Speaker 1: Brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve cameray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and sitting next to me as usual as senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, all right, we're gonna get back
Speaker 1: in your new discussion of our discussion that we had
Speaker 1: long abandoned. For those of you who are a long
Speaker 1: time listeners, we used to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: personalities that we think had a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: tech world, and we kind of haven't done it a one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we we hit a few big names early on,
Speaker 1: like Dean Cayman and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and
Speaker 1: then we kind of went quiet for a while. So
Speaker 1: we thought we'd go back and revisit that kind of
Speaker 1: uh you know topic. It's it's interesting to talk about.
Speaker 1: So today we're talking about venton vent Surf. All right,
Speaker 1: where do you want to start from the beginning? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of you, uh you younger listeners might not
Speaker 1: have ever heard of him. Yeah, but he's very important.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you probably would not be
Speaker 1: listening to us at all if it were not. Actually,
Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't have the jobs we have right now
Speaker 1: if it weren't for Venten Surf. Thank you, Mr Surf.
Speaker 1: Right um ac, Yes, doctor Surf. In fact, he holds
Speaker 1: many degrees, Yes, he does, lots and lots of degrees.
Speaker 1: So he has a he has a PhD in computer
Speaker 1: science and uh um he has a Bachelor of Science
Speaker 1: and mathematics, and then he has all these honorary degrees.
Speaker 1: Um smart, smart, guy, wicked smart, you might say if
Speaker 1: you were from the northeast. Um. So he's also referred
Speaker 1: to very often as one of the fathers of the Internet.
Speaker 1: And you might wonder why that is, Like did he
Speaker 1: actually build the physical uh machines that make up the Internet. Well,
Speaker 1: to to really understand this, when to go back a
Speaker 1: little before Vinton Serf became involved in this project. How
Speaker 1: far back? Alright, So back in the fifties, the nineteen fifties, Yes,
Speaker 1: not the seventeen fifties or anything like. You're going that
Speaker 1: far back. The fifties alright, So the Soviet Union launches
Speaker 1: sput nick all right, very small round silver thing that
Speaker 1: beeped a lot went beep. That's pretty much all it did,
Speaker 1: and m and scared people. And it scared people for
Speaker 1: two reasons. One they were thinking, does this mean that
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union can spy on the United States because
Speaker 1: the United States and Soviet Union were then engaged in
Speaker 1: what was known as the Cold War. And yes, and
Speaker 1: and even more frightening than that, if the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: had the capability of launching a rocket into space, it
Speaker 1: could also launch a rocket at the United States and
Speaker 1: cause massive amounts of damage. Now, at this time, computers
Speaker 1: were rare. There are only a you computers in the
Speaker 1: United States. Um. And they were big, huge machines, taking
Speaker 1: up entire floors of buildings in some cases. And um
Speaker 1: they're centralized. They were not able to communicate with one
Speaker 1: another in any easy way. So there was a need
Speaker 1: to find a way to have computers communicate with one
Speaker 1: another so that you decentralize this computing power. UM. Because
Speaker 1: the idea was that if if there were an attack
Speaker 1: on the United States on one of these computing sites
Speaker 1: and it was hit, you would lose that information forever, right,
Speaker 1: So you wanted to find a way where you can
Speaker 1: move information around very quickly, and you wanted to create
Speaker 1: it in such a way so that if one particular
Speaker 1: site were hit, the entire network could still function without it. Right.
Speaker 1: So this was this became the the area of interest
Speaker 1: for the Department of Defense UM. They had the Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency, which at the time was called ARPA.
Speaker 1: We now know it as DARPA UM and they wanted
Speaker 1: to come up with this computer network idea, the way
Speaker 1: of networking computers together so they can communicate. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so the ARPA net project began. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the late sixties, right right, And uh, that might sound
Speaker 1: somewhat familiar to you because you're thinking, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the Internet is a bunch of computers connected together that
Speaker 1: that you know, Hey, look that's the Internet. Well yes,
Speaker 1: but not quite yet, because it's all these computers. We're
Speaker 1: all running different and very odd operating systems in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases written specifically for that machine, right, And
Speaker 1: and so they didn't really talk the same language exactly.
