What is the Internet, Anyway?
RFC 1935
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(April 1996; No errata)
Was draft-rfced-info-quarterman (individual)
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|
---|---|---|---|
Authors | Smoot Carl-Mitchell , John Quarterman | ||
Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
Stream | Legacy | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | Legacy state | (None) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 1935 (Informational) | |
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | (None) | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group J. Quarterman Request For Comments: 1935 S. Carl-Mitchell Category: Informational TIC April 1996 What is the Internet, Anyway? Status of This Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright (c) 1994 TIC From Matrix News, 4(8), August 1994 Permission is hereby granted for redistribution of this article provided that it is redistributed in its entirety, including the copyright notice and this notice. Contact: mids@tic.com, +1-512-451-7602, fax: +1-512-452-0127. http://www.tic.com/mids, gopher://gopher.tic.com/11/matrix/news A shorter version of this article appeared in MicroTimes. Introduction We often mention the Internet, and in the press you read about the Internet as the prototype of the Information Highway; as a research tool; as open for business; as not ready for prime time; as a place your children might communicate with (pick one) a. strangers, b. teachers, c. pornographers, d. other children, e. their parents; as bigger than Poland; as smaller than Chicago; as a place to surf; as the biggest hype since Woodstock; as a competitive business tool; as the newest thing since sliced bread. A recent New York Times article quoting one of us as to the current size of the Internet has particularly stirred up quite a ruckus. The exact figures attributed to John in the article are not the ones we recommended for such use, but the main point of contention is whether the Internet is, as the gist of the article said, smaller than many other estimates have said. Clearly lots of people really want to believe that the Internet is very large. Succeeding discussion has shown that some want to believe that so much that they want to count computers and people that are probably *going to be* connected some time in the future, even if they are not actually connected now. We prefer to talk about who is actually on the Internet and on other networks now. We'll get back to the sizes of the various networks later, but for now let's discuss a more basic issue that is at the Quarterman & Carl-Mitchell Informational [Page 1] RFC 1935 What is the Internet, Anyway? April 1996 heart of much confusion and contention about sizes: what is the Internet, anyway? Starting at the Center For real confusion, start trying to get agreement on what is part of the Internet: NSFNET? CIX? Your company's internal network? Prodigy? FidoNet? The mainframe in accounting? Some people would include all of the above, and perhaps even consider excluding anything politically incorrect. Others have cast doubts on each of the above. Let's start some place almost everyone would agree is on the Internet. Take RIPE, for example. The acronym stands for European IP Networks. RIPE is a coordinating group for IP networking in Europe. (IP is the Internet protocol, which is the basis of the Internet. IP has a suite of associated protocols, including the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, and the name IP, or sometimes TCP/IP, is often used to refer to the whole protocol suite.) RIPE's computers are physically located in Amsterdam. The important feature of RIPE for our purposes is that you can reach RIPE (usually by using its domain, ripe.net) from just about anywhere anyone would agree is on the Internet. Reach it with what? Well, just about any service anyone would agree is related to the Internet. RIPE has a WWW (World Wide Web) server, a Gopher server, and an anonymous FTP server. So they provide documents and other resources by hypertext, menu browsing, and file retrieval. Their personnel use client programs such as Mosaic and Lynx to access other people's servers, too, so RIPE is a both distributor and a consumer of resources via WWW, Gopher, and FTP. They support TELNET interfaces to some of their services, and of course they can TELNET out and log in remotely anywhere they have personal login accounts or someone else has an anonymous TELNET service such a library catalog available. They also have electronic mail, they run some mailing lists, and some of their people read and post news articles to USENET newsgroups. WWW, Gopher, FTP, TELNET, mail, lists, and news: that's a pretty characteristic set of major Internet services. There are many more obscure Internet services, but it's pretty safe to say that an organization like RIPE that is reachable with all these services is on the Internet.Show full document text