Translate into English. Интернет – это сеть сетей

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The history of the Internet

The Internet in the year 2009. We send e-mails, make calls over the internet and discuss topics we take an interest in. Even our banking is going virtual. But what we take for granted today was only a vague idea fifty years ago. In order to understand how we got this far let's go back to 1957, when everything began.

Before 1957 computers only worked on one task at a time. This is called batch processing. Of course, this was quite ineffective. With computers getting bigger and bigger they had to be stored in special cooled rooms. But then the developers couldn't work directly on the computers anymore – specialists had to be called in to connect them. Programming at that time meant a lot of manual work and the indirect connection to the computers led to a lot of bugs, wasting time and fraying the developers´ nerves. The year 1957 marked a big change. A remote connection had to be installed so the developers could work directly on the computers. At the same time the idea of time-sharing came up. This is the first concept in computer technology to share the processing power of one computer with multiple users.

On October 4th 1957, during the Cold War the first unmanned satellite, Sputnik 1, was sent into orbit by the Soviet Union. The fear of a "Missile Gap" emerged. In order to secure America's lead in technology, the US founded the "Defense Advanced Research Project Agency" in February 1958. At that time, knowledge was only transferred by people. The DARPA planned a large-scale computer network in order to accelerate knowledge transfer and avoid the doubling up of already existing research. This network would become the Arpanet. Furthermore three other concepts were to be developed, which are fundamental for the history of the Internet: The concept of a military network by the RAND Corporation in America. The commercial network of the National Physical Laboratory in England. And the scientific network, Cyclades, in France. The scientific, military and commercial approaches of these concepts are the foundations for our modern Internet.

Let's begin with the Arpanet, the most familiar of these networks. Its development began in 1966. Universities were generally quite cautious about sharing their computers. Therefore small computers were put on front of the mainframe. This computer, the Interface Message Processor, took over control of the network activities, while the mainframe was only in charge of the initialization of programs and data files. At the same time, the IMP also served as interface for the mainframe. Since only the IMPs were interconnected in a network this was also called IMP-subnet.

For the first connections between the computers the Network Working Group developed the Network Control Protocol [Network Control Program]. Later on, the NCP was replaced by the more efficient Transmission Control Protocol. The specific feature of the TCP is the verification of the file transfer. Let's take a short detour to England. Since the NPL network was designed on a commercial basis a lot of users and file transfer were expected. In order to avoid congestion of the lines, the sent files were divided into smaller packets which were put together again at the receiver. "Packet Switching" was born!

In 1962 American ferret aircrafts discovered middle and long range missiles in Cuba, which were able to reach the United States. This stoked fear of an atomic conflict. At that time information systems had a centralized network architecture. To avoid the breakdown during an attack, a decentralized network architecture had to be developed, which in case of loss of a node would still be operative. Communication still used to work through radio waves that would have caused problems in case of an atomic attack: the ionosphere would be affected and the long-wave radio waves wouldn't work anymore. Therefore they had to use direct waves, which, however, don't have a long range. A better solution was the model of a distributed network. Thus long distances could be covered with a minimum of interference.

Another milestone followed with the development of the French network "Cyclades". Since Cyclades had a far smaller budget than Arpanet and thus also fewer nodes the focus was laid on the communication with other networks. In this way the term "inter-net" was born. Moreover, Cyclades´ concept went further than ARPA's and the NPL's. During communication between sender and receiver the computers were not to intervene anymore, but simply serve as a transfer node. Cyclades´ protocol went through all machines using a physical layer that was implemented into the hardware, providing a direct connection with the receiver – an end-to-end structure. Inspired by the Cyclades network and driven by the incompatibility between the networks, their connection gained in importance everywhere.

The phone companies developed the X.25 protocol which enabled communication through their servers – in exchange for monthly basic charge of course.

DARPA's Transmission Control Protocol was to connect the computers through gateways... and the International Organization for Standardization designed the OSI Reference Model. The innovation of OSI was the attempt to standardize the network from its ends and the channel's division into separate layers. Finally, the TCP assimilated the preferences of the OSI Reference Model and gave way to the TCP/IP protocol – a standard which guaranteed compatibility between networks and finally merged them, creating the Internet. By February 28, 1990 the ARPANET hardware was removed, but the Internet...

... was up and running.

