Right now i'm in the grey here.
To me time warner people came to my house, went in my basement, put some box on the wall, ran the ethernet cords up to my router and computer, and BAM internet out of no were. What gives internet to the all mighty box? I can't see it being wirelessly transmitted if that was the case then pretty sure you could just intercept that to get free wifi everywhere. And I don't understand it being connect to a cable, because you can't really run a cable from big internet source building to the middle of no were house. Halp
If it's not connected to a fiber or UTP cable, it could be connected to the telephone network and then that box acts as a modem and a router, pretty much a DSL connection.
The internet is no more than a glorifed WAN. Everything is connected, though. People have servers, hooked up to another server, hooked up to another server, and some people were smart enough to use a certain frequency to broadcast the info, and recieve info, through "thin air." It's not like they are harnessing some mythical power from above.
how does the fiber / utp cable get to my house then?
when logan talks about laying fiber it is literally that. there are thousands upon thousands of miles of cable underground running to buildings and neighborhoods.
think of it like water, gas, or electricity.
So how can we exploit stuff for free interwebs?
Do alot of illegal interwebs stuff like trying to bypass your ISP, which it's possible but against the law AFAIH.
Fiber is the fastest way to send packets, but it is delicate and expensive. Client computers (home users) will not really need direct fiber.
Any media has resistance when sending info from point a to point b, and has to be refreshed so it is not swiss cheese/corrupted like.
Your router (hybrid switch/modem) has a IP that is white listed from your ISP. Your a class c IP, while business get class b I believe and only Governments and ISP use class A.
We use IPv4 and changing to IPv6, because of damn smart phones.
Sorry if you already know this, and just basic info.