Speaker 1: And the Internet is really a network of networks, so
Speaker 1: it gets a little more complicated. Arpanet was really just
Speaker 1: a network, that's true. Yes, the arpanet was the Internet
Speaker 1: didn't exist on the scale, and it did does now right.
Speaker 1: In fact, at the beginning, Arpanet only had four nodes
Speaker 1: um for computers that were connected to another, so it
Speaker 1: was one network. But yes, as Plett pointed out, each
Speaker 1: of these computers had its own sort of proprietary language.
Speaker 1: Now they could all understand binary, but that's about it.
Speaker 1: So one of the challenges was to find a way
Speaker 1: to connect these computers together physically because they were located
Speaker 1: miles and miles and miles apart um across the United
Speaker 1: States in one case, and then beyond that, find a
Speaker 1: way where once they're physically connected, how can they actually
Speaker 1: exchange information. So in the nineteen seventies, remember nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: was when ar Ponnette the project started. Now, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Venton Surf joined the Arpanette project, and it
Speaker 1: was Venton's job, along with a couple of others, including
Speaker 1: Robert Kahn, to come up with a way to create
Speaker 1: a protocol, a set of rules for these computers to
Speaker 1: use to communicate with each other that any computer could understand. Now,
Speaker 1: the original protocol was the Network Control p call. Wasn't
Speaker 1: that network something like that? It was a network communication protocol,
Speaker 1: I guess is what it was, the n c P. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I remember it by its initials. I don't remember
Speaker 1: the initials. Someone will right in and correct me. So
Speaker 1: that's that's fine. I'll address that in the future episode.
Speaker 1: But the n c P UM. The problem with n
Speaker 1: c P was that it didn't scale very well. It
Speaker 1: just didn't have the capability to handle lots of computers.
Speaker 1: That worked fine for a small scale and didn't Surf
Speaker 1: originally worked a little bit on this project, but everyone
Speaker 1: realized I needed to find something new if they wanted
Speaker 1: to create a real network of networks. Believe that's network control,
Speaker 1: program control. I just only see I didn't hit all right,
Speaker 1: So you don't have to write in because Plett actually
Speaker 1: just pulled up this municipal thing called Google, which I've
Speaker 1: heard about. You know it it works over this thing
Speaker 1: called the Internet. Yeah, well we're getting there and that
Speaker 1: runs on alright. So what we're getting to is the
Speaker 1: TCP slash i P protocols. And I know there's someone
Speaker 1: out there right now who's yelling at me because as
Speaker 1: the P stands for protocol, and I said protocols, just
Speaker 1: you know, take a volume, Take a deep breath, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be all right. So these the t c P
Speaker 1: and i P protocols. Uh, so you might be wondering,
Speaker 1: all right, so what the heck are these things? So
Speaker 1: i P stands for Internet Protocol. TP is Transmission control protocol, yes,
Speaker 1: and the i P what that does. It moves the
Speaker 1: packets of data around from one node to another. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the set of rules that governs that transmission
Speaker 1: of information. YEP. Like everything else computer, it has to
Speaker 1: be planned down to a very fine set of details.
Speaker 1: And so this is basically the highway part of the
Speaker 1: information super highway. If we're gonna overuse that metaphor, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it has to have the the right paving
Speaker 1: that the cars can travel on if we're gonna go
Speaker 1: with that. Okay, So the t c P I P
Speaker 1: helps packets get from one place to the other because
Speaker 1: you know, they need the right type of of transmission
Speaker 1: to get from one place to the other. So that's
Speaker 1: the one that everybody is settled on now. It's very efficient,
Speaker 1: it works, you know. And the Transmission control protocol part
Speaker 1: is uh, that's what is responsible for verifying the correct
Speaker 1: delivery of data from client to server. So they're kind
Speaker 1: of two different protocols that are always grouped together, so
Speaker 1: we almost think of them as a single entity. That's
Speaker 1: why you usually hear TCP slash I p UM. And
Speaker 1: without it, we wouldn't have a standardized way of of
Speaker 1: exchanging information across the network, which would mean that when
Speaker 1: you had two different networks and you wanted to connect
Speaker 1: the too, you would have to find a brand new
Speaker 1: way to have them communicate without this protocol. But because
Speaker 1: this was set upon so early, UM, we can thank
Speaker 1: that and serve for creating a way for different computer
Speaker 1: networks to exchange information. So if you work at a
Speaker 1: at an office that has its own computer network, or
Speaker 1: if you go to a college or school that has
Speaker 1: its own network that also connects to the Internet, the TCP, SLASH,
Speaker 1: I p those those protocols, that's what allows you to
Speaker 1: to get that information. Otherwise he would only be restricted
Speaker 1: to whatever happened to be on your local area network. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, uh, I think this important piece of
Speaker 1: work is why he has so widely recognized, although there's
Speaker 1: so many other things that he's involved in. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: of course, now he's the vice president and Chief Internet
Speaker 1: Evangelist for Google. Yes, I like that chief Internet evangelist
Speaker 1: step forward and be healed here. Well, well, not exactly.
