Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies 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 Poette
Speaker 1: and I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Sitting across from me, as he often does
Speaker 1: at this very table, would be senior writer Jonathan. Hey there, so,
Speaker 1: uh so, what do you want to talk about today? Well,
Speaker 1: it's not what I want to talk about, it's what
Speaker 1: Alexander wants us to talk about. There's what Alexander had
Speaker 1: to say. Hey, guys, I find your podcasts very educating.
Speaker 1: I'm a computer science major, but I have a difficulty
Speaker 1: understanding the architecture of the Internet. So it'll be really
Speaker 1: nice for you to make a podcast addressing the Internet architecture.
Speaker 1: Continue the good work, Well, Alexander, we decided we would
Speaker 1: tackle Internet architecture, which is you know, it's it's conceptually
Speaker 1: it's a pretty simple thing, uh it it involves two
Speaker 1: different categories of of of concepts. I guess you could
Speaker 1: say you got your hardware and then you got your protocols,
Speaker 1: and that pretty much you know, the marriage of the
Speaker 1: two is where the Internet comes into play. Now, before
Speaker 1: we get to bog down with the whole thing, we're
Speaker 1: gonna start very simply. Let's take a trip back to
Speaker 1: the sixties, shall we. Right, I guess that means that
Speaker 1: we're gonna pop into the time machine. Liz is already
Speaker 1: giggling because she's here. She's actually gonna We're gonna drag
Speaker 1: Liz into the time machine with us. She probably won't
Speaker 1: say anything, but she'll be back there with her hand
Speaker 1: over her mouth giggling. All right, let's just set this
Speaker 1: back to the mid sixties and pop on back. And
Speaker 1: let's let's take a little visit to to uh, the California.
Speaker 1: Look at ARPA back in the day, dude. So here
Speaker 1: we are, California Route sixty six, right down the road, Chris, Chris,
Speaker 1: that's true. It is the only road in the sixties
Speaker 1: in California. Well, according to popular culture, I guess welcome
Speaker 1: to Misinformation Podcast Limited. So anyway, we are here to
Speaker 1: talk about arpanet. Okay, alright. So arpanet was a project
Speaker 1: that was government funded too. It was an attempt to
Speaker 1: create a network between various computer nodes to make sure
Speaker 1: that we could transmit information from one major computer to another.
Speaker 1: And you have to remember, of course, right now, back
Speaker 1: in the sixties, computers are these enormous machines that compared
Speaker 1: to the the desktop computer that you may have in
Speaker 1: front of you back over in uh the year two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, um are not that powerful, not that sophisticated.
Speaker 1: But the really important thing is they don't they aren't
Speaker 1: networked together. They aren't able to send information back and forth.
Speaker 1: Now there's a group of people who are working very
Speaker 1: diligently to create a system where two or more computers
Speaker 1: can transmit information between one another, even if they're working
Speaker 1: on completely different operating systems. Yeah, that that was actually
Speaker 1: one of the big problems because there had been uh
Speaker 1: computer networks before that, but they were all networks of
Speaker 1: computers running the same operating system. They were very local situations,
Speaker 1: right or actually some of them were sort of like
Speaker 1: bulletin board systems from what I understand, and that you
Speaker 1: could hook up to the network, but you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a permanent situation, and it was also it also
Speaker 1: required you to be running the same operating system, and
Speaker 1: it was very limited in what it could do, and
Speaker 1: you had another kind of sort of network in the
Speaker 1: sense that you had a centralized computer and now a
Speaker 1: bunch of dumb terminals where you are time sharing with
Speaker 1: that computer. It's not terms, it's not really networking because
Speaker 1: you're really tapping into the same processor and same storage
Speaker 1: unit as everybody else. You know, you don't have your
Speaker 1: own individual one. So it's not not the same as networking,
Speaker 1: but it's it's similar in concept. So now you have
Speaker 1: to find a way to connect these different machines together.
