Author Archives: My blog

TED Talk

I found that the TED Talk brought up many good points that can be related to many of the issues that we have discussed about the internet. The strongest point I felt was his explanation of how airplanes caused a reevaluation of the law just as the internet has done with music, pictures, and video. Prior to the invention of the airplane when someone owned land they not only owned the land itself but the space above and below it. When airplanes were invented some farmers went to court to argue that the airplane was trespassing by flying over his property. Just like with the internet, this law was outdated and was ridiculous to enforce because it would limit the planes capabilities, just like how copyright laws have limited the use and growth of the internet.

TED Talk

I found that the TED Talk brought up many good points that can be related to many of the issues that we have discussed about the internet. The strongest point I felt was his explanation of how airplanes caused a reevaluation of the law just as the internet has done with music, pictures, and video. Prior to the invention of the airplane when someone owned land they not only owned the land itself but the space above and below it. When airplanes were invented some farmers went to court to argue that the airplane was trespassing by flying over his property. Just like with the internet, this law was outdated and was ridiculous to enforce because it would limit the planes capabilities, just like how copyright laws have limited the use and growth of the internet.

Chapters 7 and 8 blog

Chapter 7 Blog

Kleinrock had attended a computing conference that assembled scientists from around the world, many of whom were creating digital networks for their own governments. Kleinrock had forgotten his razor at the hotel and was able to see if someone else was logged onto their computer by using software called RSEXEC which showed him who was online at the time. Although the ARPANET was not originally intended to be a means of communication but it soon developed into a communication hotspot. The first online mailing system was created in the early 1960s and was called MAILBOX. To send a message you would need to use a program called SNDMSG and when you wanted to receive mail someone had sent to you then you needed to use READMAIL. Tomlinson became famous as the inventor of SNDMSG and CPYNET but his decision to use the @ sign in email addresses was by far his most famous contribution. Companies soon realized that email was one of the best ways to communicate especially when attempting to get the bosses approval on certain actions. Roberts created the first mail manager software by setting up functions to file mail or delete unwanted mail.

 

Chapter 8 blog

Bob Kahn went to work for Larry Roberts and left BBN in 1972. What used to be ARPA had now been converted to DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Kahn said that the D was always there, but it wasn’t silent anymore. Before Bob Taylor left ARPA in 1969 he created a fund for a fixed-site radio network that was going to be built at the University of Hawaii. During this time mobile computer sites became the next big computer goal. The military was very determined to create these sites because they would be more portable on the battlefield instead of big fixed installations. Many foreign governments and corporations began to develop networking ideas. By 1972 many leaders of various nations formed a group to work together on national networking which was called the International Network Working Group and Vint Cerf was put in charge. In 1973 Cerf began to draw up a rough sketch of what a network of networks would look like. They realized that the host-to-host Network Control Protocol had to be replaced by a more independent protocol. At the end of 1973 Cerf and Kahn successfully created a paper called “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication” which described how messages could be put into and taken out of a data program and instead be sent as end-to-end packets. They labeled these messages as transmission-control protocol messages. The paper also explained gateways which would be able to only read the envelope and the receiving host could read what was inside it.

Chapter 5 – 6 blog

Chapter 5 Blog

Vint Cerf, a well-dressed and well educated man with slight hearing loss, took a job at IBM after college. Cerf was very interested in computers particularly with the networking of computers. Roberts decided to make the Network Measurement Center responsible for testing and studying the networks performance. UCLA computer scientists were working on programming with the Sigma-7, an unstable and difficult computer. Computer scientists were urgently working on creating software that would enable host computers to communicate with one another with a host-to-host protocol. Crocker sent out a Request for Comments (RFC) which was an informal request that seemed inviting to those willing to play by a certain set of rules. This RFC had a sense of community gathering with the intent of networking to everyone. UCLA required interface hardware to add to their host-to-IMP. They asked Scientific Data Systems to create this hardware but they said they would need a lot of money and months of time to create it. Mike Wingfield, a graduate student, offered to take the job for much cheaper and was able to complete it much faster. In 1970 the creation of a complete protocol was accomplished and was labeled the Network Control Protocol.

 

Chapter 6 Blog

Although the network was coming along well there was a lack of connectivity to the East Coast where important places like MIT and Lincoln Laboratory were located. ARPA’s budget had also reached a climax and was beginning to decline as the Vietnam War sucked up more government funding. In March the very first circuit to travel coast to coast in the ARPA network was implemented. Heart’s desire for a reliable and stable network led him to build a new technology, remote maintenance and diagnostics, which would be able to control and maintain the network remotely. BBN was able to set up a loop between the host and the modem allowing for them to perform loopback tests which would indicate areas with troubles. UCLA’s Network Measurement Center attempted to crash the network by overloading it. They found that under normal activity the network was able to perform just as well as BBN had predicted it would. Ornstein and Heart were getting fed up with receiving bugged machines from Honeywell and in 1970 he ordered a shipment of a new machine to turn around because of faulty equipment. Heart’s group of technicians and Roberts had talked about attempting to connect multiple users to the net without the use of a host computer. If they were successful then thousands of users would be able to access the network without living close to the host computer, allowing for a more practical network. In 1971 Kahn and Vezza assembled a group of investigators from around the United States to gather at MIT for demonstration of the network. The ICCC demonstration showed the public the potential for packet switching technology and proved to computer makers that a whole new market may be on the horizon.

