The Internet Explained
A good article is worth it’s weight in gold especially when it’s an enjoyable read and you get the added bonus of learning something. I was reading the previewed articles on the SearchandGo website over the last week and came accross this gem titled the Internet Explained. SearchandGo while in the process of building their portal have put some articles live that are unique in content (not duplicated anywhere else) and give a gerat look into a subjects history.
The Internet Explained is in seven parts and comes packed with some real good inforamtion and gave me the history of the Internet dating back to pre WWII. Here are some excerpts from the chapters:
One such man, Vannevar Bush, in his 1945 essay, ‘As We May Think’ envisaged a time when a machine called a ‘memex’ might enhance human memory by the storage and retrieval of documents linked by association, in much the same way as the cognitive processes of the brain link and enforce memories by association.
In 1972 Vinton Cerf is called to the chairmanship of the newly-formed Inter-Networking Group (INWG), a team setup to develop standards for the ARPANET. He and his team built upon their NCP communications system and devised TCP (Transmission-Control Protocol) in an effort to facilitate communications between the ever-growing number of networks now appearing – satellite, radio, ground-based like Ethernet, etc.
Tim Berners-Lee submitted a paper to CERN’s board for evaluation, ‘Information Management: A Proposal’, wherein he detailed and encouraged the adoption of hypertext as the means to manage and collate the vast sum of information held by CERN and other scientific and business establishments.
Each computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address assigned to it, either dynamically at the moment of connection or for a period of a day or so, or (for all intents and purposes) a fixed or static address like that assigned to a web or name server hosting websites.
Name servers are maintained and updated on a daily basis as IP addresses change or are added when new websites come online. Millions of people and automated systems maintain this distributed naming system worldwide and it is accessed by billions of surfers each day,
One such area is Internet2, a subscription-only multidiscipline consortium of high-speed networks connected (at least in the United States) by an ultra high-speed backbone, formed for the investigation, creation and deployment of cutting edge internet technology
The Internet does have an innate redundancy but the very speed with which files may be transmitted means it can take just milliseconds for thousands of computers to be infected by a virus.
A very good article and a damned good read with some obviously strong research having gone into it.
Add comment December 15, 2005
