds each time you use the Internet.

Pretty crazy, huh?

-Kevin

Managing operations in a data center can be pretty stressful, so one of my favorite ways to relax is reading scientific literature. I know it doesn’t sound like a very riveting hobby, but I’m rarely happier than when I have a copy of New Scientist or Scientific American in my hands. I consume the material with a voraciousness that might cause some to question my sanity. Mental health aside, I was reading an interesting article in Discover this month that provided one of those really great “ah ha” moments that related to The Planet’s data centers. Or more intimately, the place where your server lives.

The article covered some math that had been performed to determine the true, actual weight of the data that makes up the Internet. Starting with the weight of a single electron (2 x 10^-30 pound), the author broke down the number of electrons required to charge a single capacitor (the charge equaling a “1” in binary) in a computer’s memory (40,000), assuming a roughly 50 – 50 split on 1’s and 0’s in a typical 50 kilobyte e-mail. The resulting sum can then be used to determine an electron count per message (8 billion), landing us at a weight for a single e-mail of two ten-thousandths of a quadrillionth of an ounce. Now extrapolate that math across the whole of all Internet traffic; all the e-mail, Web pages, music, videos, instant messages and everything else we all contribute to the Internet. Data-wise you arrive at a mind-blowing 40 Petabyte number. However, that 40 Petabytes only equates to a weight of 1.3 x 10^-8 pound. That’s right … in real-world terms, all that data equals the weight of the smallest possible grain of sand, one measuring only two-thousandths of an inch across.

It’s pretty bewildering to think that all the effort and energy we contribute to this industry equates to such an infinitesimal true weight. Pondering that breakdown about the Internet, my thoughts drifted to another possible dissection: the data center. However, I wasn’t thinking in terms of the sub-atomic, but rather of the cellular. Let’s move from physics to biology.

Data centers are huge installations with myriad of moving parts that work to keep your server online and operational. So much so that you could liken the whole amalgamation to a living, breathing entity. Breaking down those parts to a cellular level proves to be an interesting exercise.

All organisms need sustenance, just as the data center needs AC power to survive. Think of the servers as cells in a body, varied infinitely, and specialized in both form and function. Striated muscle or peptidergic neural cells … MySQL database back-end or Battlefield 1942 server, the variations are vast. Communication is achieved via neurons arranged in a systemic network, just as the data center’s network interconnects dedicated servers to each other and to the outside world. Organelles that give metabolic function to a cell are comparable to RAM, hard drives and RAID cards, all of which are vital working parts of your server. You can even think of The Planet’s network security technicians as white blood cells fighting infection, and our DC technicians like powerful enzymes performing repairs on the cells. I guess you could refer to a RAM change out as an “organelle swap.”

But as anyone knows, the most important piece of any entity is its DNA: the core code that provides instruction, design and ultimately life to the organism. Paralleling that vital piece of the organism, a data center has DNA as well, which comes in the form of our customers. Without customers providing pattern and direction, the data center remains a nebulous blob of power, wiring and equipment without purpose or consciousness. But infused with our customers’ DNA, the data center springs to life, demonstrating utility and structure, ambition and organization.

So the next time that you are sweating a data migration or pushing code changes, stop to think about the part you play in this grand scheme and the amazing interrelation you have with this “data center organism.” But if that proves to be a bit too mind-expanding, then you can revert that tiny grain of sand that makes up all the information on the Internet. Large or small, we all have a part to play.