Taking a Step Back

Now that we have examined each layer more closely, we should take a step back and look at the big picture.

At this point, we realize how much complexity underlies a seemingly simple request from your web browser to Google and how many moving parts are involved in this transfer. Of course, the same applies to most distributed systems nowadays since they work on top of the same or a similar network infrastructure.

The following illustration shows an example of a big network like the Internet and the layers that are involved at every step.