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I am a newbie and want to know where(the physical locaton) the actual requests for a file in my server come from. I have a 12MB mp3 file in my web server. I signed up with a blog community that is located abroad. I wrote an article there with a link to the mp3 file in my server.
When I click the link, I have no problem loading up the file and listening to it. Now I wonder where the request for the mp3 file comes from. From my computer connected to the server via LAN or the server of the blog hosting entity, which is located abroad?
The reason I am concerned about the actual mechanics of such requests is because my experiences with accessing the files in my server may not be the same as those of other people who click the link in my blog article from some places abroad.
Should I ask someone abroad to test the link in the blog article to see if the mp3 file gets loaded as well as it does when I click the link.
I hope you will understand what I don't know and give me some insight into the meachnics of accessing web files.
Usually, the request will go to the closest dns server, or the dns server set up in your network configuration, then once it gets the ip address, that request is sent out to a string of routers across the web, varies with each request based on network conditions.
But at some point, if you are making the request from your computer, and it gets sent back to you, I'd guess it's not jumping too many times before your computer starts feeding itself that data. It's like a loop.
To get accurate results you'd have to completely clear the browser cache on each new request, or your server will be sending your browser 304 headers, not modified since last access.
