August 3, 2009 • 20 mins
Internet2 is a networking consortium that has been running an advanced version of the Internet since 1996. Discover Internet2's origins, purpose and impact on the progress of the Internet in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how Stuff Looks dot Coming hither everybody,
and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette.
I'm an editor here at how Stuff works dot com,
and as usual, I have sitting next to me senior
(00:21):
writer Jonathan Strickland. Hid ho, Okay, that's a new one. Yeah.
I like to bust on a new one once in
a while to keep you on your toes. All right, then,
uh so let's see. Um. Yeah, I got some special
to start this one off. You know what's coming. We
all know what's coming. Listen. It's listener mail, all right,
listener man, you got it. We're happy now, Okay, that's
(00:48):
oh all right, I'm just stunned. Yeah, I'm sure our
listeners are too. Okay. This one comes from Scotty. Scotty
says I would like to know more about the Internet
to project. There's a website, but not that much to tail.
Thank you, Thank you Scotty for that listener me, I
really appreciate it. That was so we thought we'd talked
about internet too. Oh right, do you want to jump. Yeah,
(01:11):
I think maybe, uh, I shouldn't have written it down
as Internet t o O. So this this mean I
need to start. Yeah, it's funny that you brought that up, Scotty,
because this is one of these things that you know
people here about from time to time, but nobody ever
really talks about. It was supposed to be this big
(01:31):
thing back in the in the mid nineties, because everybody
was talking about the imminent collapse of the Internet and
how it's all going to blow up, and how the
educational users of the Internet, we're all gonna go off
and start their own thing called Internet Too and you
can keep this Internet. We're gonna have our own. I'm
(01:51):
taking my ball and going home. So yeah, it didn't
exactly work out that way, but there is still an
Internet Too. Yeah. So there are a lot of miscau
receptions about it, mainly because, again, let's Chris pointed out,
not very many people chat about it that much. So
Internet Too it's it's it's two different things. First of all,
if you're thinking like there's a super secret Internet that
(02:14):
exists below our current Internet, that's not what Internet Too is. Now,
that's something else. Entirely we can't talk about it. We
can't that's the dark net. We can't go into that.
So anyway, the Internet too, that's it's really a consortium. Yes,
it's a group of universities, research institutes, corporations that have
got had They've come together to create an environment wherein uh,
(02:38):
these these different organizations can utilize a network, a very
high speed network for purposes of research and sharing knowledge,
that kind of thing. So sort of the same thing
that the original and you know what, the original intent
of the Internet was, go way back, and there there
is it is kind of from what I could tell
(02:58):
in my research, Um, there is kind of a second
Internet along the lines of the regular Internet that they use.
They all have high speed fiber optic connections. But it's
not a separate internet. Um, so they are. They are dedicated,
it's dedicated hardware what you're talking about. Yeah, but it
is part of the Internet as a whole. It's just
(03:19):
that they are the only ones who have access to that. Yeah,
they were talking about very special routers. We're talking about
special a special backbone, a fiber backbone for this this
Internet that stretches thirteen thousand five miles if I remember correctly,
from my little sheet of facts, and um the kilometer
(03:39):
conversion not because I did it just before we came
in here. So so I'm sorry to all of our
friends in other nations, but we're talking about United States
centric thing anyways. So Internet to the the idea here
is that we they these research organizations. Let's let's take
a quick step back into the way back machine and
talk about the origins of the Internet and UH and
(04:03):
networks in general. If you go all the way back
to our panet, you're talking about several research institutions uh
networking together and sending information from one massive computer to another.
And the one of the ultimate goals here was being
able to share knowledge at really really rapid speeds. And
uh so the Internet for a long time, that's really
(04:24):
what was all about. It was mostly schools, universities, research
organizations that was that used these these lines in order
to share information and open up databases so that places
that had a really rich amount of information on a
specific subject could share it with everybody instead of it
just being centralized in one location. Yep. As a matter
(04:46):
of fact, the first time I used the Internet, which
was nineteen and a half years ago. Now, um, you
know that that's you know, nobody had heard of the internet.
I mean people had heard of the Internet, but uh,
you like, if you went up to somebody on the
street and said, hey, you know, what kind of Internet
connection you have at home, they wouldn't have because they
wouldn't have really known about it and what it was
(05:07):
and what it was supposed to be for. But everybody,
and you know, the college where I went, would have
email connections and uh you know, could use chat and
you know, basic basic functions protocols in two colors, green
and black. I have all sorts of colors here. Uh So, yeah,
the that was the the original kind of purpose for
(05:31):
the Internet. And then of course the Internet opened up
to everybody, and then came the World Wide Web eventually,
which again originated as sort of a project on this
this college university environment. But once the Web opened up
to everybody and the Internet really opened up to everybody,
suddenly you've got this this great network. But it's being
(05:54):
used for lots of different things, not just research and
and sending information or or calculating law numbers. And if
you wanted to do that kind of stuff, if you
wanted to do the massive amounts of research or sending
lots of information between one major group and another. Uh,
it meant competing for bandwidth with all these other applications
(06:14):
that everybody else was using. So suddenly this incredibly useful
research tool and academic tool became less useful. Uh not
that it completely was, you know, useless. It's still how
to use. It just wasn't nearly as fast as it
had been because now everybody was on it. Yeah, I
mean there's a lot of commercial traffic now, So all
(06:35):
those other packets were going back to the whole Information
super Highway name that we used to give the Internet.