Speaker 1: And this group of people were working together to create
Speaker 1: our pannet, the first major computer network between computers running
Speaker 1: different operating systems, and they did it, yep. And that
Speaker 1: it's it's probably important at least who mentioned is a
Speaker 1: a sideline Why it's important to the government that we
Speaker 1: were able to do this. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: these institutions that were involved in this were research universities, right,
Speaker 1: and you know they wanted to share information, but it
Speaker 1: was also important for national security reasons too. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I had a dual purpose government and education, right.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the benefits that um, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but the one of the important benefits here to remember
Speaker 1: is that the um by by distributing information, uh and
Speaker 1: by creating a network between different computers, you could protect
Speaker 1: against a catastrophic attack. If someone were to take out
Speaker 1: part of your information system, you would still have other
Speaker 1: computers that would be able to pass information along within
Speaker 1: this this complex network. Now, that was not something necessarily
Speaker 1: that was in the minds of people when they were
Speaker 1: first building our Bonette, but it did become a benefit
Speaker 1: as people saw it later on down the road. So
Speaker 1: let's uh So, the thing about our Bonnette that we
Speaker 1: should remember is that this is the time and place
Speaker 1: where people began to design the protocols that would later
Speaker 1: come into play when we talk about the Internet. Now,
Speaker 1: these protocols are probably the most important aspect of Internet architecture.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got your physical hardware, and that's important
Speaker 1: because without it, you don't have any connections. But without
Speaker 1: the protocols, you don't have a common language with which
Speaker 1: all computers can use to to communicate, right, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the really cool thing about the Internet is that
Speaker 1: because of these protocols, no matter what kind of computer
Speaker 1: you're using, you are able to send and receive information
Speaker 1: from other computers. All right, So let's Uh, let's pop
Speaker 1: back in the machine and I I dig the sixth
Speaker 1: season all. Don't get me wrong, you know I love
Speaker 1: the music, but we have business to attend to. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. Alright, let's pop back in, Liz,
Speaker 1: do you mind clipping the switch for Uce? Awesome? Thanks?
Speaker 1: I wish you guys could see that at any rate.
Speaker 1: So now here we are, back in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: So the protocols designed back uh in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: really what those are what we depend upon today in
Speaker 1: order to communicate over the Internet. Ye. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, a lot of them are still in use,
Speaker 1: even though they're not necessarily uh something that you can see. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, some of them are are more common than others.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the invisible ones probably the I
Speaker 1: would I would say the most important one would be
Speaker 1: t c P i P Y, which is the Transfer
Speaker 1: Control Protocol Internet Protocol. Yes, um, and that's that one
Speaker 1: is pretty much invisible because that's you know, you your
Speaker 1: computer hooking up to the Internet and transferring information back
Speaker 1: and forth. But you don't really see that happening, right,
Speaker 1: And let's just to think back on the whole arpen
Speaker 1: ed deal arpen ed it self was not the Internet.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. You can call it a kind of a
Speaker 1: grandfather to the Internet if you like, But it was
Speaker 1: just a network. The Internet is a network of networks.
Speaker 1: It is constantly changing, It is always evolving. As more
Speaker 1: networks come online or leave, the Internet itself changes. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what the protocols do, is they make They made
Speaker 1: it possible to network networks. Right, so as more UH
Speaker 1: computers were able to use T C P I P
Speaker 1: to talk to one another, and it was possible to
Speaker 1: hook other networks up to the arper net, and thus
Speaker 1: the evolution of the Internet. Right. So, you even had
Speaker 1: things like satellite networks that could interconnect with the land
Speaker 1: based networks. You have cables that go underneath the ocean
Speaker 1: that connect continents together, and you have satellites that connect
Speaker 1: continents together. All of these different systems together comprise the
Speaker 1: Internet that we know love, that Chris and I depend
Speaker 1: upon for our livelihood. Um, now, why are you does
Speaker 1: that scary? That's pretty blunt? Yeah, we do. I mean
Speaker 1: without the Internet, there's no house stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: there's no tech stuff, there's no job for you and I,
Speaker 1: and we'd be working somewhere else. So yea for the Internet,
Speaker 1: all right. So the protocols, protocols are the common language.
