Internet Reading

The required AccessScience reading dealt with the internet and gave a brief overview and summary of the   internet.  Since our generation was the first to grow up with the internet, I felt that the article was more a less a reminder of things I knew through experience of previous technology classes.  The article was also dated in some ways, talking about chat rooms, older connection speeds, and the new fangled electronic mail.  The part of the article I found most interesting was about ICANN and the domain name system.

The article I found dealt with ICANN and it's decision to alter or update the current domain naming system. The article, published on the Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), discusses the recent board approval of a revamped domain name naming system.  For the majority of the internet's short history, there have been 22 primary domain names within the system - ranging from .com to .org to .edu.  However, this summer (2011) the ICANN board decided to expanded the naming system beyond the generic top-level domains.  The expansion of the domain name system will alter the way people search and use the internet, as well as the way business and markets structure their online presence.  Under the new rules, any pretty much any word or combination of letters can be used to end a web address.  The board will begin to accept new naming systems from Jan. to April of 2012.  While a shorter article, I found it helpful to see what exactly the recent decision entailed.  I remember hearing about the possibility of the system changing and allowing any ending.  While I don't necessarily agree with the change, as I think it will create a good deal of confusion, I can see how the 22 domain names could be a limitation as our society becomes more and more web based.

Week 7: "Internet" Readings

The assigned article from AccessScience provides more than just a basic overview of the internet and how it operates. The article covers the background and history of the development of the internet quite effectively. It presents the internet as an evolution or progressive development of other media technologies and electronic sources, such as newspapers and magazines and identifies that the internet is proven to be so “versatile,” and in turn, this makes it powerful. Current users that have grown up in the age of the internet can testify these facts. The internet is used constantly and for a variety of uses/practices. Its continuous growth, even in the past decade, has demonstrated the effect that the enhancement of technological features, protocols, connection speed, and communication of the internet has had on user capabilities in many facets. The following two sources focus on the prospective capabilities of the internet in the future.

This second article addresses the question of whether the current research being conducted is enough to progressively influence in the internet industry needs for the future. The article discusses the concept of an incremental or progressive model and identifies the economic and social factors that influence the needs and expectations for future communications systems, which was the theme for a joint workshop held by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in January of 2007. The article presents observations made by the author, which include the relationships between the internet and economic and social theory, a discussion of the argument for anonymity of use of the internet, and observations of the social implications of a future internet. Several of these uses are discussed in the AccessScience reading, as well. This article presents a series of relevant questions that aid the reader in understanding the reflections made during the NSF and OECD joint workshop in 2007. These questions are quite thoughtful and their responses are detailed. The article addresses several important aspects regarding the future of the internet, such as lessons to be learned and improvements that can be made to improve the efficiency of inter-networking, and the challenges presented by each reflection.

This video provides a brief, yet detailed, overview of how the internet works. It is much simpler than the AccessScience reading. This source demonstrates the application of internet connections in a straightforward manner, using line diagrams and graphics for representation. It is even able to explicitly describe how “packets” of information are transferred across the internet (i.e. picture e-mails or Facebook photo albums). The source claims that by watching this video, one becomes part of the ten percent of people that understand the internet. The video uses analogies familiar to the viewer (i.e. candy wrapped in layers to describe the workings and relationships of various routers). It is short and therefore, a quick watch, and provides enough information for the average internet user to understand the workings of internet.

SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. OH MY!

"It’s a medium in which corporations and the general public are on equal footing in terms of reach, in that anyone who has an internet connection can view both a commercial website or a person’s personal web page without having to pay anything extra to do it.  There’s no barrier to entry, anyone can post anything, as long as it doesn’t violate our country’s law."

- "Why SOPA Will Turn The Internet Into A Television", Andrew Dat

I had been wondering if we would talk about the current events in Congress/the Internet in this class, and given the weekly reading topic, this seems like the best time to bring them up. I am talking about PIPA and SOPA, two acts which are being backed by the Senate and the House, respectively. My goal on this subject is not to present any bias towards these acts; however, given their nature, it is difficult to remain neutral when discussing their intended outcomes. Rather, my hope is that I will be able to tie them two what we read in the Access Science encyclopedia article on the Internet, by discussing the technical nature of the two acts as much as possible.