How the Internet Works in 5 Minutes

So how does the internet work? Most of us know how to use the internet without actually understanding how it works, sort of, like electricity in your home - you use that every day but may not understand the mechanics behind it. And if the electric grid is difficult to understand, the Internet must be impossible to understand. Right? Wrong! In the next few minutes I’ll put you in the top ten percent of people who understand how the internet actually works. For Security catalyst.com, I’m Aaron Titus.

Whenever most people think of the internet, this is what comes to mind. the internet is not a bubble cloud even in the new age of cloud computing. The whole fuzzy cloud picture was created by people more concerned about job security than education.

This is the internet. The internet is a wire actually buried in the ground. It might be fiber optics, copper or occasionally a beam to satellites or through cell phone networks, but the internet is simply a wire. The internet is useful because two computers connected directly to this wire can communicate. A server is a special computer connected directly to the internet and web pages or files on that server’s hard drives. Every server has a unique internet protocol address or IP address, just like a postal address IP addresses help computers find each other. But since 72.14.205.100 doesn't exactly roll off the tongue we also give the names like Google.com Facebook.com or Security catalyst.com. So this is how it works.

Your computer at home is not a server, because it's not connected directly to the Internet. Computers you and I use everyday are called clients, because they're connected indirectly to the Internet through an internet service provide. Here we’ll pretend that this is my home laptop and I’m using DSL. Now let's pretend that I want to visit aol.com which is coincidently both a server and ISP. I hop onto my laptop with DSL go through my ISP onto the Internet and look at aol.com. My computer connects with aol.com and I can look at its web pages. Now let's say that I want to send an email to aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth aol.com dial-up from home and I’ve got a gmail account. I log onto gmail.com and compose a message to the aunt Ruth’s email address - Aunt [email protected]. Once I click “send” gmail.com sends the email to aol.com. The next day aunt Ruth dials into aol servers and retrieves the email.

Whenever an email, picture or webpage travels across the Internet computers break the information into smaller pieces called packets. When information reaches its destination the packets are reassembled in their original order to make a picture, email, webpage or tweet.

Okay, so imagine you're at work sitting next year boss and you're both surfing online. Your boss is doing market research and you’re updating your face book profile. You’re both sending packets back-and-forth over the Internet. But what's to keep your packets from accidentally ending up on your bosses screen? That could be embarrassing! The solution to that problem is IP addresses and routers. Everything connected directly or indirectly to the Internet has an IP address, everything. That includes your computer, servers, cell phones and all of the equipment in between. Anywhere two or more parts of the Internet intersect there's a piece of equipment called a router. Routers direct your packets around the internet helping each packet get one step closer to its destination. Every time you visit a website, upwards of ten to fifteen routers may help your packets find their way to and from your computer. Imagine each packet as a piece of candy wrapped in several layers. The first layer is your computer's IP address. Your computer sends the packet to the first router which adds its own IP address. Each time the packet reaches a new router another layer is added until it reaches the server. Then when the server sends back information, he creates packets with an identical wrapping. As a packet makes its way over the Internet back to your computer, each router unwraps a layer to discover where to send the packet next, until it reaches your computer and not your bosses. And that's how the Internet works. In five minutes or less. And you’re now easily in the top ten percent of people who understand the basics of the Internet. If you found this video helpful, check out Security catalyst.com for all kinds of ideas on how to protect your information.

How Does the Internet Work?

When you use the internet what happens? Whether you go online to check with a friend or send e-mails or buy a book or check the weather, watch a movie or study the Peloponnesian war, it feels like one wire connecting you directly to the thing you want. But a billion other people are connecting to the billion other things at the same time. How does that happen? It’s really about making agreements. Think of networking as a game. It only works if we agree to play by the same rules. Otherwise it's not much fun. If you can get two or more computers to play together you have a network. If your friend can do it too – there’s another network. But if you both agree that your networks will play the same way, now you can hook the two together. You have an inter network.

The rules we play by are called the Internet protocol. And as long as we all agree we can keep adding more devices and more networks until the whole world is connected. That’s what the Internet is – a network of networks that share each other.

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Every device on the Internet has its own unique address. Anything you send via Internet is really just a message from one device to another. But it doesn’t travel in one big blank. It gets polarised in tiny packets of data each one wrapped in info about what it is: where it came from and where it’s going. This way, your one message can actually take several different paths to its destination. Then by following the protocol the receiving device knows how to put it all back together. The strength of the Internet is that it’s decentralized. With so many possible connections there’s no single point of failure. If one path gets overloaded or broken your data just takes a different path. Even if a big chunk of the Internet gets wiped out your message can still find its way.