Speaker 1: It's so if you think of each operating system having
Speaker 1: its own native language. And when we're talking operating system,
Speaker 1: remember we're not just talking Windows or Linux or or
Speaker 1: the mac os, where there are hundreds of operating systems
Speaker 1: out there, some of which are proprietary to a very
Speaker 1: specific set number of machines. Has nothing to you know,
Speaker 1: they and they would look as foreign to anyone used
Speaker 1: to Windows or Mac or Lenox as as a truly
Speaker 1: foreign language would to you, like you know, if you
Speaker 1: were to go to a country where you didn't speak
Speaker 1: the language, same sort of thing. Your computer would not
Speaker 1: be able to communicate with these computers normally, But because
Speaker 1: of protocols like t c P I P, these computers
Speaker 1: can exchange information and it will be understandable on either
Speaker 1: end of the line, which is pretty phenomenal. So, and
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a network of networks, that network
Speaker 1: can be made up of practically anything. We can talk
Speaker 1: about something as small as a home network, where that
Speaker 1: home network may just be one computer and whatever peripherals
Speaker 1: you happen to have attached to it. Or it may
Speaker 1: be that you have three or four computers that are
Speaker 1: all network together that are then have a connection to
Speaker 1: the outside world through an Internet service provider, um, but
Speaker 1: your home network that's a network. Or it could be
Speaker 1: a local area network where several machines are all network together,
Speaker 1: like an office network exactly. For example, if I want
Speaker 1: to send a message to Chris, my messages don't necessarily
Speaker 1: go all the way out to the Internet and then
Speaker 1: come back. They're on a local area network. So and
Speaker 1: a message I said to Chris is going to get
Speaker 1: there very very quickly, and it doesn't require going out
Speaker 1: to the outside world. It's all self contained. But our
Speaker 1: local area network also obviously has a connection to the
Speaker 1: Internet to the outside world, because otherwise I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to do any research. That's a that's a positive. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out I have to do that a lot.
Speaker 1: You know. Another protocol that that Jonathan uses when he
Speaker 1: does his research would be Hypertext Transfer Protocol, Yes ht
Speaker 1: t P, which is the HTTP you see at the
Speaker 1: beginning of a web address, right, And of course we
Speaker 1: should also point out the World Wide Web and the
Speaker 1: Internet are two different things. The Worldwide Web is an
Speaker 1: interface built on top of the Internet, is not the
Speaker 1: Internet itself. The Internet is far more complex than just
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web, although in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: it's not for most people, which is why for most people,
Speaker 1: for most people, their main their main interaction with the
Speaker 1: Internet is limited to two things, email and the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web. But the Internet itself. Again, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a network of networks, so it's more complex than that,
Speaker 1: even if your own interactions tend to be pretty simple.
Speaker 1: So now let's talk about some of the hardware that
Speaker 1: you find in the Internet. Really, the Internet can be
Speaker 1: divided up into two categories of machines, clients and servers.
Speaker 1: All right, So every machine on the Internet is either
Speaker 1: a client or a server, or it can switch. It
Speaker 1: can be a server or it can become a client
Speaker 1: depending on the situation. Clients are, in general, the devices
Speaker 1: that you that you are using to try and access information.
Speaker 1: You are requesting information from a server. Your client sends
Speaker 1: this request out to a local server, which, if the
Speaker 1: local server does not have access to this information, it
Speaker 1: will send it out to a regional server, which, if
Speaker 1: it does not have access to that information, will then
Speaker 1: send it to a national server, and so on. It
Speaker 1: keeps going further up the chain until it reaches the
Speaker 1: point where it can access the information you are requesting.
Speaker 1: It pulls that information from another server and then sends
Speaker 1: it back down the line to you. Awesome, that's it
Speaker 1: sounds pretty um you make it sound really simple. It is. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, if you look at a big picture scale,
Speaker 1: it is pretty simple. Some pretty amazing things have to
Speaker 1: happen for this to work properly. For example, the computers
Speaker 1: have to know where all the other computers are, you know.
