Notes On Chapter Two -- Internet Trends

• 2.1 Introduction
  • change to networking and Internet
  • Internet motivation: centralized to distributed
  • Internet applications
  • communication paradigms
  • programming interface
• 2.2 Resource Sharing
  • The purpose of early forms of computer networks was connect multiple users to a single large computer.
  • People want networks so they can share printers, share files, share powerful CPU's.
  • At the time that the Internet got its start, the sharing of powerful computers was important to researchers working at government laboratories. Computers were expensive and sharing was seen as a way to save money.
  • The Department of Defense is also said to have been interested in developing a network that could continue to function even after being heavily damaged.
  • ARPA put together a large group of the best and brightest individuals available and they created the Internet. The story has something of the flavor of the story of the Manhattan project.
  • ARPANET was developed all through the 70's and 80's. It became known as the Internet. MILNET split off and the Internet was run by NSF for a while. It became commercialized in the 90's.
  
  
• 2.3 Growth of the Internet
  • Plots show that the number of hosts (computers) on the Internet approximately doubled every 9-14 months from 1981 through 2008.
  • What has been the relative growth in various areas of the world?
    • 1997 Internet Penetration
    • Internet Penetration Information at Stanford University
    • Internet World Stats
  
  
• 2.4 From Resource Sharing to Communication
  • Now that computing equipment is cheap and powerful, the original emphasis on resource sharing has shifted.
  • The sharing of information (communication) is now much more important that the sharing of hardware.
  
  
• 2.5 From Text to Multimedia
  • Early on, most of the data on the Internet was text. Today much of it is high-fidelity audio and high-resolution video.
  
  
• 2.6 Recent Trends
  • Telephone: Voice over IP (VoIP)
  • Cable Television: Switch to digital and IP delivery
  • Cellular: Switch from analog to digital (3G)
  • Internet Access: Switch from wired to wireless (Wi-Fi)
  • Data Access: Switch from centralized to distributed (P2P)
  • High-Quality Teleconferencing
  • Navigation Systems
  • Sensor Networks
  • Social Networking