Blown to Bits Appendix

• It is interesting to think about the foresight (or luck?) that caused initial Internet designers to choose a packet-switched network as the basis for the Internet. What do you think, foresight or luck?

I think it was foresight that allowed for initial internet designers to choose a packet-switched network as a basis for the internet. This is because they clearly stated that they needed to allow messages of unlimited size. Also they needed to ensure that the capacity of the network would be limited only by the amount of data traffic, rather than by the number of interconnected computers. Based on this, I can tell that this was foresight because the thoughts of the people around this time was focused on comparing it to a postal service, but making it better. According to that, I can assume that this was all planned out and they weren't waiting for luck to hit them.

• What do you think the Internet would be like today if different companies’ network protocols were still competing for adoption for the Internet, instead of TCP being the de facto standard?

I can predict that if different companies' network protocols were still competing for adoption for the Internet, instead of TCP being the de facto standard, the internet probably wouldn't have come into existence. The many profusion of services and manufactures with the internet wouldn't be in existence either because they wouldn't intercommunicate and the ideas that they had wouldn't be put together to make it. The internet's existence was only there because of the companies adapting to TCP IP, which allowed them to advance.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

WBL Workshop #6 Interview Skills

CTE Expo Reflection Journal

Lab #12 Reflection