Speaker 1: I know. I'm sorry. I was brought up in the
Speaker 1: Bible belt. Well that's you know, that's one form of
Speaker 1: evangelism that, yes, he does. He is sort of an
Speaker 1: ambassador for the Internet. Not like the Internet needs one. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's he's Um, he's a big important guy
Speaker 1: over at Google. In fact, he was so important that
Speaker 1: he was on the list of a lot of people's
Speaker 1: guesses for who Bamba might pick as ct O. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's a brand new office, the the Chief
Speaker 1: Technology Officer of the United States. Um And he was
Speaker 1: on a list of some very distinguished names. Yes, but
Speaker 1: was not ultimately chosen. No. Um, but that's that's neither
Speaker 1: here nor there. Let's let's stick on, Mr sir. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure he would have left
Speaker 1: Google anyway. Yeah, see gig So, so let's say, all right,
Speaker 1: so he was working with DARPA until the early eighties.
Speaker 1: Um So, through the seventies into the eighties, he he
Speaker 1: helped he and Robert con helped define exactly how the
Speaker 1: transmission of data was going to to happen across networks.
Speaker 1: Uh in the early eighties. Now remember this is this
Speaker 1: is back when the Internet is still pretty much just
Speaker 1: in the realm of government agencies and universities. So he
Speaker 1: leaves and joins the m c I. Who comes a
Speaker 1: vice president of m c I for a while. Then
Speaker 1: for a while he was a vice president for the
Speaker 1: Corporation for Natural Research, initially of National Research Initiatives. Yes,
Speaker 1: I natural it's a national didn't I, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: then Corporation for National Research Initiatives. Naturally, and because I
Speaker 1: do do that, it happens. But then after that he
Speaker 1: went back to m c I became a senior vice president.
Speaker 1: He was there until about two thousan five and eventually
Speaker 1: then he made his way over to Google, where he Um,
Speaker 1: he still does a lot of important presentations. Um, he's
Speaker 1: still very much involved in and things that are transmission
Speaker 1: of data across networks. I mean, he's still very, very
Speaker 1: heavily involved in that kind of work. Well, it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, you know, given how invested Google
Speaker 1: is in the Internet, you know, not just the search
Speaker 1: engine aspect of the company, but you know, they do
Speaker 1: so much innovative work on new initiatives. That makes sense
Speaker 1: that they would want someone along who had that kind
Speaker 1: of experience. I mean, they their goal is to organize
Speaker 1: the world's information. That's that goes so far beyond just
Speaker 1: the Internet in a way you think the Internet search
Speaker 1: engine that was the first step. Ultimately Google will be
Speaker 1: in charge of everything or else, which is why I
Speaker 1: joined ranks early, working my way up. You know your
Speaker 1: place in the in the Google Yes, exactly, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a low level evangelist for Google. So um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about some of the other stuff. He's
Speaker 1: he's also involved in the UH in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Speaker 1: He's he's working on a design for interplanetary Internet. Interplanetary Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I you know what, I didn't turn that one up.