Before we get into the current events, I would like to give a little primer on the Access Science article. It found it interesting, while reading the article, how my response changed several times throughout. At one point I would be somewhat shamed, given that it was the first time I saw some of the acronyms that I know so well, fleshed out: http, DNS, TCP, to name a few. Admittedly, before reading this article I hadn't put much thought into looking in to what they stood for or what exactly their purpose was. At other times, I found myself scoffing at the article, thinking that it was quite out-of-date. If I had been asked to guess when the article was written, without having seen the citation, I definitely would not have guessed 2008. I'd be curious to know how many other people were caught off-guard by this. Really what this shows though is how much I take the Internet for granted, and I suspect this applies to quite a few others in my generation, though I don't wish to generalize. I finally have some perspective of how lucky I have been to grow up in an age where Internet speeds and general connectivity are taken for granted. I could have read the article on my phone is I had so desired; less than 25 years ago, I couldn't have even made a call from said phone further than 10-15 feet away from some wall in my house. Wow! (Not that I was even alive 25 years ago, but you get the picture.) 

The other things that the second point brings to mind is exactly how much the Internet has changed in even the last 4 years. In 2008, when the AS article was written, cable and DSL were state-of-the-art in terms of Internet connectivity options; fi-os was just creeping on the stage. Fast-forward 4 years, I'm not sure I know a single person that is still using DSL. As we speak I am sitting in my apartment, forced to physically connect to the Internet modem by Ethernet cable, since the walls are not conducive to transferring wireless signal. On any other night I would be upset by this, though given my current perspective as a result of the readings I have just finished, I'll settle for being able to upload this in the next couple of minutes, for potentially hundreds of millions of people to see, should they happen to stumble upon it.

This is a good place to tie in the SOPA/PIPA legislation - as I muse about just how extensive and powerful the Internet is... Lets just say that if SOPA is passed, the Internet will be a shade of what it is today. The first article that I read gives a pretty spot on analogy for this circumstance, comparing the watered-down, post-SOPA Internet to "little more than an interactive TV." While the most outright aim of SOPA - Stop Online Piracy Act - is to prevent access to overseas sights that traffic copy-right material, the ultimate affect that it could have could spell the end for websites that many of us use everyday without a second thought. Under the act, any copy-right material that is posted without consent would be considered a criminal offense. Bye-bye Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, etc... The bill would accomplish this by requiring ISP's, search-engines and administrators to restrict access to blacklisted sites. Initially, they hoped to achieve this by allowing these providers to change the Domain Name System (DNS) communication, which switches recognizable URLS, to unique IP address for execution. Thankfully, this provision was removed because it required a significant change in the internet's infrastructure, and could also potentially lead to security issues. Still. however, access to these sites would be restricted. Additionally, VPN's used nowadays to provide advanced security measures against spying and filtering - used legitimately by some businesses and government websites - would be prohibited, as they could potentially be used to prevent access to websites trafficking copy-right material from being restricted. Imagine the increased security risks.

Ultimately, the Internet would become a web of domains and websites completely controlled by corporations that have the necessary authority, or own significant amounts of the copy-right material. The playing field, as one can derive from the quote at the beginning of the post, would no longer be level. Currently, these big corporations already have the resources to battle infringement. With the aid of SOPA and PIPA, there would be little standing in the way of them potentially 'corpritizing' the Internet. One of the best things about the Internet is the freedom you have explore, and the potential communication lines that you wouldn't otherwise have. There are limits, certainly, to what you can and should legally do. Still, legislation such as SOPA and PIPA would have much more disasterous ramifications than they might be intended for, and they would certainly leave the Internet a much less exiciting place.

Reading One: Why SOPA Will Turn The Internet Into A Television

A SOPA/PIPA Blackout Explainer

Truly Wireless?

Having been born in the 1990’s, I grew up using the computer and the internet. I remember first using AOL and having slow dial-up internet. This usually took a few minutes to get internet access. Now there is wireless internet which is streamed through an antenna and recognized by the computer. It takes mere seconds to connect to the internet with wireless. Major cities like Philadelphia and college campuses have wireless internet with a strong signal so people can connect anywhere. Today anything and everything can be found on the World Wide Web. Websites like Google and Bing make it easy to navigate the internet and are helpful in finding information you are searching for. The required reading for this week discussed how connected we are today to the internet. It also went into detail about how information travels across many networks until it reaches its destination.

