From Hardware to the Web
Trace one connection from the CPU on your laptop through the operating system, the network, and the web browser.
- Reading time
- ~29 min
- Level mix
- 6 beginner · 1 intermediate
Most people use the web every day without ever thinking about what happens between pressing Enter on a URL and seeing a page. This path walks down the stack one layer at a time — from the chip doing the computing, through the OS managing it, the network carrying the request, and the browser turning the response into pixels.
Roadmap
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The component of a computer that fetches and executes instructions — the place where programs actually run.
Fast, temporary storage where a running program keeps the data it is actively using.
The system software that manages hardware and provides services and abstractions to all other programs.
A numeric identifier for a network interface — how computers find each other on the internet.
The phone book of the internet — translates human-readable names like example.com into IP addresses.
The request/response protocol that powers the web — how browsers and servers talk to each other.
A program that fetches web pages over HTTP, parses HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and renders them as the interactive sites you see.