- #1
Lebombo
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After some of the information I've read and a few youtube videos, this is a rough idea of how I view a basic internet structure. However, I would like to find out how money changes hands in this industry. This is my guesstimate of who pays who:
The individual residential households pay the ISP for access to the electric wires/cables which connect to other residential households. The ISP may pay a backbone provider for access to another set of wires that connect further into the internet, perhaps with other ISPs which connect to other residential households and websites.
However, one thing I'm having trouble understanding is the expenses of the ISPs and backbone providers. They charge for "access," and "bandwith usage." But what does that mean? If I'm not mistaken, the only thing flowing through the wires are electrons. And when those electrons flow through my outlet to my computer, I pay my electric utility company for that electrons flow. So what is it that I am really paying my ISP for? The ISP claims I pay for internet usage, so internet usage could just be electrons flowing in some specific pattern that allows me to send email and view websites? Okay, but is it really the ISP that is involved in the technology that creates the specific electrical signals to view a webpage or is that something that the technology that exists in my internet browser? If its the ISP that creates the specific ability for those electrons to retrieve a website, then I wonder what the cost involved is? I would guess that the ISP owns and operates lots of servers that route traffic around their networks and into other ISP networks. And those servers that ISPs operate must consume a lot of electricity to operate, so ISPs must pay the utility company just like residential internet users. So when it all comes down to it, am I really just paying my ISP so that my ISP can pay it's electricity bill? If not, what other operation does an ISP perform other than laying some wire and setting up some routers and letting the internet flow autonomously? So does it boil down to when ISPs are claiming that bandwidth usage is high on their network, it is just a synonym for saying that their electric bill to the utility company is too high?