Answer Key to Guided Video Notes
When the video is finished, discuss the following:
What did you find interesting about the video? What surprised you?
- Answers will vary. Give students time to share.
What are the three major parts of the Internet and provide examples of each one?
- (2:19 min) - First and Last Mile: Texts, notifications, apps; everything we do to connect and receive information from the Internet; routers, WiFi, cell service.
- (7 min) - Internet Hubs: Wires come to a building where they all connect and send information.
- (8:45 min) - Internet Backbone: Cable highway - cables come from building down to dock; cable on the ocean floor.
How is information transferred wirelessly? (3 min)
- We use routers and cell service. All wireless technology uses radio waves to send and receive information.
How is the information transported? (3:35 min)
- Through packets. (Each packet is like a letter in an envelope; each envelope has a header to indicate where it is from and where it is going to.)
When she says everything in the computer and everything you send over the Internet is binary what is that like? (4:32 min)
- It is like a kind of Morse code your computer understands.
What is a bit? What is a byte? What are they used for? (4:50 min)
- Each 1 or 0 is a bit
- Eight bits is a byte
- To store and transfer data
How does a wave carry binary information? (5:20 min)
- Transmit a different frequency for 0s and 1s (frequency modulation).
- At its most basic a cell phone is a radio.
If you use copper wire, how is the information being transferred? (6:14 min)
- With pulses of electricity.
If you use fiber wire, how is the information being transferred? (6:17 min)
- With laser light.
- If it is a 1 it turns on; if it is a 0 it turns off.
What do ISPs do? (6:50 min)
- They look at the headers of our messages and they decide the most efficient way to send our messages to get where they need to go.
How does information travel long distances? (8:36 min)
- Cable highway.
- Wires on the floor of the ocean - sometimes buried in the ocean floor but most of the time just laying on the bottom of the ocean.
What is the type of wire used for the cable highway on the ocean? (9:55 min)
- Typically fiber wire
What can damage the wires on the ocean floor? (12:00 min)
- Sharks (but not really)
- Ship anchors, fishing, anchors (human activity)
Who suffers the most when Internet wires are severed? (12:47 min)
- People who have few connections - places that are not highly congested.
What makes it hard for some people to get low-cost, high-speed Internet? (13:50 min)
- Companies are not incentivized to offer service in areas where the cost of providing the service is more expensive that the number of people who will pay for it.
What would be required for 5G? (15:10 min)
- More towers
Who would benefit from 5G? (16 min)
- People in well populated areas.
What is Loon? (16:25 min)
- They are focused on the unconnected and the under-connected. They launch balloons that use stratospheric winds to get to its location, and in the balloon it has the ability to transmit radio waves from it's station on the ground and people with cell phones nearby. It is a space, or near space, systems that use radio waves to give people access to the Internet.