Speaker 1: You didn't know that. Yeah, that was one of the
Speaker 1: projects that the Jet Propulsion Laboratories working on is finding
Speaker 1: a way to create Internet links so that when man
Speaker 1: does colonize things like the Moon or Mars, that there
Speaker 1: is a way to have of Internet communication between the
Speaker 1: Earth and wherever those other folks happen to be. You know,
Speaker 1: when they when they get to Mars and some of
Speaker 1: those other places. They're going to find that there's a
Speaker 1: Starbucks in a subway on every corner, are they. Well?
Speaker 1: I was thinking that when they get to Mars, there
Speaker 1: darnwell gonna want the internet because what else is there
Speaker 1: going to be doing? I mean, besides surviving? What else
Speaker 1: do you have to do? That's a good point. How's
Speaker 1: the weather, red? Yeah? Kinda wait, back to a back
Speaker 1: to events surfing, right, we were talking about him. I
Speaker 1: was amused to find out that he was a technical
Speaker 1: advisor for Gene Roddenberry's Earth Final Conflict, and he even
Speaker 1: made a guest appearance in Yes I remember it well.
Speaker 1: He's even been on Next Wave with Leonard Nimoi, Live
Speaker 1: Long and prosper So, so you know, yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: happening guy. Yeah. Yeah, unless he's a you know, a
Speaker 1: fellow of the I triple e yes. Yes, And he
Speaker 1: said on the board of CAN and a C M
Speaker 1: and a A S. And he has has Academy of
Speaker 1: Arts and Science and he has more awards than I
Speaker 1: can even count. I actually, uh, honestly, guys, I honestly
Speaker 1: had a photo of vents surf hanging in my cubicle
Speaker 1: until fairly recently. That is very impressive. It was given
Speaker 1: to me by our own Candice Keener, after I had
Speaker 1: no idea. I wrote, and well, this is I'd seen
Speaker 1: it there, but I didn't know that's where it came from.
Speaker 1: For those of you who are who are keeping up
Speaker 1: with all of our podcasts, and you know Candice Keener
Speaker 1: from the stuff you missed in history class, Candice used
Speaker 1: to be my editor, but then apparently she did something
Speaker 1: right and I got shifted over to Pallette, who apparently
Speaker 1: was behaving poorly and that's why he has to be
Speaker 1: edit me. So but yes, back when Candice was my editor,
Speaker 1: I wrote a couple of articles about our pinette and
Speaker 1: how did the Internet get started, which involved Vent and Surf,
Speaker 1: and it was apparently quite clear that I admired the man,
Speaker 1: and so she printed out ay a photo of Mr Surf,
Speaker 1: doctor surf um with a loving message beneath it, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had that up in my cubicle until very recently.
Speaker 1: I took it down when when Discovery Communications people came
Speaker 1: through the office. Well, um, you know, I just think
Speaker 1: that doctor Surf is one of those people that has
Speaker 1: had such an amazing role in all of our lives,
Speaker 1: but you just don't really know. Yeah, he's not one
Speaker 1: of those personalities that gets out there and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not not sort of an attention hound or anything
Speaker 1: like that. And and he's definitely not you know, the
Speaker 1: he's not in the foreground of any particular movement or anything.
Speaker 1: So it's quite possible that if you're not you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not a student of the Internet, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know his name. That that's uh, that's very true.
Speaker 1: And there are lots and lots of other people who
Speaker 1: have played a part like that. Yeah, the team we
Speaker 1: should we should hasten to add that the team that
Speaker 1: designed to our pannette and the the other systems that
Speaker 1: eventually morphed into the Internet, uh, was rather large. Um.
Speaker 1: There were dozens of people involved in this, not just
Speaker 1: than Surf and Robert Kahn, there are plenty of others
Speaker 1: and um uh and all things considered, they built it
Speaker 1: in a very short period of time, got it to work. UM.