Speaker 1: It has to has to be able to figure out oh,
Speaker 1: based upon this I P address. Then I have to
Speaker 1: contact this other server over here, which can then at
Speaker 1: least point me in the right direction to get to
Speaker 1: the information, even if this server itself does not have
Speaker 1: the information I need. And not only that, but when
Speaker 1: it sends the information, it splits it up into lots
Speaker 1: of tiny little bits called packets. Yes, it makes me
Speaker 1: always think that, you know what I always think of
Speaker 1: when I think of information being split into packets and
Speaker 1: then sent to be reassembled back at the your computer. Right. No,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna say ketchup, are you? No? No, you
Speaker 1: can't honestly, Mike TV right, chocolate factory, Yes, because you
Speaker 1: think of exactly yeah, that's exactly the right image too.
Speaker 1: If you've seen the movie, you know that he gets
Speaker 1: broken down and had lots and lots of aty bitty
Speaker 1: pieces and then reassembled on the television screen. Your email
Speaker 1: is my smaller than it was when Yes, wow, you
Speaker 1: know that's why. That's why web pages when we make them,
Speaker 1: are much bigger over here at how stuff works. If
Speaker 1: you came in and looked at one of our web pages,
Speaker 1: they are like three stories tall. But of course they
Speaker 1: get very tiny on the internet, which is why they
Speaker 1: look so small in your screen. Someone is going to
Speaker 1: write in that is also more from Misinformation Love Podcast Limited.
Speaker 1: Uh okay, so alright, so alright. Granted the analogy is
Speaker 1: not perfect, but that's what I always think of. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to It's amusing to me. But no,
Speaker 1: that that's that's pretty much it accepted. Doesn't travel over
Speaker 1: the air waves generally, it you know, proceeds down the
Speaker 1: series of tubes. Well well okay, no, it goes the
Speaker 1: packets are broken up, and actually they don't proceed in
Speaker 1: an orderly fashion. No, Um, they are. They're essentially labeled
Speaker 1: with a little bit of information at the beginning in
Speaker 1: the end of each packet and UH, as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, there's some redundancy going on. The same packets
Speaker 1: are sent in diferent places because from time to time,
Speaker 1: computers connect and disconnect and um or whatever. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: for well, for whatever reasons, they connect and disconnect. The
Speaker 1: thing is, um Genet was saying, it is pretty amazing
Speaker 1: that they can find one another. Well, it's even more
Speaker 1: amazing when you consider that machines fail or get shut
Speaker 1: off or you know, UH suddenly become available, and then
Speaker 1: there's another connection in between. Well that that redundancy helps
Speaker 1: the packets go from one place to another, and then
Speaker 1: they're reassembled based on the instructions in the header and
Speaker 1: foot or of that that individual packet to be reassembled
Speaker 1: into a file. Say you know, UM, a movie that
Speaker 1: you purchase online. That's a that's a big file and
Speaker 1: it's broken down into lots and lots and lots of
Speaker 1: little packets and reassembled it on your computer. Right, And
Speaker 1: these packets can spread across various parts of the network,
Speaker 1: again depending on where you need to connect. For example,
Speaker 1: let's say that you, Uh, you are a customer of
Speaker 1: a specific I s P. I'm not the name any
Speaker 1: here because they're hundreds of them, big ones and small ones.
Speaker 1: But you're a customer of let's say you are a
Speaker 1: customer of I s P A. Okay, we're just saying
Speaker 1: A as in that's the designation. Yeah, they're very good.
