Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: The Web

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  • Steve Barnes, in reply to Lindsay Vette,

    I’m an old geek and to me the Internet is the underlying infrastructure that’s been around since I was in primary school in the 60s.

    You went to primary at MIT?
    Joking of course but "The Internet" is younger than you think I suspect, The World Wide Web, even younger...
    Back in '63 "The Net" was still but a dream. Here's the Memo...
    Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network
    J.C.R. Licklider or Lick as he preferred to be called, could be considered the father of "The Internet"

    Tim Berners Lee is the father if the World Wide Web which, simply put, is the stuff of the internet, information linked using HTML

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming, in reply to Steve Barnes,

    Is this good news?
    In sudden announcement, US to give up control of DNS root zone

    More a case of the Americans trying to put the best spin on a situation that was moving out of their direct control, anyway.

    The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), under the United States Department of Commerce, has retained ultimate control of the domain name system (DNS) since transitioning it from a government project into private hands in 1997. With Commerce’s blessing, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) acts as the primary essential governing body for Internet policy.

    Yeah, nah. A contract is not a “blessing”, and paying the bills does not actually equal control, except that it gives leverage, which may be the reason for the lack of [edit: critical] comment by ICANN in that article. Also, there was no way the rest of the world was going to let the US have any vestige of control after the contract end date of 2015, despite the bluster, and ICANN has been moving towards this point since it was founded. Indeed, it was the basis on which it was founded, right back to the Green Paper days.

    What has happened, I think, is that someone at the White House has said “We need a good news story about the Internet!”, but this in no way counters the harm the NSA has done, technically and spiritually, to the Internet protocols and technologies by compromising the most basic levels of security. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of new tech for that to be undone.

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • Lindsay Vette, in reply to Russell Brown,

    Yes, communication before tcp/ip was proprietary and convoluted, and applications like Usenet were only recently established anyway.

    When I joined DEC they had a corporate network (not tcp/ip) that enabled email and a forum like application amongst other network facilities with links to the internet for things like Usenet etc. What we had internally was more useable than the internet applications of the time (and quite extensive given the 100,000+ employee count), and until the arrival of the web there was little need to stray outside the corporate boundaries for more than email and the occasional connection to customer systems.

    X.25 and modems were more commonly used till the mid 90s to interconnect with other businesses.

    Tauranga • Since Nov 2006 • 18 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    a sleepy little Ham net...
    We all thought we were pretty connected back in the third form at Cashmere High Radio Club ... CQ... CQ... (mid '70s)
    ... and we could toast our sandwiches at lunchtime!

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Anyone vaguely techy these days can distinguish The Internet from The Web. But "little i" internets are lesser spoken of these days and they definitely existed before 1980, and continued well after then. IPX/SPX was a common internet protocol even in the 90s. It was just mostly on Novell networks, many of which were true WANs. From my hazy memory of networking terms from a horrible varsity paper, an internet was a collection of one or more networks, with traffic able to route between them. The Internet was just the biggest one. But definitely TCP/IP was a great leap forward, slaughtered the performance of IPX/SPX over big WANs. Less efficient on a LAN though. I supported dozens of sites using both in the early noughties. My own home file server was Netware one until around 2007, faithfully running without a glitch on 10 year old hardware, until I set up a Linux box.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Gah, read "two or more networks" above. On tablet in bed atm editing features are hopeless.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to nzlemming,

    This I totally agree with.

    What has happened, I think, is that someone at the White House has said “We need a good news story about the Internet!”, but this in no way counters the harm the NSA has done, technically and spiritually, to the Internet protocols and technologies by compromising the most basic levels of security. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of new tech for that to be undone.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to Ian Dalziel,

    CQ… CQ…

    Hey, five months late but....
    That came from ... "seek you", simple effective communication. Sadly lacking these days.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to BenWilson,

    Gah, read “two or more networks” above. On tablet in bed atm editing features are hopeless.

    Yup, 5 months down the track and edit functions on tablets are still crap.
    Nothing happens under a National Govt.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

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