title: What is the purpose of configuring a remote?
body: <p>On the <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo" rel="nofollow">step 3 of the forking tutorial</a> it is explained as follows:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>When a repository is cloned, it has a default remote called origin
    that points to your fork on GitHub, not the original repository it was
    forked from. To keep track of the original repository, you need to add
    another remote named upstream:</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Can you explain what is the purpose of doing that ?</p>