                The first additional article I looked at was, Introducing a Thermostat Steve JobsWould Love: Nest. Professor Mitchell mentioned this thermostat a few times in class and I wanted to know a little bit more about it. I thought this article also went well with the idea of wireless internet. The Nest is a thermostat that ideally after a week or so you won’t have to touch at all. The first week of its life the device takes in a lot of data about how you like your home cooled and heated. After this period, the device recommends settings that are more efficient. Nest continues to learn throughout its life span via five sensors. These five sensors include temperature, humidity, light and two activity sensors. The activity sensors are used to identify when no one is in the home and adjust the temperature accordingly. One problem with normal thermostats is that people set them either way above or way below the desired temperature, thinking that it will cool or heat their home faster. The Nest has a feature called “time to temperature” that lets the user know exactly how long it will take to cool or heat their home to their desired temperature to avoid this waste in energy. To tie in with the idea of being wireless, you can remotely adjust Nest from anywhere in your home. To do so you just need to log onto the Nest website or download the app to your mobile phone. The Nest website also tracks a number of things such as the times you’ve adjusted the thermostat and even how much money you are saving.

                The second article I looked at was, Wireless Internet for All without the Towers. Since we live in a large city we assume, at least I did, that everyone has wireless internet connection. However, this is not the case for the rest of the world. At least 27% of the United States’ population do not have internet connection and another 30% with internet connection do not have a wireless connection and are still using slow dial-up. In an effort to solve this problem, municipal Wi-Fi networks are being installed. There are a few drawbacks with this though. For one, installing municipal Wi-Fi is costly and can run up to $125,000 a square mile to install. The Wi-Fi is being installed on street lamps and has a strong signal if you are sitting outside at the corner café but is barely recognizable inside homes. Wi-Fi signals use unlicensed bands of the radio spectrum and must use low-power transmitters. This means that the Wi-Fi signals aren’t strong enough to penetrate through walls, which is why the majority of people in the United States use a router from inside their home to transmit the wireless signal. A small company, Meraki Networks, may have come up with a solution to this problem. They are calling it a Meraki box. The boxes run around $50 and can be easily installed by anyone that “knows how to plug in a toaster”. The box is located inside a home and sends a signal out to surrounding neighbors. Some neighbors will have a similar box called a repeater that will relay the signal even farther. Each box comes with special software that meshes all of the boxes networks together. This means that if one box becomes dysfunctional or is unplugged, the network will be re-routed. Meraki Networks was started by two M.I.T. students who have gotten the attention of Google. Their product will hopefully go into production and help solve the wireless internet connection in the United States and around the globe.

R7 - The Internet and Ubiquitous Networks

The first article I read, the required reading, entitled "The Internet" from AccessScience gave a full background and breakdown of how the internet works. I found this article very interesting because I don't generally thing about how the internet actually works. Prior to reading this article I knew that the internet is run and supported through servers. This article explained that in fact when information is sent, it is sent in packets which are broken down and sent in pieces and then reassembled on delivery. This article also went over some very general terms such as TCP/IP that I have definitely seen before but never realized what they actually meant for how the internet works. It was also interesting learning about how domains are beginning to be governed and monitored. I had never heard of the term "cybersquatting" before but it is an interesting idea that this could be considered property infringement. I guess I would disagree with that statement because I don't think you automatically own a website that uses your name. I would still say that a website is a just a piece of property that can be bought. I guess it will be interesting to see how legal rules and regulations develop in this area in the future.