Speaker 1: Their customer service is really really excellent. So I s
Speaker 1: P A and UH, you connect to your I s
Speaker 1: P or Internet service provider and you are typing in
Speaker 1: a web address. You want to get access to a
Speaker 1: specific web address, and that web address, uh is for
Speaker 1: a a page that exists on a server that is
Speaker 1: not within that Internet service providers network. So the Internet
Speaker 1: service provider has to then connect to what is called
Speaker 1: a network access point. Network access points are points on
Speaker 1: the Internet where multiple networks connect, right, So it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a like a stoplight, yeah, or an intersection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's exactly. So I s P A does not have
Speaker 1: does not directly connect to the server that contains the
Speaker 1: web page you want. But I s P B it
Speaker 1: does exist on I s P B, you can you
Speaker 1: can connect to it through there. So you have to
Speaker 1: go to a network access point where both A and
Speaker 1: B have a connection. And then because the the protocols
Speaker 1: allow different networks and computers to communicate with one another,
Speaker 1: the information from the request from s P A can
Speaker 1: be answered by I s P B. Now, uh, if
Speaker 1: it has to go even further up and eventually hits
Speaker 1: what we call the backbone of the Internet. Now, the
Speaker 1: backbone is owned by multiple UM owners. We're talking about
Speaker 1: government's major corporations, major I s p s. They own
Speaker 1: what is called the backbone, which which is the trunk
Speaker 1: of the Internet. Yeah, it isn't really UM, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say incorrect to think of it almost like you would
Speaker 1: a tree, because um, what they call the last miles
Speaker 1: between you and the local switches handles much less bandwidth
Speaker 1: than what's actually available in the Internet backbone. I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking hundreds and hundreds of megabits per second transfer speeds.
Speaker 1: But you need that on the on the backbone because uh,
Speaker 1: these are the major thoroughfares are almost like you use
Speaker 1: another metaphor, like an interstate. There's a lot more traffic,
Speaker 1: it's moving on much faster speed. And then you get
Speaker 1: to your you know, your side roads, which is where
Speaker 1: your house might be right. Once you once you get
Speaker 1: to the backbone, that's where you're getting to the major
Speaker 1: communication between enormous networks. Part of my mixed metaphors, that's
Speaker 1: all right, So you get the major communication between networks
Speaker 1: along the backbone. Then once you get down to the
Speaker 1: network access point, you're talking about communication between a couple
Speaker 1: of networks, and then once you get beyond that, you're
Speaker 1: talking about communication within a single network. So each time,
Speaker 1: each step, you're getting slightly smaller until you get down
Speaker 1: to the original client that requested the information in the
Speaker 1: first place. So yeah, think of it like a tree
Speaker 1: and then a uh. The You could think of the
Speaker 1: network access point being a major branch that then forks
Speaker 1: into two smaller branches, which would be the two different
Speaker 1: Internet service provider networks. Um, it's you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: it might be a little weird to to imagine it
Speaker 1: in a physical sense, but really it's it's all just
Speaker 1: about connecting and uh and sending information through various connections.
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime you're actually requesting information, the information is
Speaker 1: passing through lots and lots and lots of different machines
Speaker 1: to get you both the request to go out from
Speaker 1: you to the destination and the information from the destination
Speaker 1: back to you. UM. And it doesn't all follow the
Speaker 1: same path. UM. Something you might try if you're interested
Speaker 1: in learning a little bit about your particular connection. UM,
Speaker 1: you could try something called a trace route, which will
Speaker 1: show you some of the different places where your connection
Speaker 1: is is linking up with other computers on the internet. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I could get into greater detail. But UM,
Speaker 1: I forgot to look that up. UM. But UM, it
Speaker 1: just occurred to me actually, and so UM, but you
Speaker 1: can you can find that out. You can also do
Speaker 1: a ping, which will tell you how far how fast UM,
Speaker 1: the signal is transferred from your request is transferred from
Speaker 1: your computer to the receiver machine. UM. You can you
Speaker 1: can look at you know that you can look up
Speaker 1: how to do that online. But UM, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're just vaguely curious about UM other machines in your
Speaker 1: area and and that. But you will see something called
Speaker 1: an IP address for most of those machines if you
Speaker 1: do a trace route. UM. And that's important because I
Speaker 1: P addresses are how machines are hooked up to the network.
