How the internet actually works, and why nobody is in charge of it

The internet is not a single thing anyone built; it is roughly 75,000 independent networks that voluntarily agreed to exchange traffic using shared rules. Data travels in packets that can take different paths and arrive out of order, with reassembly handled at the endpoints, keeping the core network simple and scalable. BGP, the protocol networks use to announce reachability, has no built-in verification, making hijacks possible. Physics sets a hard limit on speed, which is why CDNs exist.