How the Internet works

so I'm doing a presentation for AP American History on how the internet came about and some history and current events and stuff, and i wanted to give them a brief overview of how it all worked. But i had this question thats been on my mind a while but i never cared enough to ask. Who decides who is allowed to be part of the internet and how to connect and stuff. I was reading wikipedia and it's all like "its and open community with no central regulation" to paraphrase. And it brought the question back up, why can't i just go find a wire and tap it so to speak and give my house access, why do i have to pay my ISP, and who do they pay? Who's at the top of the food chain. It said something about a collaboration of networks that mutually assented to join, is it just a bunch of networks that got together in the beginning and anyone who wants to join now has to pay to be in their club?

Man im starting my own club. Who wants to join? We'll have our own internet, and The Internet can pay to be in our club. :)

If you string the wire I’m in!

Try googling these keywords:

Internet Backbone

ICANN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN

Hi Gosdsrock,

You have been given some good links to start with. But to take up on your hypothesis............

1. A LAN is simple, you can set one up in your own home, workplace, appartment block or whatever. It is private and you control it.

2. A WAN is more far reaching and introduces the concept of some sort of carrier............generally a Telco.............. once again it is private, and could be internally owned.

3. WWW ...............as it says "World wide" so you need some sort of organisation to facilitate it.

Now, it is #3 that we are interested in? and the issue is not that different from the one faced by the postal or telecommunications services, or even the media.

Radio and TV stations have a limited power (transmission range) and are given certain frequencies, bandwidths and timeslots by their local authorities. You have unique telephone numbers and postal addresses?

When these "go Global" then it is an international body that takes over and agrees the "rules".............. The Universal Postal Union is one that comes to mind;)

What I am saying is that the WWW faces the same issues as these earlier technologies, in that it is not "hard wired" and is global in its embrace.

The requirement is basically to assign unique addresses that everyone agrees to, although this has been somewhat obfuscated by political sidetracking.

The Texican (hi Tex how's it hangin pal? :D) has cited ICANN. Please look at it and check the makeup (nationalistically speaking) of its management.......... it may live in America, but it has many nationalities amongst its personnel........... hell, the UN headquarters are in America?

Telecoms are regulated from Geneva by this lot:

http://www.itu.int/net/home/index.aspx

Postal services are regulated from Berne by this lot:

http://www.upu.int/

And the message here? well, nuking Switzerland might be considered reasonable sport............... nuking the USA might provoke some unfavourable criticisms ........... at least from our ballistic submarine fleet ;)

your problem with tapping someone else's wire is simple. Its someone else's wire.

Although no-one "controls" the internet as such, people DO control each individual wire. Thus, there is nothing stopping you running a wire from your neighbours house and sharing their broadband, so long as they agree.

Aard~

I don't think the issue is about whose wire it is. I dealt with that in the LAN/WAN bit.

What we have with the internet is the unique addressing and conformity requirement, not who actually provides the hardware and connection services.

:)

See if you can get Al Gore to come speak.

Wouldn't that part of the Globe be too warm for him?

:p:D

ok, i get the individual unique addresses and what not, but now i am talking about the wire. how come i have to pay my ISP? Who do they pay? I'm assuming it's that alliance of networks i read about on Wikipedia that kinda started it all up and joined together. I think I kinda answered my own question but let me know if im on the right track.

thanks for all the help guys, i understand it a lot better now :)

p.s. - we're watching his movie in AP Bio, so we might as well make a day of it :D

Quote:

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how come i have to pay my ISP? Who do they pay?

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You pay your ISP for their bandwidth and a DSLAM or Cable distribution hardware. They have to have an OC, Mux equipment DSLAM, DACCS etc and all the routers to get yo ass to www.antionline.com.

They pay vendors fees and companies like UUNET, MAE-EAST, PSI, Level 3, Linx, Al Gore, etc.

Perhaps it might be useful to look at how things work in the UK, for private users at least?

The first thing you do is connect your modem to your telephone line. This is "owned" by your Telco, or is rented from the infrastructure owner by your Telco. This is the same for 56.6 dial up and for ADSL, even though they use different resources.

You connect to your ISP via this telephone line, and from them to the internet.

So, you use the Telcos resources and the ISP's. Both expect to be paid for this in some way or another.

OK the normal practice in the UK these days is to rent a package that covers both your telephone and your broadband.

Back in the days of 56.6 dial-up there were a variety of packages.

1. "Free" ISP................ here you don't pay for the internet but you pay for the telephone connection. The Telco then shares the revenue from the call charges with the ISP.

2. Fixed monthly fee..............here you pay the ISP a fixed charge, and they give you a "freephone" number to call them. They share part of the revenue with the telco.

3. Pay as you go.....................like #2 but the charges are based on usage.

The thing to remember that local telephone calls are not generally free in the UK, unless you have one of the packages, in which case you would almost certainly have broadband.

Sure you could (theoretically) register a domain and set up your own gear, as outlined by RoadClosed, but in reality that is restricted to large corporations, institutions and the like.

OK, you can use cable, satellite and wireless to connect, but the business model is pretty much the same :)

You could start up a small ISP for about 20,000 to 40,000 a month and around 700k US dollars, in equipment. What will that get you? and OC3 (100 T1 lines).

But your customers could only use you for an ISP not as a line provider. You would have to then rent each line, provision it and add that to the cost or sell a package and add the line into your facility, like most do. They (telco) sell you a DSL, you order the circuit and intall it and have it billed to the customer when the telco charges you. But then that 700k goes to 1.5 million initial start up. And we don't even have a billing dept or tech staff yet.

OK who's up for giving me 1.5 million for a start up? ;)

Can't afford an OC? A T3 can get you started for about 4,000 to 15,000 a month. That's 28 T1s. Or a T1 for about 400 a month that will spit out 24 DS0s. You might be able to sell those as dial-up accounts and get 50 or so out of it?. Note sure how to interface that 100 percent.

Godsrock37

I suggest that you look into the "gateway" concept in telecommunications. Where there are differing protocols (and, apparently, rights into certain communication linkages) that necessitate facilitation of connections, there are commercial "service" value involved and that's where the ISPs have to pay their way in as sort of middlemen for the individual users in whatever setting it may be.

...just a thought.