Speaker 1: Because each UM to use my streets metaphor, well, we'll
Speaker 1: stick with that one. UM. You know, you need a
Speaker 1: street address for people to send mail UM or for
Speaker 1: information to get to so you know if your your
Speaker 1: computer has its own address UM, usually assigned to you
Speaker 1: by your I s P, which may or may not
Speaker 1: change depending on depending on your Yeah. So so for
Speaker 1: every instance where you are connected to the Internet, the
Speaker 1: machine you are connecting through, whether that's a computer or
Speaker 1: a smartphone or any other kind of Internet capable device,
Speaker 1: is going to have its own IP address. Now that
Speaker 1: address may change depending on your Internet service provider and
Speaker 1: UH it won't change through the duration of your of
Speaker 1: your current stay, but it might change from one instance
Speaker 1: to another. So if you log off and turn everything
Speaker 1: off and then you log on again later, you may
Speaker 1: have a different IP address again depending on your I
Speaker 1: s P. UH. The I s p s for servers
Speaker 1: that serve up information very rarely change. They usually stay
Speaker 1: pretty static UM, which is helpful because when you're when
Speaker 1: you're trying to connect to a server UH to to
Speaker 1: access information, if it stays the same, then that makes
Speaker 1: it easier to do repeated connections to that server. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about looking it up every single time.
Speaker 1: It as a matter of fact um that uh. That
Speaker 1: also is important to the domain name servers or d
Speaker 1: n s UM because you know, these these IP addresses,
Speaker 1: Internet protocol addresses are a series of four octets um
Speaker 1: basically zero to two five separated by periods. So you
Speaker 1: could have for example, zero dot zero dot zero dot zero,
Speaker 1: you know, or any number zero for each of them. Um,
Speaker 1: And and that's what an IP address looks like. Now, um,
Speaker 1: you have to say, if you wanted to visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, you'd have to know our IP
Speaker 1: address and that could get really annoying because you know,
Speaker 1: on all those commercid holes you see, Yeah, check us
Speaker 1: out at zero dot four five dot five six three whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: read that number again. And I don't think the Internet
Speaker 1: would be nearly as popular if you had to do that.
Speaker 1: So they came up with the system of domain names,
Speaker 1: and in order to manage that, the domain name server
Speaker 1: actually connects the name that you know, how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com with the IP address for the website, so
Speaker 1: that it's you know, you have a static IP address,
Speaker 1: which is the dedicated address for that and it can
Speaker 1: be found at how stuff works dot com. So all
Speaker 1: you have to remember is the name that is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a name that you can that's easy to
Speaker 1: remember in your head, right exactly. So for example, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like computer languages. Computer languages are designed so
Speaker 1: that humans can can program because we think more easily
Speaker 1: in terms of like words and and and strings of
Speaker 1: letters and things of that nature. But that's not machine
Speaker 1: read bowl. The machines need numbers, ones and zeros. So really,
Speaker 1: ultimately the even the the numbers in an IP address
Speaker 1: eventually become ones and zeros. But uh, yeah, so www,
Speaker 1: dot how stuffworks. Dot Com is not machine readable. That's
Speaker 1: the domain name servers job is to translate that into
Speaker 1: the correct IP address, which might mean looking up the
Speaker 1: domain name server for all dot Com addresses, and then
Speaker 1: that would eventually be able to point to the right
Speaker 1: uh server that would have the specific address for house
Speaker 1: supports dot Com. Um, this is getting a little more
Speaker 1: granular than I expected, but yeah, that's that is a
Speaker 1: good A good point is that without the IP addresses,
Speaker 1: the Internet doesn't work, or at least the being able
Speaker 1: to track down specific information on the Internet wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: You would you know, you wouldn't be able to direct
Speaker 1: anything to anyone because there'd be no way of knowing
Speaker 1: where to send any information. Yeah, well no, that's well,
Speaker 1: that's the important thing I think is that you've got
Speaker 1: your IP address, which identifies your machine. You have an
Speaker 1: IP address of the machine on the other end that
Speaker 1: you know, or that your computer knows is where it
Speaker 1: needs to go and the protocols. You know, it's got
Speaker 1: the information it needs and it already has a connection
Speaker 1: to those machines through the network of networks. So using that,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the ability to, you know, do
Speaker 1: all kinds of things use using net. Do email transfer
Speaker 1: files on FTP, that's file transfer protocol, tell net if
Speaker 1: you want to, if you're so inclined, Hey, that's how
