Home Internet

A plain-English path through the boxes, signals, speeds, and services that bring the internet into your home.

Start here

Begin with the three ideas that clear up most home-internet confusion.

• What Is an ISP? — Meet the company that delivers internet service to your home.
• What Is Wi-Fi? — Learn why Wi-Fi and the internet are related, but not the same thing.
• Modem vs. Router — Understand what each box does and which one to check when something stops working.

Understand speed and performance

“Fast internet” can mean several different things. These explain the measurements that matter.

• What Is Bandwidth? — See how much traffic your connection can carry at once.
• What Is Latency (Lag)? — Learn why a connection can have plenty of capacity and still feel slow.
• Download vs. Upload — Understand the two directions your data travels and why their speeds differ.
• Bit vs. Byte — Find out why your advertised internet speed does not match the download number on your screen.

Go deeper

Once the basics make sense, follow what happens behind the scenes when a device joins your network or opens a website.

• What Is Buffering? — See what your device is doing when a video pauses to catch up.
• What Is an IP Address? — Learn how devices get addresses so information reaches the right place.
• What Is DNS? — Understand how website names are translated into numerical addresses.
• What Is DHCP? — Meet the network service that automatically hands out local addresses.
• What Is a VPN? — Learn what a VPN can protect, what it cannot, and when it may be useful.