In The News Today...

Quote: Evenbob

As of yesterday Parler is back up.
They are limited right now, but
will be back to full speed soon.
This will spawn a whole new
breed of server companies
that are not touchable by
big tech. This is interesting:

If you know what you are doing and have the cash is is a chance to make some real cash. Big tech is getting blowback for their censorship. Lots of people are finding alternatives to YouTube and their demonitization of things they do not like. It will take a little time for it to consolidate, but when it does the YouTube monopoly will be broken. Facebook is already abandoned by people under 30.

Quote: Tripdufan

Let them build their own network. Go climb some trees and hang some hubcaps.

Do you even know how computer networking works at all? People build server farms all the time.

Quote: Evenbob

I just read a few articles that the
internet couldn't be shut down
even if it was tried. It's too big
and grows bigger every hour
every day. Any new server that
comes online, any new user
and their first computer. You
could shut down parts of it
but it would only find another
path to take. They say if
the internet totally shut down
worldwide for one day, it
would crash the world economy.
Luckily that cannot happen.

I've read a bit about networks, if I was young I'd skip college and just go after a network cert perhaps. In simplest form, you string two computers together. Then a whole room of terminals to a mainframe. We had this when I was in college. On a college or corporate campus then you go from a room to all over the campus. Terminals plug in and get to use the resources of the mainframe.

Then it go to another step. Maybe two colleges or corporations needed to talk to each other's computers. They had to run a cable between them. At first this was very expensive since it was just the two of you. And you had to do it for each campus. So eventually the cables were run and they let anyone tap in with permission.

Routers were invented. Simple when you break it down. My computer asks the router "do you know where EB is?" And the router either does it or sends to the next router. The routers ask every computer "are you EB?" Eventually EB answers and the "path" is set.

When I was in college in the early 1990s the internet was just getting mainstream. There were "other" networks. You had to know the path to the connection and put it in the email. Sort of like needing a country code on the phone. But slowly those network bosses just went on the main internet. Often users did not know the "old" network was no more it got that seamless.

Now to close the internet you would have to take down many, many main routers. Sort of like trying to completely shut down road travel in the USA. You can do it but it would take a huge amount of sustained effort.

Quote: AZDuffman

I've read a bit about networks, if I was young I'd skip college and just go after a network cert perhaps. In simplest form, you string two computers together. Then a whole room of terminals to a mainframe. We had this when I was in college. On a college or corporate campus then you go from a room to all over the campus. Terminals plug in and get to use the resources of the mainframe.

Then it go to another step. Maybe two colleges or corporations needed to talk to each other's computers. They had to run a cable between them. At first this was very expensive since it was just the two of you. And you had to do it for each campus. So eventually the cables were run and they let anyone tap in with permission.

Routers were invented. Simple when you break it down. My computer asks the router "do you know where EB is?" And the router either does it or sends to the next router. The routers ask every computer "are you EB?" Eventually EB answers and the "path" is set.

When I was in college in the early 1990s the internet was just getting mainstream. There were "other" networks. You had to know the path to the connection and put it in the email. Sort of like needing a country code on the phone. But slowly those network bosses just went on the main internet. Often users did not know the "old" network was no more it got that seamless.

Now to close the internet you would have to take down many, many main routers. Sort of like trying to completely shut down road travel in the USA. You can do it but it would take a huge amount of sustained effort.

IT life has been very good to me.

I dropped out of college, and got multiple job offers in the $35/hr range plus overtime, and to be honest my job isn’t very demanding. I’m planning on moving to software dev in a few years because it pays double.

While true that it would be impossible to bring down the internet because it is so decentralized, the internet as we know it relies on a system called DNS that is far more centralized.

Sophisticated DNS attacks have caused major outages in the past.

https://theconversation.com/by-attacking-dns-hackers-can-bring-down-many-websites-for-the-price-of-one-67564

Quote: AZDuffman

I've read a bit about networks, if I was young I'd skip college and just go after a network cert perhaps. In simplest form, you string two computers together. Then a whole room of terminals to a mainframe. We had this when I was in college. On a college or corporate campus then you go from a room to all over the campus. Terminals plug in and get to use the resources of the mainframe.

