Talk:Internet/Archive 2

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Definitely not underlinked

Just took a look at "What links here"... ok this definitely isn't underlinked --Eric M Gearhart 09:45, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Eric, I just added a bit of stuff to the intro, but feel free to mangle it anyhow you see fit. I was just brainstorming.Pat Palmer 22:32, 12 May 2007 (CDT)
Yes the article needs much attention of course... I'd like to start with talking about IMPs and the early DARPAnet and end the history section around the 1990s (when the WWW started getting big). Eric M Gearhart

I think this goes on World_Wide_Web, not here

Someone added this:

The "disruptive technology" and popularity of the Internet has precipitated a paradigm shift in global mass communication much the same as earlier technologies such as the Telephone and American Bell system did, as people around the world can communicate seamlessly over vast distances via many different means. Because of technologies like the Internet, it is said that everyone lives as neighbors in the "global village."

The "internet" is just the network; it grew rather slowly over 20 years. Yes, it was important, but I would not characterize it's advent as "disruptive". The World_Wide_Web, however--HTML, web pages, HTTP and all that--came along in the early 1990's and it certainly was a disruptive technology.

It is a common occurence that people make the shortcut of saying "internet" or "the internet" when they really mean WWW, which is difficult to pronounce. but here, we should be careful to use the precisely correct words. Pat Palmer 13:51, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Perhaps pedantic, but relevant here as well, is that lower-case "internet" is essentially the Pouzin-Cerf paradigm of generic interconnection of networks, while the upper-case "Internet" is the system of assigned autonomous systems and IP address blocks assigned under IANA authority. Examples of lower-case internets include the secure military networks such as SIPRNET and JWICS, which use exactly the same Internet Protocol and routers as the public Internet, but also have additional security features.


I feel compelled to point out that NIPRNET and SIPRNET - Nonsecure Internet Protocol Routed Network / Secure Internet Protocol Routed Network - simply take their name from the IP in TCP/IP. The entire time in the military we never referred to SIPR as an "internet." I can't be more verbose about more details than that, other than we soldiers had it firmly planted in our minds that SIPRNET was not the Internet in any way, other than it happened to use the same technology as you pointed out Eric M Gearhart 18:33, 13 July 2008 (CDT)
SIPRNET is not "the" public Internet, but it is properly an extranet that uses Internet Ptotocol, IPv4 addresses from the same space as the public Internet, has routers that are essentially identical to routers used in the public Internet, etc. I regard a lower-case internet as an IP-based network,which NIPRNET, SIPRNET, and JWICS all are. That they use link encryptors is invisible to the routers. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:13, 15 July 2008 (CDT)
Even more than the Web, a set of disruptive technologies, much as I hate the term, is "convergence" of data, video, voice, telemetry, imagery, etc., over a common IP infrastructure. That infrastructure can have separate and secure Virtual Private Networks.
Within the Internet operations and standards communities, it sometimes feels as if the antithesis of disruption is desirable. "Just-in-time" inventions have been important, such as Classless Inter-Domain Routing, in the early nineties, where we were about to run out of certain parts of address space, and also that the commercial routers of the time were not growing as fast as the address space. When a private organization contracted to provide a significant part of the DNS infrastructure suddenly disrupted the behavior of DNS in an attempt to improve their profits, the response, to put it mildly, was explosive; I was there at some of the more explosive confrontations.
Many of the connection technologies that physically reach the Internet are disruptive, such as bypassing monopoly telephone wiring with leased optics or wire, satellites, and wireless transmission. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:43, 13 July 2008 (CDT)
I agree completely, and viva la revolucion! Telco companies and those companies that feed off them have two choices: evolve or die. It's market Darwinisim at its best :-) -Eric M Gearhart 19:12, 13 July 2008 (CDT)
Certain telco cable splicers do, however, appear to be the Missing Link. For that matter, I once taught a seminar at British Telecom's training center in Stone, Staffordshire. Outside my classroom window was the lineman training center, where I could watch 48 trainees going up and down telephone poles all day. There was something very Freudian about that. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:11, 13 July 2008 (CDT)

1980-1990; color me confused

Having been there, done that, and have the T-shirt from the Second Annual TCP/IP Interoperability Conference, I'm afraid I needed to correct a few things. The premise of the section lead seemed to be that the Web defines the Internet -- and that's not even true today, especially when looking at things like convergence of communications.

