Here is the real "truth" about the internet:  there is no such thing.

"The Internet" is simply a bunch of computers connected together.  They all use TCP/IP 3 as a networking protocol, and use a common system to access each other.  That is it.

There are many other "alternate internets" around.  FIDONet is still in existance, and offers a service comperable to USENET and Internet E-Mail.

What most people call "Internet 2" is the Internet that will replace the one we use now.  That will not happen for the forseeable future, because of the software in use and the servers being used.

IP 3 is badly outdated.  When it was concieved, it was never thought that they would run out of IP address for each computer connected.  But once the WWW craze started, that was quickly found to be a false assumption.  An IPP Address is composed of 4 sets of 3 numbers, from 001.001.001.001 to 255.255.255.255.  A lot of the numbers are reserved, but the theoretical maximum is only 42 million numbers.


Interesting.  So it's essentially just a supercomputer, spread throughout the world and created by PCs and servers?

When the IP 4 system was initiated, nobody could concieve of even 4 million computers being connected, let alone 42 million.  But by the middle to late 1990's, it became increasingly obvious that they were running out of numbers.

A lot of the buyouts of Internet Providers in the late 1990's were done for one reasonL to acquire IP addresses.  The limiting factor was no longer the number of phone lines a providor had, but the number of addresses they could give out.  This caused some (AOL, Earthlink, Prodigy) to go on "buying sprees".  And the advent of highspeed internet made the problem even worse.  Now you had people that stayed connected permanently, so the address was never released for others to use.

This is where we are at now.  IP 6 was standardized over 6 years ago, but remains largely unused.  This is because a lot of computers, operating systems, and other devices (routers, netwrok cards, etc) are unable to use it.  Unlike IP 4 with it's 42 million theoretical addresses, IP 6 allows over 3.4x1038 individual addresses.  That is enough addresses to allow every living person on the planet to have is over 50 octillion (50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) addresses.  That means that everything that might connect to the internet in any way would have it's own private address.  Your car, your TV, your cell phone, your refrigerator, everything.

However, there is a problem with IP 6, it is not compatible with IP 3.  So before it can start to be used as the "new standard", everybody will have to stop useing the current Internet.  This is because instead of 4 groups of 3 numbers which range from 0 to 255, IP 6 uses 8 groups of 4 hexadecimal numbers (0 through F).

There are serves now that are able to translate to and from IP 4 and IP 6.  And more and more IP6 servers are going on-line.  This has helped a lot, and it is why we are now seeing more "Internet Ready" devices then ever before.  This is because the device is given a local IP 4 address, and the IP service is translating that to IP 6.

Windows XP is able to use IP 6 in a native form.  So are many variations of Unix.  Windows 2000 can work with IP 6 with some work.  Windows ME and earlier are totally unable to use IP 6.

I expect that the current IP 4 will die out within the next decade.  When designed in 1980, it was thought that they would never run out of numbers.

Here is a site that shows the most recent block allocations:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space

It shows just how crowded things are.  Hopefully IP 6 will become the standard soon, before things get worse.

Interesting.  So it's essentially just a supercomputer, spread throughout the world and created by PCs and servers?


Not really.  A "Supercomputer" suggest a logical expansion.

The Internet is the world largest form of Anarchy.  It is impossible to control, and impossible to prevent people from useing it.

The only control is the DNS servers.  That is the "Yellow Pages" of the internet.

When you type in www.inthe00s.com, the DNS servers jump in.  They look up the IP address that it is listed to (207.44.142.16), and sends you there.  Since this site is co-hosted, it arrives there with the information that the site wanted is www.inthe00s.com.  The server then sends you the information on the page requested.  This is how a web server is able to hose hundreds of web sites on only 1 server.

Yes, it is complicated and convoluted.  But until everything is converted to IP 6, it is the only thing we can do.

And that is when you hear of a website taken out by an attack, that is normally what happens.  Hackers no longer attack a web site, but they attack the DNS server.  By overloading a DNS server, you prevent anybody from being forwarded to websites.  But because of redundency nowadays, it does not happen anywhere near as often as it used to.

^My god you're smart!

That's a great analogy: Anarchy. I kind of think of the Internet as a parallel world, inhabited by Earthlings (mostly at least, anyway  ;)) but with its own realms too.

Have you heard of the conscious internet theory?

I think that in about 5-10 years from now, the internet and all other programs will run more by voice activated interfaces, making a keyboard obsolete.

I think that in about 5-10 years from now, the internet and all other programs will run more by voice activated interfaces, making a keyboard obsolete.


I like the keyboards though.  My god, the future hasn't even began to start yet.

^My god you're smart!


LOL!

This is more a matter of experience.  I grew up with computers, and got into them seriously in the early 1980's.  I got into networking in 1990.  When most people were getting their first taste of Windows 3.1, I was already setting up 5 computer networks in my house.  Then in 1996, I took a Novell class.  That taught me even more about networking.

In 2000, I took an MCSE course.  almost 4 months, 6 weeks of that covering things like IP 3, IP 4, IP 6, DNS Servers, and everything else that makes up "The Internet".

And that is all the Internet is, millions of computers networked together.  I find that like most things computer related, people tend to make them more complex then they really are.

And because I still do this for a living, I have to keep up with the new trends and systems.  I read 2-4 magazines a week, several "techie" websites, and several news sites just to keep up.  This is an industry where if you turn your back, your skills have become obsolete.

...


I didn't think it was around then.

Internet???...... 80's???........ New to me!!

I didn't think it was around then.

Internet???...... 80's???........ New to me!!
The Internet was around but not for us mortals then.

I didn't think it was around then.

Got my first email address the end of August, 1987. It was a bitnet address, V050FN5R@UBVMS  8)

The internet's existed since 1967...(I think the military used it), but of course what we now know as the internet is the World Wide Web, 'invented' in 1993.

The internet's existed since 1967...(I think the military used it), but of course what we now know as the internet is the World Wide Web, 'invented' in 1993.


Did a quick bit of research and discovered the World Wide Web, developed by Tim Berners-Lee, was launched by the CERN research center in 1991 and the application was written on a neXT computer. The first web browser was also written on a neXT computer, in hypertext. The term "surfing the Internet" was coined by public librarian Jean Armour Polly in 1992. The first banner ads, for the Zima beverage and AT&T, appeared on Hotwired.com in 1994.

The earliest versions of these ideas of the Internet appeared in the late 1950s. Practical implementations of the concepts began during the late 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, technologies we would now recognize as the basis of the modern Internet began to spread over the globe. In the 1990s the introduction of the World Wide Web saw its use become commonplace.

A fundamental pioneer in the call for a global network, J.C.R. Licklider, grasped the need for a global network in his January 1960 paper, Man-Computer Symbiosis.

"a network of such , connected to one another by wide-band communication lines" which provided "the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and symbiotic functions. " -- J.C.R Licklider

More can be read on Google Searching ARPANET.