Then it go to another step. Maybe two colleges or corporations needed to talk to each other's computers. They had to run a cable between them. At first this was very expensive since it was just the two of you. And you had to do it for each campus. So eventually the cables were run and they let anyone tap in with permission.

Routers were invented. Simple when you break it down. My computer asks the router "do you know where EB is?" And the router either does it or sends to the next router. The routers ask every computer "are you EB?" Eventually EB answers and the "path" is set.

When I was in college in the early 1990s the internet was just getting mainstream. There were "other" networks. You had to know the path to the connection and put it in the email. Sort of like needing a country code on the phone. But slowly those network bosses just went on the main internet. Often users did not know the "old" network was no more it got that seamless.

Now to close the internet you would have to take down many, many main routers. Sort of like trying to completely shut down road travel in the USA. You can do it but it would take a huge amount of sustained effort.

I just wanted to say that's one hell of a good explanation. I'm a Neanderthal when it comes to tech, and I understood it.

Yeah, I used to send email using bang paths. Early on, you had to know the names of all the host computers between you and your recipient.
Say you are emailing someone named janet, on a host computer named moria. You'd have to know how to get there.
$ mail ahost!anotherhost!gettingcloser!almostthere!moria!janet
Subject: hi janet!
hello!
^D

eventually these host maps, of who was connected to who (usually by known dial-up numbers, avoid toll charges whenever possible) got distributed to various computers, so as long as you had enough information in the bang path to find a route between you and them, it would fill in the rest.

So if you're lucky, you could send mail to moria!janet. Probably several hosts named moria, though, so you might have to say almostthere!moria!janet, and it would look up in the host maps a host named moria connected to a host named almostthere, and try to find a route between you and a host named almostthere that is connected to a host named moria.

Quote: Dalex64

Yeah, I used to send email using bang paths. Early on, you had to know the names of all the host computers between you and your recipient.
Say you are emailing someone named janet, on a host computer named moria. You'd have to know how to get there.
$ mail ahost!anotherhost!gettingcloser!almostthere!moria!janet
Subject: hi janet!
hello!
^D

Yes, that is what I was talking about but been so long I forget most of it. Here is an interesting story. In the Gulf War e-mail was still fairly unknown. I was home for the holidays and tried explaining it to family. Not only did nobody have a clue, it was like explaining television shows to someone who had never seen a TV. Anyhow, enough people did know that someone thought it was a great idea to be able to send emails to soldiers dying of boredom. It was cobbled together so much that you could send an email to a random soldier, pen-pal style BUT THEY COULD NOT HIT "REPLY" AND WRITE YOU BACK!

For some reason it was one-way.

20 years later I would be helping my parents Skype with my brother who was a in KSA to fly lower level royals to Italy when they were in the mood for a pizza.

Quote: Mission146

I just wanted to say that's one hell of a good explanation. I'm a Neanderthal when it comes to tech, and I understood it.

Glad you enjoyed! I wish I could find a few month course to break into the industry. Get my CompTIA cert or something. Bad part there is the first year or two making your bones on the help desk.

Quote: AZDuffman

Now to close the internet you would have to take down many, many main routers. Sort of like trying to completely shut down road travel in the USA. You can do it but it would take a huge amount of sustained effort.

I read it's the same as stopping
the flow of every river in the world
at once. Impossible. At first it
was just a couple colleges talking
to each other. Now it's billions
of people doing it. Unstoppable.

And Bill Gates thought the internet
was a nothing burger. Like Mark
Twain rejecting the telephone,
Gates in the early days couldn't
see a practical use for the internet
and regrets it to this day.

Quote: Evenbob

And Bill Gates thought the internet
was a nothing burger. Like Mark
Twain rejecting the telephone,
Gates in the early days couldn't
see a practical use for the internet
and regrets it to this day.

Which is amazing. When I started using Telnet and GOPHER I was amazed from the start. Not that I predicted it would be exactly what it is, but I knew it was an amazing thing. I worked as a lab monitor at the computer center which meant loads of time to fool with it. Several of us felt the same way.

For one of my professors I was the first student to use an internet source on a term paper.