I well remember the first Worm, and, given I have a background in infectious disease, watching with some amusement as some brilliant computer scientists ran about re-inventing epidemiology. Unfortunately, my suggestions about reading John Snow's work from 1854 was not taken seriously. Since my Internet access was cut off until the worm was eradicated, I suppose I felt like the people who were annoyed that they coudn't draw water from the Broad Street Pump. Snow, after establishing this was the source of repeated cholera outbreaks in London, removed the pump's handle when he couldn't get any other action.

Could we talk about the purpose of the list of protocols and programs below? I moved them here because I didn't understand their significance. By far, the most important protocols of the decade were DNS and SMTP. Those search engines weren't too useful, because there wasn't that much random information on the net. There certainly were domain-specific search engines that were used heavily, such as MEDLINE from the National Library of Medicine, RECON at NASA, and, on closed IP networks for the military, quite a few tools. IIRC, if I did any general searching, I used WAIS.

Given that most interfaces were text-based, is there an implication that telnet wasn't useful?

It also should be mentioned that many IP-based protocols were in heavy use, but in local area networks, such as NFS, X/Windows, RPC, etc. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:33, 14 July 2008 (CDT)

Shine on, you crazy Internet diamond. I added that section - you were there, I wasn't :-) -Eric M Gearhart 21:33, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Impact on society

Can I get away with pointing out that teenagers spend too much time on the phone, watching TV, sending text messages, and browsing the web, such that Internet-enabled convergence of communications will allow them to waste time at the speed of light? Howard C. Berkowitz 18:57, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Nope! Hayford Peirce 19:23, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Definition becoming bloated

Definitions are supposed to be short and snappy. The definition for this article seems to be getting extended. How long until it is as long as the article? --Tom Morris 08:05, 19 July 2008 (CDT)

I'd be delighted to have a shorter, snappier definition, but it has to be one that deals with some of the essential issues most often misunderstood:
  • The Internet is not the Web; the Web is not the Internet
  • You can use Internet technology without connecting to the public Internet
  • The public Internet works, even as a relative anarchy, through cooperative technical agreements and underlying technical mechanisms
Could you suggest an alternative that doesn't continue some of the common misconceptions? Howard C. Berkowitz 10:13, 19 July 2008 (CDT)
I think the current definition works quite satisfactorily. That information can be included in the article. The point of the definition is that it's supposed to provide an extremely succint introduction so that it can appear in Related Articles lists and so on. This will mean that it does not reflect the complexity of the subject. But if someone wants to know more, then they can click through and read the article. The same is true for all short-form writings: headlines, titles, abstracts, slogans, bulletin flashes and so on. Yes, it sucks that it can't be a complex essay delineating the rich structure of the topic. But that's what the article is for. --Tom Morris 10:18, 19 July 2008 (CDT)
I hear your point, and I agree it should be written as tightly as possible. Nevertheless, to take your point about Related Articles, I believe that if the definition conveys that one should read related articles about the Web, and that TCP/IP is just not what runs the Internet (IP, arguably, yes), we accomplish something.Howard C. Berkowitz 10:39, 19 July 2008 (CDT)
I think Tom's shortened definition is fine, and is what, per Larry, a definition is supposed to be. My own feeling is: who hell reads a definition -- it's so hiddened away that it's essentially useless. So I wouldn't worry much about what it actually says. A contrarian view, perhaps.... Hayford Peirce 10:44, 19 July 2008 (CDT)
I do read definitions, but that's because I spend a fair bit of time writing Related Articles subpages, where definitions are used. --Tom Morris 13:26, 19 July 2008 (CDT)
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