WWW: Beyond the Basics

3. The Internet Today

3.2 Overview of the Internet

The Internet was developed in the 1970's as a United States Defense Department network called the ARPAnet. It started as an experimental network designed to withstand partial outages and support defense communication. The Internet today uses the ARPAnet structure and is a collection of computer networks linked through different medians. The Internet connects many campus networks, commercial networks, and government networks across the world.

3.2.1 Who Governs the Internet?

The Internet doesn't have a President or CEO in control (Krol, 1992). There is a body called the "Internet Society (ISOC) who is a voluntary body whose purpose is to promote global information exchange through Internet technology. It appoints a council of elders, which has the responsibility for the technical management and direction of the Internet (Krol, 1992).

The council of elders appointed by the ISOC, is the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) which meets regularly to approve standards and to allocate different resources. The standards set by the IAB allow computers from different vendors to communicate. This overseeing body of the Internet also keeps tract of the number of computers on the Internet and controls the assignmets of the unique Internet address to each computer (Krol, 1992).

Lastly, there is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that concerns itself with "near-term" technical problems of the Internet. When there are problems that seem of great concern, the IETF will construct a "working group" for investigation and suggested solutions. The IETF includes voluntary participants who may suggest a certain action or present the action to IAB to be considered as a standard (Krol, 1992).

The ISOC, the IAB, and the IETF are the main bodies that oversee the Internet and its function. These bodies set the rules that should be followed by networks connected to the Internet. Those who do not agree with the current standards can address their concerns and comments to the IETF. Some concerns may be addressed by the board while others may be rejected. There exist networks that do not adhere to the standards and create problems for the Internet. These networks are disconnected from the Internet and reconsidered after need changes are made (Krol, 1992).

3.2.2 What Is the Internet?

The current Internet is a packet switching network. It can be best described as one large network connecting many smaller networks. There are no dedicated lines connected for any one transfer. Think of packets as little envelopes of information packaged and routed according to network availability. The packet has an address destination and is transported from one place to another until the packet is delivered to the correct address (Krol, 1992). There does not have to be a direct connection between the computer networks, but there may be a series of networks a packet may go through before it reaches its final destination. The protocols that make the packet transformation possible is TCP/IP or The Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol.

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the medium that connects different networks together. Each network is connected to a router and when a packet is received at the address the router looks at the destination address and decides the best route to send the packet according to the direct connections from this network (Krol, 1992).

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used to get around Internet problems such as packet loss and packet duplication. On the sending side, TCP breaks the entire message up and puts each piece into a packet with a sequence number and destination address; each to be sent across the network. On the receiving side, the TCP protocol gathers all the packets and assembles them according to how they were broken up at the original sender. The TCP protocol is also responsible for acknowledging the safe receipt of packets, or replying that some packets that are missing/corrupted. The last part of the protocol is useful because it provides a method to send duplicate copies of those packets missing/corrupted (Krol, 1992).

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Copyright © 1996 Vonda M. Patterson, All Rights Reserved

Vonda M. Patterson <vondap@csgrad.cs.vt.edu>
Last modified: Tue Nov 26 13:13:33 1996