The internet might be called a cloud or a web, but it still relies on a physical system. Sure, talking about the cloud with as much reverence as an alien squeaky toy from feels for The Claw, there's still something much more condensed and real than a sky-based metaphor. In fact, it's an entire web of connected wires and cables. If it wasn't, the interweb wouldn’t be able to snare us in its spider-like grip with all those videos where cats react to cucumbers.

Most of the time, the thing connecting you to the internet calls itself a modem. (Pro tip: always call someone or something by the name they or it wants to be called—both on the internet and in real life.) That modem (usually a gift from your Internet Service Provider) takes a signal as electrical pulses and converts it into binary. That way, your computer can interpret and give you the internet access you love and pay so much for.

But that signal doesn't just appear out of thin air. A cable runs out of the back of that modem and into the wall, leading to

• the internet.
• the cloud.
• the information superhighway.
• digital dragons (probably).

First, that cable would prefer we address it by its full name, coaxial cable, and that we remember and admire its valuable copper makeup. A thin inner conductor (made of—guess what—copper), insulation lining, and outer conductor (still copper), wrapped in a smart-looking plastic jacket gives us the coaxial we know and love, transmitting varying signals and different frequencies back and forth all at the same time.

Even with all that insulation, the metal inside coaxial cables can only carry pulses of energy so far before the signal sputters out.

In an effort to fix this problem, scientists saw the light. Literally. The fiber optic cable (which you've probably heard about if you live anywhere near New York) carries data as beams of light. Fiber optic cables use tons of super thin threads of glass (giving them flexibility) wrapped in a couple layers of surrounding material. A cladding (a layer of optical material) wraps around that glass core to keep the light bouncing back into the core and moving along. On top of that, the cable has an outer buffer to protect it from damage.

A transmitter near the optical fibers (typically laser, but sometimes LEDs) converts the binary information from the computer into light pulses (which are like electrical pulses except…made of light) and shoots them down the cable. It gets better, though: if you adjust the angle of the light beams each time, you can actually send multiple signals down the cable at once, all zooming at the speed of light. Literally.

Please excuse us while we call Verizon again to beg for Fios in our neighborhood.

(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5)