Inside the Internet

Internet Architecture Fortunately, nobody owns the Internet, there is no centralized control, and nobody can turn it off. Its evolution depends on rough agreement about technical proposals, and on running code. Engineering feed-back from real implementations is more important than any architectural principles. What is the Internet architecture? It is by definition a meta-network, a constantly changing collection of thousands of individual networks intercommunicating with a common protocol.

User PC - A Multi-Media PC equipped to send and receive all variety of audio and video. Sound Board /Microphone/Speakers for telephony, MIDI,Creative Labs/SoundBlaster, Yahoo's List for Sound Cards. Video/Graphics for 3D graphics, video, playback. Matrox, Diamond Multimedia, Yahoo's List for Video Cards. Video camera - Connectix, Yahoo's List for Video Conferencing, Yahoo's List for Manufacturers. Voice recognition - Yahoo's List for Voice Recognition. Internet Architecture

User's Communication Equipment - This is the communication equipment located at the User's location(s) to connect the Users' PC(s) to the "Local Loop" (aka Customer Premise equipment - CPE) Phone line - Analog Modem (v.90=56K) US Robotics, Rockwell, Yahoo's List for Modems. Phone line -ISDN(128K) Yahoo's list for ISDN. Phone Line - DSL (6 MB), Yahoo's list for DSL., ADSL Forum. Cable Modem (27 MB) Cable Modem University (and their neat table of Modem Vendors) Electric Line (1 MB) Digital PowerLine by Nortel Satellite (400 Kb) DirecPC LAN - 3com, Yahoo's list of Network Hardware. Routers - Cisco, Ascend, Bay Networks, Yahoo's list. Firewalls - TBD Vendors, Yahoo's list for firewalls. User services - Many corporations also provide "User services" to their employees such as DNS, , Usenet, etc. Links for these services are described further down this diagram in the user services section.

Internet Architecture Local Loop Carrier - Connects the User location to the ISP's Point of Presence Communication Lines -RBOCS: (Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Cincinnati Bell, NYNEX, Pacific Bell, Southwestern Bell, US West),GTE, LEC's, MFS, TCG, Brooks, Cable - List of Cable ISP's. Satellite - DirecPC. Power line - Digital PowerLine by Nortel. Wireless - Wireless Week, Wireless Access Tech Magazine, Yahoos' List for Wireless networking. Equipment Manufacturers: Nortel, Lucent, Newbridge, Siemens.

Internet Architecture ISP POP- This is the edge of the ISP's network. Connections from the user are accepted and authenticated here. Remote ports Ascend (Max Product), US Robotics (3com), Livingston (Portmaster), Cisco, Yahoo's List for Routing Technology.

Internet Architecture User Services - these are the services that most users would use along with Internet Access. (These may be hosted within a large corporate LAN) (Webhosting is discussed under the online content section) Domain Name Server - BIND, DNS Resources Directory. Host -,Sendmail,Microsoft Exchange Usenet Newsgroups (NNTP) - INN, Special services such as quake, telnet, FTP User Web Hosting - See the online content section for details. These servers require fast interfaces and large/fast storage.

Internet Architecture ISP Backbone - The ISP backbone interconnects the ISP's POPs, AND interconnects the ISP to Other ISP's and online content. Backbone Providers - Russ Haynal's ISP Page. Large Circuits - fiber Circuit carriers, AT&T, SPRINT, MCI, Worldcom (MFS, Brooks), RBOC's, C&W, Qwest, Routers - Cisco, Ascend, Bay Networks, Yahoo's list. ATM Switches - Fore, Newbridge, Lucent, Ascend, Yahoo's List of ATM Manufacturers. Sonet/SDH Switches - Nortel, Fujitsu, Alcatel.Tellabs, Lucent and Positron Fiber Systems. Gigaswitch - Gigaswitch from Dec, Yahoo's List. Network Access Points - Russ Haynal's ISP Page The Broadband guide (links to 4,000 vendors)

Internet Architecture Online Content - These are the host sites that the user interacts with. Web Server platforms - Netsite, Apache, Microsoft, Yahoo's List of web servers. Hosting Farms- Many online resources are hosted at well- connection facilities These servers require fast interfaces and large/fast storage.

Internet Architecture Origins of online content - This is the original "real-world" sources for the online information. Existing electronic information is being connected from legacy systems. Traditional print resources are being scanned and converted into electronic format Many types of video and audio programming is being broadcast via the internet. For example, look at Radio_locator. Internet telephony is growing on the Internet Start with VON and then explore this list from Yahoo. Look at this list of interesting devices connected to the Internet.

Internet Architecture The Internet's architecture is described in its name, a short from of the mix word "inter- networking". This architecture is based in the very specification of the standard TCP/IP protocol,TCP/IP designed to connect any two networks which may be very different in internal hardware, software, and technical design. Once two networks are interconnected, communication with TCP/IP is enabled end-to-end,end-to-end

so that any node on the Internet has the near magical ability to communicate with any other no matter where they are. This openness of design has enabled the Internet architecture to grow to a global scale. In practice, the Internet technical architecture looks a bit like a multi-dimensional river system. In general, small local Internet service providers connect to medium-sized regional networks which connect to large national networks, which then connect to very large bandwidth networks on the Internet backbone. Internet Architecture

Most Internet service providers have several redundant network cross-connections to other providers in order to ensure continuous availability. The companies running the Internet backbone operate very high bandwidth networks relied on by governments, corporations, large organizations, and other Internet service providers. Their technical infrastructure often includes global connections through underwater cables and satellite links to enable communication between countries and continents. Internet Architecture

As always, a larger scale introduces new phenomena: the number of packets flowing through the switches on the backbone is so large that it exhibits the kind of complex non-linear patterns usually found in natural, analog systems like the flow of water or development of the rings of Saturn. Each communication packet goes up the hierarchy of Internet networks as far as necessary to get to its destination network where local routing takes over to deliver it to the addressee.packetrouting In the same way, each level in the hierarchy pays the next level for the bandwidth they use, and then the large backbone companies settle up with each other. Internet Architecture

Bandwidth is priced by large Internet service providers by several methods, such as at a fixed rate for constant availability of a certain number of megabits per second, or by a variety of use methods that amount to a cost per gigabyte. Due to economies of scale and efficiencies in management, bandwidth cost drops dramatically at the higher levels of the architecture. Internet Architecture

Internet Network Topology The Internet network topology is a slowly changing web with thousands of lines and even more inter- connections. Internet Exchange Points. The communications traffic on the Internet backbone is exchanged at large Internet Exchange Points (IXP), sometimes called Network Access Points (NAP) or Metropolitan Area Exchanges (MAE), constituting the top level of the Internet network topology.NAP The first five large NAP's in North America were established in the 1990's in –Chicago, –New Jersey, –San Francisco, –San Jose, –Washington, D.C.

Does the kingdom contain an IXP? Internet Network Topology