Next week our panel will discuss how the internet works.  As far as how class will be run this week, everyone should read the summaries under the category for the week, namely “how it works.” You can find them all here.

NB: If you did summaries for this topic and they don’t show up in the category above you tagged your posts wrong. Fix this by retagging your posts properly with the tag “how it works” (no quotes).

We want to have the entire class engaged in the discussion. If you have questions about what you’re reading in the summaries, bring them. If you have something to add, bring that too.

Panel members will be considered the resident experts for the week. They should be prepared to discuss their readings and maps. Each panel member is required to come up with at least one good discussion question for the class. You should add and label your discussion question (or questions) to the shared Google Doc for the panel before class.

A good discussion question gives the class something to think and talk about. It should not be a short answer type of question. It does not necessarily have a definitive “right” answer.

What we hope to get out of each panel discussion is some sort of consensus understanding of the topic for the week. An outcome of that understanding will be a unified concept map of the week’s topic. Panel members are to collaborate on the unified map, and link the map back to panel members’ individual maps. The unified map will be due by Thursday the week after the panel discussion.

Topic 2: How it Works Here are some of the questions we are thinking of circulating. Also, anyone in the class can follow how the panel develops the topic in the public Google Doc here.

• What does it mean, a network of networks?
• How did ARPANET work?
• How was what ARPANET was different from Host to Host communication?
• What are protocols, and how do we break them down? Application layer, Transport layer, Internet layer, Link layer, etc.
• Can you explain some of the most prevalent protocols? FTP, SSH, HTTP, IP/TCP, SMTP, DNS
• How does email work?
• How does Usenet work?
• How did Bitnet work?
• How does Gopher work?
• What is the technology behind the web?
• What are we missing? Feel free to add more?

Also, here are the students that are on the panel for the How the Internet Works week:

• Faisal
• Jack H
• James
• Lex
• Meredith
• Matt