This article is taken from FEER.
By Ronald Deibert
What happens to your request when you click on a link to a website or send an email? For most surfers, the internet experience begins and ends with what happens on the computer screen in front of them.
However, if you follow that email or web request as it leaves your computer and passes down the fiber-optic cable to the servers and routers of your local Internet Service Provider (ISP), through the Internet Exchange Points (IXPS), international gateway, and on to the undersea trunk cables of telecommunications companies, you will find a complex and largely hidden infrastructure of filters and choke points.
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