Speaker 1: Just very impressive. Yeah, and it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where people were impressed at that that things like the
Speaker 1: TCP slash i P was able to scale so well
Speaker 1: because originally there was talk of of of redoing it
Speaker 1: before the Internet really took off. Um, But they discovered
Speaker 1: that was much more robust than they had they had anticipated,
Speaker 1: so it ended up serving just fine. Um. That's probably
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why some people talk about the
Speaker 1: need for an Internet too, because we can build on
Speaker 1: what we learned from Internet one and create an even
Speaker 1: better system. Now, the thing is that the original Internet
Speaker 1: is so well entrenched at this point, Um, doesn't make
Speaker 1: more sense to create a brand new system or does
Speaker 1: it just make more sense to keep on adding to
Speaker 1: the one we've already got. I sense foreshadowing here. What then,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll do an article or or a podcast later
Speaker 1: about Internet to I wouldn't say that we're going to
Speaker 1: do a podcast later about Internet to know. You wouldn't know,
Speaker 1: but we are, Okay, so you did. Yeah anyhow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll probably come much later, after we've done a lot
Speaker 1: more research. But yeah, it's you know, it's a testimony
Speaker 1: to how well it works and how robust it is
Speaker 1: that that we're still using it thirty years later plus
Speaker 1: years later. And now granted now most of us are
Speaker 1: only been using it for since the at the earliest,
Speaker 1: since the early nineties. I guess some some of us
Speaker 1: probably earlier than that, if we've worked on government systems
Speaker 1: or in colleges. But um, I remember my first real
Speaker 1: encounter with the internet had to be when I got
Speaker 1: into college, so sometime around ninety three, maybe I just
Speaker 1: gave away my age. Yeah yeah, yeah, mine was before that,
Speaker 1: So I remember the clay tablets. I remember I wrote
Speaker 1: about that. So anyway, that's a that's a that's a
Speaker 1: just a brief rundown on Mr Doctor surf um and
Speaker 1: hopefully you learned a little bit more about him in
Speaker 1: this podcast. He's, like we said, a very fascinating person.
Speaker 1: So and you know, if you want to read more,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of information out there about him. And as
Speaker 1: we said, he's still very much active in guiding the
Speaker 1: way we transmit information. So once again, thank you Dr
Speaker 1: Surf because I like this job. Yeah no kidding, Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up all I had to talk about. Do
Speaker 1: you have anything else you when I add, not really? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that just brings us back round again to
Speaker 1: listener me. You know, you can thank TC T I
Speaker 1: P for allowing you to hear that sound or a
Speaker 1: cursive whichever is you know you prefer, I know which
Speaker 1: I prefer. So this email comes from Robert in Indiana. Hi,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to write and tell you guys, I
Speaker 1: love your podcast. I had a question though about IP addresses.
Speaker 1: What exactly are they and why are they important? So
Speaker 1: we you know, we talked a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Internet Protocol, so I thought we could kind of hit
Speaker 1: IP addresses. UM. One of the ways, the one of
Speaker 1: the reasons the Internet actually works is because this this
Speaker 1: IP address idea it gives it's like a physical address
Speaker 1: in a way, except that you know, it's not anchored
Speaker 1: to a physical location, but it's one allows computers to
Speaker 1: find one another, so that you can transmit information to
Speaker 1: and from one computer, and you know, or two different
Speaker 1: computers really work. I think hundreds and hundreds of computers
Speaker 1: when you actually look at the process. But without IP addresses,
Speaker 1: no computer would know where any other computer was, and
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to get any information at all.
Speaker 1: So your IP address, you can think of it sort
Speaker 1: of like a street address in a way. Again, it's
Speaker 1: not tied to a geographical location, but it is how
Speaker 1: your computer identifies itself and identifies other computers, so that
Speaker 1: trans the transmission of information can occur. Yeah. Um, it's
Speaker 1: actually very not particularly pleasant to look at. It's uh,
Speaker 1: in most cases, four sets of numbers, right, um, separated
Speaker 1: by dots UM, and generally might be something like zero
Speaker 1: dot one oh one, dot two oh five, dot six.
