MITS ACM / PS / 19 AN INTERACTIVE EXHIBIT

HOW DOES THE INTERNET REACH YOU?

“Your click travels farther than you think.”

You tap a link. Somewhere far away, a machine receives the request, breaks information into packets, and sends those packets across a global network of fiber, routers and cables until the response reaches your screen.

SEE THE ROUTE →
01 ORIGIN → 02 OCEAN → 03 ISP → 04 ROUTER → 05 YOU
SCROLL TO FOLLOW THE PACKET ↓
01 / THE JOURNEY BEGINS

It starts with a machine.

When you request a webpage, your request travels thousands of miles to reach a server. The server processes the request and prepares the data that needs to come back to you.

In a climate-controlled data center thousands of miles away, powerful server blades slice high-resolution text, code, and images into small, discrete chunks called packets—each capped at around 1,500 bytes.

PACKET ANATOMY MTU: 1500 BYTES
IP HEADER 20 Bytes (From/To)
TCP HEADER 20 Bytes (Seq/Port)
TLS PAYLOAD 1460 Bytes (HTML)
âš¡ FUN FACT

The internet is not one giant machine. It is a vast, decentralized federation of independent networks that agree on a universal language called TCP/IP.

RACK_01A
WEB_NODE_07
PACKET_GEN
EDGE_SW_03
TCP
STATUS: PACKET CREATED PACKET_7A3F [SYN-ACK]
FIBER OUT
02 / ACROSS THE OCEAN

Most of the internet travels underwater.

Long-distance internet traffic does not bounce across space satellites. Over 99% of intercontinental traffic travels through fiber-optic cables laid directly across the pitch-black ocean floor.

Inside these armored cables resting miles beneath the ocean surface, infrared lasers fire pulses through hair-thin silica glass strands at approximately 200,000 kilometers per second.

TRANS-OCEANIC FIBER GRID Ashburn Data Center, USA
DEPTH: 3,840 m Undersea LIGHT SPEED: 200,000 km/s
ASHBURN [DATA CENTER] BUDE CLS MUMBAI LANDING STATION
TRANSIT DISTANCE: ~13,800 KM // OPTICAL REPEATERS: 184 UNITS
âš¡ FUN FACT

A single modern undersea fiber cable is only about the diameter of a garden hose (around 25–35 mm), yet carries hundreds of terabits per second using multiple wavelengths of light on strands thinner than a human hair.

03 / THE NETWORK OF NETWORKS

Now the packet enters your ISP.

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) connects your local city to global backbone transit carriers and peering exchange points.

As your packet arrives at the coastal landing station, it leaves the undersea fiber and enters giant routing computers. These core routers use Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to examine the destination IP and forward the packet across autonomous networks.

Tier 1 Backbone

AS3356 / GLOBAL TRANSIT

Transcontinental carrier routing high-capacity DWDM traffic across optical rings.

Internet Exchange

IXP / PEERING FABRIC

Neutral switching facility where major telecom networks exchange traffic freely.

Regional ISP Core

AS55836 / METRO RING

Aggregates regional city traffic and routes packets toward the metropolitan gateway.

Central Office OLT

GPON OPTICAL LINE

Terminates thousands of neighborhood fiber optic cables using laser modulation.

Street Cabinet

LOCAL SPLITTER DROP

Splits the single fiber line into individual residential connections down your road.

ACTIVE BGP ROUTE: AS3356 (Lumen / Level 3)
HOP 1 OF 5 +4.2 ms
BGP Route Active [PREFIX 104.21.0.0/16]
âš¡ FUN FACT

The internet functions without any central commander. Over 70,000 independent networks cooperate using voluntary peering agreements, letting billions of packets traverse borders seamlessly.

04 / THE LOCAL TRAFFIC COP

Your router decides where the packet goes next.

A router examines incoming packet headers, translates network addresses, and forwards data straight to the specific device that requested it.