Speaker 1: I met my wife. Hey, well, you know, and there
Speaker 1: are other ones to gopher ways. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of these older protocols, some of which are
Speaker 1: very um minimally used at this point, but are still
Speaker 1: you know, possible using the Internet. And it's the funny
Speaker 1: thing is a lot of this technology that the protocols
Speaker 1: and IP addresses are essentially the same that were invented
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, and uh, you know, with
Speaker 1: minimal revisions. Of course, one of the reasons that Internet
Speaker 1: service providers have to assign I P addresses dynamically, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, a new one every time you log on, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, reboot your motum er or a dial in
Speaker 1: if you're still using a dial in connection. I'm very sorry. Um,
Speaker 1: it's because so many people are using the Internet now
Speaker 1: that they realized while we're going to run out of
Speaker 1: addresses eventually, especially when you figure that most people have
Speaker 1: more than one Internet capable device. People, most people who
Speaker 1: are already on the Internet, I should say not most
Speaker 1: people period. Um, so that in fact, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, that's why they amended the IP
Speaker 1: address to be i p V six, which is basically
Speaker 1: just extends the number of octets in the IP address
Speaker 1: to make more combination possible. Combination, huge, huge expansion. Actually yes,
Speaker 1: because right now, if you guys listen to our our
Speaker 1: twenty eight problem podcast, we had this great time where
Speaker 1: we talked about how many seconds you could count up
Speaker 1: to until you hit the eight and starts over again
Speaker 1: because it's a thirty two bit number. Same thing here
Speaker 1: with the the octet system, it gave us a maximum
Speaker 1: of and this this is a kind of a fake
Speaker 1: maximum because not all addresses are available to start with.
Speaker 1: But if you were able to use every single address
Speaker 1: within that zero to octet range, you would have a
Speaker 1: maximum of four billion, two d ninety four million, nine
Speaker 1: hundred sixty seven thousand, two hundred addresses, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean four billion, that's a lot, But
Speaker 1: you think about it, there are a lot more people
Speaker 1: in countries that are just tuning in, if you will,
Speaker 1: to the Internet. Yeah, heck, China's exploding on the Internet
Speaker 1: right now. And again people might have multiple devices and
Speaker 1: not all of those addresses are usable. So that was
Speaker 1: why various groups we're working on on a new set
Speaker 1: of protocols in order to address this problem before it
Speaker 1: becomes you know, before you get to a point where
Speaker 1: you cannot add any more devices to the Internet because
Speaker 1: you've run out of IP addresses. That's where the i
Speaker 1: p v six comes in. So the octet version was
Speaker 1: a thirty two bit system. The i p v six
Speaker 1: is uh is a hundred twenty eight bit system, which
Speaker 1: pretty much solves that problem for the foreseeable future. Because
Speaker 1: again we're talking exponential growth here, We're not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just oh, that's you know, four times as many.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, it's way more than that.
Speaker 1: And it's in fact, it's such a large number that
Speaker 1: I can't rattle it off like I did the four
Speaker 1: billion number, because that, in comparison, is a tiny number.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, again, that will solve the problem in
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. And I don't know, uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know about the other you know, a lot of changes
Speaker 1: to other protocols, such as t c P, I P
Speaker 1: and UH and Hypertext Transfer Protocol. I think for the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future, those will probably stay similar anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: they seem to hold up reasonably well. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while you hear people say that the Internet is
Speaker 1: going to uh explode or fail because there's so many
Speaker 1: people on it. But I think, um, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things to where people are gradually adding more capacity.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a stuff wears out there, you know,
Speaker 1: technology allows new and expanding connections. I remember when I
Speaker 1: first worked UH at a at a place that had
Speaker 1: a a T one line. I used to think that
Speaker 1: was really fast, and I thought, well, I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: that up. Well, it turns out it's about one point
Speaker 1: five megabits per second, which is you know, an average
Speaker 1: DSL speed. Um, you can find much faster now and um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's the average connection to the home
Speaker 1: now is you know, well, the average broadband connection is