Speaker 1: Oh you're gonna get emails? No go ahead? What? No? No,
Speaker 1: no go ahead? All right? Anyhow, that's that's I p
Speaker 1: V four UM, And that's that's generally what we use now.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of different combinations that you
Speaker 1: can create with that, which gives us a lot of
Speaker 1: different IP addresses. Of course, um. Coming up, they're working
Speaker 1: toward a newer system called i p V six, which
Speaker 1: offers even more combinations of numbers. Um. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not like you know, two Main Street, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just uses a series of numbers and dots that
Speaker 1: that helps you know, the information get to where it's
Speaker 1: going from my place to the next. And the what
Speaker 1: you're familiar with domain names, those are really just kind
Speaker 1: of a just sort of a mask that sits on
Speaker 1: top of the IP address and that sort of humanizes
Speaker 1: the IP address its remember and otherwise we would have
Speaker 1: to remember these strings of numbers to send information to
Speaker 1: specific computers, and that one't necessarily works so well because
Speaker 1: not every computer has a static IP address. I would
Speaker 1: think most don't. That's very true. Actually, I I used
Speaker 1: to work for an Internet service provider and UM. One
Speaker 1: of the things they found out was that, you know,
Speaker 1: they couldn't if everybody had a static IP address, which
Speaker 1: means one that doesn't change. UM. They had to continue
Speaker 1: to buy more I P addresses, right, And the problem
Speaker 1: with that is, you know, well John and hasn't been
Speaker 1: home for a week and his IP address is going unused.
Speaker 1: So finally they said, you know, look, we need to
Speaker 1: assign these dynamically. You'll see dynamic IP addressing. That means
Speaker 1: we've got a pool of fifty I P addresses and
Speaker 1: forty five people are online at any given time, then
Speaker 1: we can just assign them as needed. You know, it's
Speaker 1: yours as long as you're online and it doesn't change UM,
Speaker 1: and as soon as you log off, it gets reassigned
Speaker 1: to somebody else, and all the information that goes from
Speaker 1: that person's computer to the Internet and back with whatever
Speaker 1: information they're doing they're using, UM gets to where it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be going. But that's the difference in static
Speaker 1: and I p uh stack and dynamic IP addressing and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it is a hard and fast identifier, but
Speaker 1: your IP is probably assigning one to you on the fly,
Speaker 1: depending on when you're online. And Robert had one other
Speaker 1: question that we might try and answer. Okay, can I
Speaker 1: be hacked if someone finds my IP address? Technically yeah
Speaker 1: you can't. Yeah, huh, but they would have to know
Speaker 1: the thing about that is, they'd have to know exactly
Speaker 1: where you are. I mean, somebody could randomly hack, you know,
Speaker 1: direct an attack at that IP address. You could get
Speaker 1: a denial of service attack sent to your IP address
Speaker 1: UM where people try to send you a lot of
Speaker 1: messages all at once and take you offline. And that
Speaker 1: could that could work very easily, but they would have
Speaker 1: to know where you you know, if it was going
Speaker 1: to come at you from a specific person, just what
Speaker 1: are you afraid of? Um? Then who have you been
Speaker 1: taking off? Who have you been upsetting? Here? It wasn't
Speaker 1: met and served smart, but yeah, he could probably figure
Speaker 1: out where your IP address this if you were online
Speaker 1: at that particular time. And this was theoretical until recently,
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah, yeah, it is it is possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can also spoof an IP address with uh, you know,
Speaker 1: basically you appear to come from one IP address. You know, somebody, UM,
Speaker 1: if you had a static IP address assigned to you,
Speaker 1: and somebody else wanted to, um, you know, launch an
Speaker 1: attack on somebody else and make make it look like
Speaker 1: it was from you, they could spoof. Uh, they could
Speaker 1: appear to be coming from your IP address, and then uh,
Speaker 1: then everybody would come back to your house and go, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? You know what why you hate
Speaker 1: me so much? Yeah? So theoretically possible, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of improbable. I mean, especially if you're on a dynamically
Speaker 1: assigned IP address like an average person would be, because
Speaker 1: there then it's a one and fifty shot. Using the
Speaker 1: example you used earlier, Okay, I'm not going for numbers
Speaker 1: that I didn't bother to look up. Well, no, that
Speaker 1: was just an example. When we're talking about major I
Speaker 1: sp s, we're talking about huge numbers here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was just using your Okay, that was it.
Speaker 1: So thanks very much Robert for your email. If any
Speaker 1: of you have any questions for us, you can write
Speaker 1: us tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. And remember,
Speaker 1: at House of Works dot com we have lots of
Speaker 1: articles about everything from I p H to domain name
Speaker 1: servers everything in between, So check that out and we
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
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