The evolution of Internet routing
If you ask "how do I get a video from Netflix to my TV screen?" you will probably get a variety of answers depending on whom you ask. Here are a TL;DR of the answers you are most likely to get: the home setting answer "your access point gets the video from the Netflix over the Internet and sends it over wifi to your TV" the smart apps and video encoding answer "the Netflix app creates an HTTP request specifying your account and some chunks of the video you are about to watch and the Netflix server replies with HTTP responses that contain the chunks" the Internet Protocol (IP) answer "your smart TV creates packets addressed to the Netflix server by its IP address. Based on the IP address, the packets are first sent to the access point which sends it over fiber or telephone landlines to the Internet Service Provider (ISP), like AT&T, the ISP then sends it to other networks which eventually deliver it to Netflix (the ISP can also directly deliv...