The second article I read titled, "Ubiquitous transportation network sensors", also from AccessScience. A ubiquitous network is a network that provides services anywhere to anyone or anything on any device. This transfer of data can be done through many different methods all of which are internet based. This particular article talks about ubiquitous networks that deal with transportation information, such as sensors measuring traffic flows and incidents and sending drivers this information in real time so that the driver can make decisions based off this information. I think these sort of integrations projects are a really amazing way of using the internet and its data transferring capabilities in order to make regular daily tasks a more intelligent based system. In terms of transportation a lot of these systems have already been put in place, especially in terms of public transportation such as seeing how long it will take for a train to arrive at a station. Using this sort of technology in terms of automotive transportation is a little more recent. Some of the ways that I have encountered this technology is with the large electronic signs along highways that tell you how long it will take to get from point to point ahead of you on that highway. I think these signs are already a very help technology because if it says it will take an extreme amount of extra time you can take this into consideration and try to find an alternative route. I have also encountered this technology in new gps systems that come with a traffic feature that is updated in real time, alerts you to heavy traffic on your intended route, and most times will automatically reroute you to the shortest route around the issue. The article goes on talk about how these sensors are going to become more refined. Becoming very small, easy to install, and battery powered. One of these issues still being looked into is the conservation of power for these sensors. There are also many different data transfer systems that these sensors can use in order to alert you. These systems have different benefits and drawbacks usually based on how far the data can be transferred and at what speeds the data can be transferred. This article was interesting and I believe this is an area that is the next step in data transfer technology and ubiquitous networks seem to be something that could be applicable to many different industries. On a side note, one interesting fact I found in this article when it talked about the systems that can be used for data transfer, it mentioned that mobile devices can receive a signal while you are traveling at speeds up to 155 mph. I had never though about how speed would affect your cell phone from finding data but apparently there is a limit on how fast you can go and still use your cell phone.

R7 - Internet

The assigned Access Science article is a very concise and a rather informative concerning the basic concept of the Internet. I, probably as many others, was rather uninformed about the mechanic of the internet – as long as it works and I am connected, all is well in the world. This article mentioned some things I already knew, clarified some other things, as well as introduces to some new concepts. For example, I had no idea that DSL connection was faster than Cable. Based on the media coverage and internet service provider advertisements, I was under a misconception that a cable internet is the ultimate fastest.
While it was interesting to read about the mechanics and a short history f the internet, I personally am very interested in slightly different topics, relating to internet and instantaneous information availability in general, which are described the two articles I selected:

• The Way 4WARD to the Creation of a Future Internet


• The millennial invasion: are you ready?

The first articles I chose talks about the future structure of the internet, because the current architecture cannot support (properly) today’s information transfer demands, and soon will be crippled in its entirety. The author’s state, that current internet structure was designed for minimal traffic, for small file and message transfers, and its demand was simply underestimated. This team of researchers introduces a few options for new framefork of the internet, and calls it the 4WARD project. The second article does not talk about the internet specifically, but it discusses current people generation – us (those born since the 1980’s) – and the authors call us the Millennial Generation. It is a rather interesting article, and in some cases author’s views about us are very sadly true. The reason I chose this article, is because in this day and age, primarily due to the internet and instantaneous information access (virtually unlimited information), young generations are overly informed and technologically advanced. I am very curious how this affect us and those who came before us, because we will be their co-workers soon. This article is interesting, because it expresses a multitude of conflicting emotions at the same time: pride, excitements, but also strong concern and fear. At the beginning of the article we are called the next “great generation” and by the end of it there is concern because of our need for instant gratification, continuous stimulus, and the fact that we question everything. It is a very interesting article describing one aspect of the social outcome of the internet.

R7-Internet

The assigned reading gives information on various contents of Internet such as its technological features, connection speeds, TCP/IP, international domains etc. It is emphasized that the internet is the combination of several media technologies and an electronic version of newspapers, magazines, books, and more. Additionally, it is explained that a nongovernmental organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, performs a supervisory function in regard to standards, multilingual sites, and domain names. Thus, domains are managed and controlled all around the world.

The second article that I read is called “Internet Security” written by Sang Wong. In this article, it is emphasized that the Internet security has become a top priority issue for both corporate and government computers. The author indicates that viruses and other destructive actions taken by computer hackers will cost businesses an estimated $1.6 trillion by the end of the year alone. Moreover, it is explained that the browser displays the data sent by the server and serves as the Window on the internet. When the browser points to an internet address, it uses the modem to download files that are required to display various pages on the web site. The author believes that Internet Explorer is the worst way to browse the Internet due the fact that it is highly insecure in comparison to other browsers such as Mozilla.

The third article that I read is called “Internet Appliances". In this article, the author gives information on Internet appliances and explains how they work. It is emphasized that the appliance needs to meet two criteria: it connects directly to the Internet through an Internet service provider in order to connect with an application service provider to download necessary software; and its primary use is to connect to the Internet. It is also mentioned that the Internet appliances are less powerful than PCs due to the fact that they have minimal memory, smaller hard drive space, less local software and less processing power. Consumers should be aware that each Internet appliance is built specifically to execute a small number of tasks and the uses to which it can be put vary greatly.