DUAL-BAND WI-FI 6 GATEWAY

PUBLIC IP: 198.51.100.24
PWR
WAN
2.4G
5G
LAN1
NETWORK ADDRESS TRANSLATION (NAT)
SOURCE: WAN 198.51.100.24 : 49152
DESTINATION: 192.168.1.102 : TCP 443 (HTTPS)
CARRIER: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax 5GHz)
DESTINATION MATCH — Forwarding primary webpage packet payload.
CONNECTED LOCAL SUBNET (192.168.1.0/24)

Workstation Laptop

192.168.1.102 • Port 443 (HTTPS)

TARGET RECIPIENT

Personal Smartphone

192.168.1.145 • Port 5060 (VoIP)

ACTIVE

4K Ultra HD Smart TV

192.168.1.200 • Streaming 4K

LAN 1

Reading Tablet

192.168.1.118 • Idle

STANDBY
âš¡ FUN FACT

Your home router can be handling many different packets and connections at the exact same time—translating single public internet addresses into multiple private home devices in microseconds.

05 / THE LAST METER

And finally... You.

What felt like an instantaneous click was actually a physical odyssey spanning continents, oceans, and millions of transistors.

✓
01 / PACKET ARRIVES
Antenna receives electromagnetic RF waves @ 5.2 GHz
✓
02 / DATA REASSEMBLED
TCP stack checks checksum, strips headers, reorders chunks
✓
03 / CONTENT RENDERED
Browser engine parses HTML/CSSOM and paints GPU pixels
★
04 / YOU SEE THE PAGE
Total elapsed physical time: ~104 milliseconds
🔒 https:// acm.mit.edu/follow-the-packet
STATUS: 200 OK • 104 MS

PACKET RECEIVED.

“Your click travels farther than you think.”

1,460 BYTES REASSEMBLED
06 / SPEED & LATENCY BENCHMARK

How fast is “instant”?

When a web page opens in what feels like the blink of an eye, packets are racing against the fundamental physics of the universe.

SIMULATED PACKET TRAVEL BENCHMARK

Select a remote server location to simulate network transit speed.

SIMULATION / NOT A LIVE NETWORK TEST
ROUND-TRIP TIME (RTT)
168
MILLISECONDS
Speed of Light in Silica Glass (~200,000 km/s) Direct Optical Pulse
Electronic Router Hops & BGP Inspection Routing Delays Compound
Human Eye Blink Reference (300 – 400 ms) Average Human Perception
PHYSICAL DISTANCE
13,800 km
NETWORK HOPS
14 Hops
SPEED VS BLINK
PHYSICAL MEDIUM
Submarine Fiber Cable
07 / INTERACTIVE KNOWLEDGE HUB

Curious where your data goes?

Ask the packet directly. Explore the engineering trade-offs, undersea physics, and networking wonders that keep our planet connected.

AI EXPLORER // INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
CHOOSE A QUESTION

Why does the internet need undersea cables instead of satellites?

Imagine trying to move an ocean of water through garden hoses in the sky versus massive underground aqueducts. Submarine fiber-optic cables use lasers inside solid glass strands to carry over 99% of global internet traffic.

Undersea Cable: Direct Point A âž” Point B (Pure Light @ 200,000 km/s) Satellite: Ground âž” 36,000 km into Space âž” Ground (~600ms latency)
“Cables provide nearly infinite bandwidth, extreme reliability, and lightspeed latency that wireless space networks cannot physically match.”
08 / THE COMPLETE ECOSYSTEM

ONE CLICK.
AN ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM.

Next time you open a webpage, remember: the internet didn't simply appear on your screen.
It travelled.

01 ORIGIN SERVER
→
02 OCEANS FIBER CABLE
→
03 BACKBONE GLOBAL NET
→
04 ACCESS LOCAL ISP
→
05 GATEWAY ROUTER
→
06 DESTINATION DEVICE
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