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And let’s say you use one internet provider and your friend is on a different one. How does your data really get from one network to the other? Some companies make private connections with each other to exchange traffic. But more and more traffic is flowing through shared service platforms we called an Internet exchange points. An Internet exchange is the place where many different organisations come together to interconnect their technology. They may be access providers, broadcasters, publishers, social network sites, telecom operators, really anybody who relies on network traffic can benefit from the exchange. By connecting in a common place they save costs and the traffic between them flows faster and much more efficiently. Traditionally, providers have sold each other passage on the networks. But for some providers who regularly exchange traffic all that buying and selling get more trouble than it’s worth. Many of them saw that if they just agree to meet each other halfway, then everybody’s costs go down and the traffic moves more smoothly. Provides are able to make a single connection to the platform to exchange traffic with many participants. This way of doing things is called peering and it’s making the Internet faster and more affordable for everybody. The exchange participants make deals with each other according to mutual benefit, so the peering system tends to regulate itself. It may seem like companies are giving away their services but in fact each is providing their part of the whole solution their customers need to most efficiently and reliably exchange traffic.

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The Internet is open, decentralized and totally neutral. Its intelligence lives at the edge not in the core. No single organisation controls it. And that’s why it works as well as it does. By agreeing to co-operate we all make the Internet happen and that’s how the Internet happens.

What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

So you are reading an article online then you get an instant message with a link to a funny photo, which of course you have to share. And now you are reading your Facebook News Wall, which sends you to a video of a panda bear attacking a kid. And now you are reading Wikipedia to learn everything you can about the violent behavior of panda bears. And this is what 3 minutes on the Internet can be like.

We live like this all the time, and it has to have some kind of effect on us.

The Net is making us more superficial as thinkers. That is Nicholas Carr. He is the author of, "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains."

To understand this whole thing better we need to go way back in time, to say, like, the prehistoric age. You wanted to know everything going on around you because the more you knew about your surroundings the less likely you were to get attacked by a predator. And there's even evidence that our brains release some dopamine - a pleasure producing neurotransmitter chemical - to reward us for seeking out and finding new information. So, getting distracted felt good and helped us stay alive. But the problem is that nowadays, predators aren't much of an issue, but we still have the same brains. And also, there's the Internet, which is...

It's an incredibly information rich environment, uh, that the Net creates for us. And that's why we use it so much. I mean sounds, pictures, words, texts. And what this tends to do is promote a sort of compulsive behavior in which we are constantly checking your smart phone, constantly glancing at our email inbox. We're kind of living in this perpetual state of distraction and interruption. Which is dangerous because... That mode of thinking crowds out the more contemplative calmer modes of thinking.

And that focused, calm thinking is actually how we learn. It's a process called memory consolidation. And that means the transfer of information from our short term working memory, to our long term memory. And it's through moving information from your working memory to your long term memory that you create connections between that information and everything else you know.

So you've got this awesome, life changing piece of information in your short term memory, but then you hear that email ding, and poof, there it goes. That email takes its place, and you never get a chance to learn anything, all because of one distraction.

So attention is the key. And if we lose control of our attention, or are constantly dividing our attention, uh, then we don't really enjoy that consolidation process. But I can hear it now, someone out there is saying, "Uh, what does learning matter if all of the information in the world is just a Google search away?" Well...

Um, that is kind of short-changing our intellects. If that's the way you're using your mind, just kind of searching very quickly and finding information and then forgetting it very quickly, you're never building knowledge. You're simply, you're, you're kind of thinking like a computer, which means that our very humanity is at stake. And it would be a shame if we all got assimilated, because, well, humanity is pretty neat.

I really believe that if you look at the great monuments of culture, they come from people who are able to pay attention, who control their mind. That's what allows us to think in the highest terms and think conceptually, think critically, uh, think in some very creative ways.

And it's this kind of thinking that's at risk: being eroded one cute cat video at a time. Don't get us wrong: The Internet is good for lots of things, and it should be celebrated. But the best thing we can do for our minds is to find some time every day to unplug, calm down, and focus on one thing at a time. Your email -- and those cats -- will be here when you get back.