On 6/22/06, Stewart Stremler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
from "where wizards stay up late: the origins of the internet" by katie hafner and matthew lyon
I've read this book. I know that the global warming attack theory of the Internet's origins is generally regarded as a myth by those in the know. But I've always kind of looked at it as figurative, not literal. I always figured it was designed from the beginning to withstand the loss of some of the communications links that make it up. Even if that just means that some computer somewhere up and walked off the job, causing some link to go down. You can still get your data to where you want it to go by rerouting to elsewhere. Bombs are just a metaphor for that general class of failure. But the following does present a unique origin theory:
Davies simply wanted to exploit the technical strengths he saw in digital computers and switches, to bring about a highly responsive, highly interactive computing over long distances. [...] Davies was concerned that circuit-switched networks were poorly matched to the requirements of interacting computers. The irregular, bursty characteristics of computer-generated data traffic did not fit well with the uniform channel capacity of the telephone system.
-todd -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