Chapters 1-4 blog

Chapter Blogging

Chapter 1: In chapter 1 we are introduced to one of the most important characters, Licklider. Lick was a tall man with a southern accent who was not only extremely intelligent but kind and humorous. Lick believed that in the future the advancement of the computer would help spread political information to the masses and greatly improve the lives of those with access to a computer. Bob Taylor is another character introduced in this chapter who loved science and technology. He was invited by a government group that’s goal was to research computers. Taylor came up with the idea to connect all computers together to more easily share information without having to travel to another state to look at someone else’s computer.

Chapter 2: Taylor worked to solve the problem of information sharing which at the time was a very difficult process. If someone in another state wanted to create a similar form of software not only did they have to travel to another state to learn about the software they desired but they also had to come back and replicate the entire thing from scratch. Taylor hoped to bypass this process by creating a way to share information from one computer to another without the hassle of traveling around to multiple places. Taylor attempted to recruit Roberts, a highly intelligent but reserved man, to help them in their expedition to connect computers. Roberts declined at first but when his boss received a call from Taylor’s boss he quickly changed his mind and joined them.

Chapter 3: Lick was recruited to work at BBN by Beranek. Lick was able to convince Beranek to purchase a 25,000 dollar computer for “an unknown purpose” by promising government contracts to BBN for computer research. Lick truly believed that computers would be the future and be able to change the way the business was run, improving it over time. BBN purchased a 150,000 dollar computer that could not fit though most of their doors and had little memory. They used this computer day and night giving everyone a chance to test it out.

Chapter 4: BBN was given $1 million to build four IMPS. Kahn was very skeptical about being able to build the network due to the complexity of the whole process. In February BBN had finalized its contract to purchase the DDP-516s. This machine had no disk drives, hard drives, or floppy disk inserts and had a minimal amount of memory compared to our computers today. Crowther and Walden solved the algorithms for the packet switching and realized that it would take one hundred and fifty lines of code to process a packet.

The Internet: How it works

Source 1: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet.htm

When learning about how the internet works it is important to know what the difference between hardware and software is. Hardware is the physical parts of the computer or device like the router, hard drive, phone, and keyboard. Software is the programs that run on the computer like Microsoft, Netgear, and other programs used to give the computer commands. Another important part of the how internet works is protocols. An example of an important protocol is the hypertext transfer protocol, or the HTTP in the address bar, which is used to see websites. Each device that you connect to the internet also has its own individual address called an IP address. The IP address helps one computer locate a different computer through the internet.

 

Source 2: http://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/wwwspr04/readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm

When sending messages over the internet the message you send is broken down in to packets which are segments of data that are sent from one computer to another one over the internet. These packets that are being sent are then given their own port number. The router then finds out the location that the packets are to be sent to by examining the packets. The internet is made up of numerous networks all connected together, and these networks are known as Network Service Providers.

 

Source 3: http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/01/17-how-does-internet-actually-work-singer-friedman

In 2008 the Pakistani government decided to filter the internet in Pakistan to prevent its citizens from viewing content that it believed was offensive. The government was able to successfully block its citizens from viewing YouTube by rerouting their search for YouTube through Pakistan Telecom which then blocked the search result for YouTube. Each computer is assigned its own unique IP address by the individual’s internet provider which functions as the address for final locations on the internet. The Domain Name System converts the users search names, like Google.com to an IP address which it can find. These Domain Name Systems are then further divided into different categories like .edu, .com, or .org depending on where the information posted is coming from. The Pakistani government was able to abuse this system and censor its people by tricking their computers to reroute to a different domain than they were looking for.

Blogs and Tweets, Texting and Friending

Sandra M. Dejong talks about how sometimes it is necessary to separate lives due to technology in her book Blogs and Tweets, Texting and Friending. In the medical field, not only is it morally right, but it is law that professionals may not discuss information about a patient except with that patient. This makes their lives difficult, especially in a small community, where professionals have to separate their lives into work and social. The introduction of the Digital Age takes this one step further. Doctors now have the ability to share records with other doctors almost instantly, but because the methods of sharing aren’t always secure, special permission must be given, and conditions considered. This is very hard, especially with hackers being in every field there is. A doctor can’t just message someone about sensitive information because someone else might be able to get that information. With progressing technologies, safety measures must also progress.