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What Makes Up the Internet
What comprises the Internet is a difficult question; the answer
changes over time. Five years ago the answer would have been easy:
"All the networks, using the IP protocol, which cooperate to form a
seamless network for their collective users." This would include
various federal networks, a set of regional networks, campus
networks, and some foreign networks.
More recently, some non-IP-based networks saw that the Internet was
good. They wanted to provide its services to their clientele. So they
developed methods of connecting these "strange" networks (e.g.,
Bitnet, DECnets, etc.) to the Internet. At first these connections,
called "gateways", merely served to transfer electronic mail
between the two networks. Some, however,
have grown to translate other services between the networks as well. Are they
part of the Internet?
Maybe yes and maybe no. It depends on whether, in their hearts, they
want to be. If this sounds strange, read on--it gets stranger.
The Internet has been an international network for a long time, but
it only extended to the United States' allies and overseas military
bases. Now, with the less paranoid world environment, the Internet is
spreading everywhere. Eastern European countries longing for
western scientific ties have wanted to participate for a long time,
but were excluded by government regulation. This ban has been
relaxed. Third world countries that formerly didn't have the means to
participate now view the Internet as a way to raise their education
and technology levels.
Here in Europe, the development of the Internet used to be hampered by
national policies mandating OSI protocols.
These policies prevented development of large
scale Internet infrastructures except for the Scandinavian
countries which embraced the Internet protocols long ago and are
already well-connected. In
1989, RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) began coordinating
the operation of the Internet in Europe and many of the hosts connected to the
Internet are located in Europe.
The Internet's expansion is hampered by the lack
of a good supporting infrastructure, namely a decent telephone
system. In both Eastern Europe and the third world, a state-of-the-
art phone system is almost nonexistent. Even in major cities, connections
are limited to the speeds available to the average home anywhere in
the U.K., 56000 bits/second download and slower for uploading. Typically,
even if one of these countries is
"on the Internet," only a few sites are accessible. Usually, this
is the major technical university for that country. However, as phone
systems improve, you can expect this to change too; more and more,
you'll see smaller sites (even individual home systems) connecting to
the Internet.
Many big corporations have been on the Internet for years. For the
most part, their this has been limited to research and
engineering departments. The same corporations used some other
network (usually a private network) for their business
communications. The IBM mainframes that handled their commercial data
processing did the "real"
networking using a protocol suite called System Network
Architecture (SNA).
Businesses are now discovering that running multiple networks is
expensive. Some are using the Internet for "one-stop"
networkinh. They were scared away in the past by policies which
excluded or restricted commercial use. Many of these policies are
under review or have changed. As these restrictions drop, commercial
use of the Internet will become progressively more common.
This should be especially good for small businesses. Motorola or
Esso can afford to run nationwide networks connecting their
sites, but TotalSupport
can't. If had an Edinburgh office, all it needs is an Internet connection on
each end. For all practical purposes, we have a nationwide
corporate network, just like the big boys. |
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