Re: Earthlink cable through a Time-Warner cable? [was: Re: For Donna]

Bob Cunningham wrote:
On Fri, 1 Sep 2006 09:39:48 +0100, Mike Barnes <mikebarnes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

The Internet is simply the road (the information superhighway, if you will). The web, e-mail, Usenet, etc, are services that you can reach using that road.

But in past years in alt.usage.english there have been postings scolding people for using "the Internet" to refer to the World Wide Web.

The Internet is simply lots and lots of nodes scattered around the
world, with some sort of mechanism for passing information from one node
to another. (Most of the time, a "node" is simply a computer, although
there are exceptions to this.) The way the messages are passed is
irrelevant. It can be by telephone wires, by satellite radio, by TV
cable connections, by ansible, ... I suppose even by carrier pigeon,
although I don't think anyone's yet tried that. The thing that makes it
the Internet rather than, say, the Frednet, is that the format of those
messages is defined by a standard called IP (Internet Protocol). Having
a standard protocol guarantees that new nodes can be added in a way
that's compatible with the existing network.

So: the Internet is a network, capable of passing messages around. We
haven't yet said what the messages are.

Inside your computer, you have a whole lot of extra software that uses
IP to do more sophisticated things. It's almost certainly called TCP
(transmission control protocol). It doesn't have to be; but TCP is what
BSD Unix uses, and practically all the personal computers in the world
use networking software that was ultimately pinched from BSD. Usually
programmers lump the two sets of software together and call it TCP/IP.
The IP part moves the messages around, and the TCP part adds some extra
features, like figuring out how many times to retry when messages don't
seem to be getting through.

That still doesn't give you any user-friendly applications. TCP/IP is
something that only a programmer could love. (And for most of them it's
a love/hate relationship.)

Now, we get the useful applications by adding even more protocols that
sit on top of TCP/IP. There's FTP (file transfer program) for
transferring files around. There's SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol)
for moving e-mail around. There's NNTP (network news transfer protocol)
for passing newsgroup messages between Usenet news servers. And dozens,
nay hundreds, of others. Among the others is HTTP (hypertext ... damn,
I've forgotten what the two Ts are; anyway, hypertext something transfer
program) which is the protocol that a web browser uses to fetch pages
from a web server. HTTP, therefore, is what is used to implement the WWW.

The bottom line is that the Internet is a network that is used for a
multiplicity of purposes, and the WWW is only one of those many purposes.

The reason why people confuse the two is because of an evolving
philosophy of software design. Years ago, it was almost an article of
faith among computer programmers that a program should do just one thing
and do it well. The present trend is to write a single program that does
many things and does them all badly. Back in the early 1990s, a web
browser was just a web browser. Then one group got together and invented
Netscape, which was not only a web browser but also an ftp client and a
gopher client and a newsreader and an e-mail client. For all I know they
also had plans to include a desk calendar, a screensaver, and a device
to prepare your breakfast. Since then, just about everyone has copied
the Netscape approach of adding every bell and whistle they can think of
to their web browser. One idiotic company even went so far as to declare
that its web browser was an integral part of the operating system.

One reason why Firefox took off so quickly was that people were getting
sick of software bloat. There was a big demand for a web browser that
did nothing except web browsing, and that's what Firefox was going to
be. Unfortunately the bells-and-whistles crowd came to dominate the
Mozilla project, so we're headed back into bloat territory again.

But, as usual, I digress.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org

Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cant fileshare between XP pro and Winn98
    ... IPX/SPX is a network protocol, and using more than one protocol can ... Internet access, remove IPX/SPX. ... Permanently disable XP's built-in Internet Connection Firewall on ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)
  • Re: One example of why I detest negative partisanship (quite long, but somewhat infomative)
    ... most important contributors to what became the Internet. ... Internet, for the creation if the Internet Protocol, and the Transmission ... Control Protocol, now known simply as TCP/IP, that made communications ... "Galactic Network" of computers. ...
    (misc.news.internet.discuss)
  • Re: Problem: SUSE 9.2 and onboard Marvell Yukon NIC
    ... >fine UNTIL I try to connect to the internet. ... >I use Firefox or the KDE web browser. ... >I have a problem with SUSE 9.2 and my onboard Marvell Yukon NIC. ... >and I can no longer ping my router, the other PCs on the network or outside ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Why not use NETBEUI on Windows XP ??
    ... NETBEUI ... >>small networks connected to the internet, ... Microsoft Networking components on my network. ... SOME protocol in order to access their files/printers. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)
  • Re: What am I doing wrong here??? (RE: "Home Networking Confusion")
    ... Your cable modem would connect to the router's WAN or Internet port, ... Using a router instead of a switch has several advantages, ... You could use TCP/IP as the only protocol on your network, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)