Speaker 1: I think around three megabits per second. I didn't look
Speaker 1: that up, so you know, feel free to uh it's
Speaker 1: the same me an email. But no, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's becoming more normal to see speeds of three and
Speaker 1: six megabets to the home when broadband is available, so
Speaker 1: and some some places you know, even higher, and and
Speaker 1: fiber is becoming more popular as an option now, so
Speaker 1: you know, I think that they're going to be forced
Speaker 1: you know, the the owners of the backbone will probably
Speaker 1: be forced to expand as time goes on. But I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a big commercial interest in the Internet now. You know,
Speaker 1: now that it's no longer just a an educational and
Speaker 1: government U utility, so many people rely on it for
Speaker 1: a lot of different reasons that you know, it's um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not worthwhile to let it collapse under
Speaker 1: the weight of the traffic traveling on it. There's the
Speaker 1: best at interest. I am done, But I mean it's again,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of our cane and interesting at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know. I mean, you can get a
Speaker 1: lot more annual and a lot more technical about it too,
Speaker 1: But we should just be thankful for the fact that
Speaker 1: we had some some brilliant minds working on these protocols
Speaker 1: in the first place, because otherwise, what we would have
Speaker 1: is a bunch of separate networks that would be incapable
Speaker 1: of communicating with one another. So we would have regions
Speaker 1: a very rich content and connectivity and other regions that
Speaker 1: would be very poorly served. Uh, and there'd be no
Speaker 1: way to share the wealth, or even two regions that
Speaker 1: were both very rich but could not share that information
Speaker 1: among each other, so you'd have big gaps and info
Speaker 1: on one versus the other, depending on you know, the specialties.
Speaker 1: So uh, yeah, it's it's mainly the protocols. The hardware
Speaker 1: is important, but again, without the protocols in place, all
Speaker 1: the hardware in the world is not gonna matter to
Speaker 1: you because they're not gonna know the machines will not
Speaker 1: be able to communicate with each other. So actually, and
Speaker 1: you know, now that I think about it, it might
Speaker 1: have been nice that such a small group of people
Speaker 1: were working on this, because if we had relied on
Speaker 1: you know, the governments of the world to agree on protocols, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd we'd be way behind behind. You know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get a lot of people to agree on any
Speaker 1: one thing, so well, we we would probably have a
Speaker 1: bunch of Again, we would probably have a bunch of
Speaker 1: independent networks that didn't work very well together. And right
Speaker 1: now we have, you know, lots of networks that can
Speaker 1: all communicate using the same basic set of protocols. So
Speaker 1: good job, I'm are you. I don't have anything else.
Speaker 1: Good Let's let's wrap up. I don't philosophical as it was.
Speaker 1: I don't have any listener mail to end today, but
Speaker 1: I do have a little listener tweet And this Twitter
Speaker 1: message comes from Nico Stamatolos, who said to me, how
Speaker 1: come your podcasts seem always short no matter how much
Speaker 1: time you and Chris talk weird? You know what, That's
Speaker 1: an awesome compliment, because sometimes we sit here and we're like, seriously,
Speaker 1: we talked about that for forty four minutes. Conspiracy theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you enjoy it. And I know that
Speaker 1: some of our listeners sometimes think that we go on
Speaker 1: a little too long. I recommend you listen to us
Speaker 1: at one and a halftime speeds can here. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: If any of you want to write us, our email
Speaker 1: address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to send me a Twitter message, my
Speaker 1: Twitter handle is at John Strickland and mine is at
Speaker 1: tech stuff Chris. So, yeah, we we do read listener
Speaker 1: tweets occasionally, not that often, but I'm trying to save
Speaker 1: those so that I can make sure I can acknowledge
Speaker 1: on air whenever possible. And remember, you could read all
Speaker 1: about Internet architecture, domain name servers, IP addresses. We have
Speaker 1: articles on all this information. If you want to see
Speaker 1: some really cool illustrations that that show what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, I recommend you go to how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. We have all of that information there. Um,
Speaker 1: sometimes that stuff is easier seen. Yeah, yeah, and we've
Speaker 1: got some nice animations and everything to kind of kind
Speaker 1: of illustrate these points. So if you still are confused,
Speaker 1: visit our website and Chris and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the New Tech Stuff blog
Speaker 1: now on the House Stuff Works homepage, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
Speaker 1: you