I don't know how many of our listeners actually remember that,
um I do, but the Information super Highway. Think of
it like that. Like originally the super highway was allowed
only allowed traffic from ten percent of the population on
(06:56):
that highway, and it was lanes wide, exact, there's no
one in the way, you can go as fast as
you want, there's nothing to worry about. And then the
highway opens up for everyone something You've got traffic jams everywhere.
That's essentially what we're talking about here, and that's that's
why everybody was talking about this in the mid nineties
about how the Internet was going to implode under the
weight of all the traffic. Well, it's one of those things. Actually,
(07:19):
I think the the information super Highway at that point
was maybe four lanes wide. But that's the thing, you know, people,
you don't really see this, but as the Internet grows
in traffic, they're also adding on more lanes of super highway.
UM so, I mean it's it's really grown to handle
more traffic as time has worn on. It's just that,
(07:42):
you know, there's infinitely more traffic going on. It's just
like in the real physical world. Yeah, exactly. So so
what's the solution. Well, the solution is to build a
different set of roads for just the universities. UM. Back
in October one in Chicago, a group of they for
university they had salmon for lunch. Thirty four universities. UH
(08:07):
representatives from thirty four universities met in a Chicago hotel
and they committed to this idea of forming an organization
at that time called Internet Too. And the organization would
also be dedicated in to finding ways of dedicating specific
resources to the academic research world and uh academic and research,
(08:29):
I should say, just academic research and UH so that
that kind of set the ball in motion. It wasn't
until we started actually seeing corporations kind of join into
on us and uh and provide the hardware that was
gonna be necessary. You know, you had to have grant
money come in to fund it. And you might say, well,
what how does this benefit the rest of us? I mean,
(08:51):
I'm not, for instance, I haven't been in college in
a long time, So how do I benefit from this
Internet Too thing? While they're a lot of different ways
we benefit, one very simple one is that Internet Too.
You can think of it as the way the way
Internet to his website describes it. You can think of
their network as being four to five years ahead of
(09:12):
our current technology that we use on the Internet right now.
And then, in a on to our sister podcast, High
Speed Stuff, I think of its sort of as a
test track for the Internet. So yeah, you can think
of it like, well, so their technology is why why
don't we have that technology in a more widespread, universal
kind of of of approach. Well, the reason is that
(09:36):
this Internet Too is being used as a as a
test track. You can't be sure that everything is going
to work. In fact, most stuff isn't going to work.
The first time out, you're gonna have to tweak it,
and you're gonna have to adjust it, and I'll and
that's eventually the the successes are going to trickle down
into everything that we use. It's just gonna take a
(09:58):
few years. But the the fact that this exists allows
researchers to create new applications, new uh coding. I mean,
there's all sorts of things that they can do you
over this network that they couldn't do over the regular Internet. Yeah,
and it's you know, now that the Internet is such
a big part of all of our lives. Um, if
(10:18):
they tried to, you know, throw the switch and convert
everybody over to a new technology overnight, it's bound to
take out a large section of the Internet worldwide. And
that's you know, that's the reason for needing to keep
that in a separate test environment. But there are already
some things that that we're seeing, you know, that have
been developed from Internet to technology. I mean, they were
(10:40):
pioneers in i p v six technology, which is the
newer version of the Internet Protocol address UM. Basically, to
accommodate the number of people on the Internet, you have
to have you know, everybody's got an address where your
information is sent, and uh, you know, there are so
many people and only so many I P numbers that
(11:01):
they can use, so they basically tacked on a couple
of octets on the uh the IP address. I mean
I'm oversimplifying here, but this is one of the things
that they tried out on Internet to was, you know,
will I PV six work? And uh, you know, now
gradually it's sort of making us way over into the
real world. Yeah, and you're you know, we we talked
(11:23):
about the the speed of this network. You might be
wondering how fast is it. Well, the backbone can support
speeds of up to a hundred gigabits per second. That's
a little fast. That's amazingly lightning fast. If for a comparison,
I looked up Verizon's FiOS service Yes, Yes, which comes
in several different tiers. The first one, I believe is
(11:46):
fifteen megabits per second. That's megabits as opposed to gigabits.
You know, we're talking about orders of magnitude here. Uh.
And the fastest that I saw, which may not be
Verizon's fastest because I just did this very quickly, was
fifty combits per second, which is still tiny. Now. Now
(12:06):
the hundred gigabits per second we're talking about, that's the backbone.
That's just the information being able to travel across the
backbone of this network. The interfaces that people are actually
using do not go that fast, um, although they're trying
to support interfaces that would support go up to around
forty gigabits per second right now, as I recall UM,
(12:26):
which is again lightning fast. And you may say, well,
why do they need speeds that high, Well, some of
the applications are using involve enormous numbers and calculations. For example,
the Large Hadron Collider when it finally goes online, assuming
it ever does, uh, that data is going to be
shared with scientists from around the world. And it's not
(12:49):
just going to be the people who are at the
CERN facility. They're gonna be other laboratories. They're going to
use this information to really take a look at what
makes our universe tick. So we're talking about big, big
questions here, which coincidentally require big big numbers when you're
when you're crunching the data, and so all of the
(13:09):
information that's coming out is going to take up huge
amounts of bandwidth and so without a dedicated network, uh,
it would take ages for that information to get to
where it's going. Another thing they work on on Internet
too is middleware. They have a middleware initiative and that
Uh it's not very sexy, I gotta admit. UM basically
(13:31):
it's a it's a type of software, but it negotiates connections.
I mean it involves UM things like authentication, identification, security,
UM directories. It's the kind of thing that will help you,
you know, get one packet to the other end of
the network and back, uh, you know, more smoothly and
and securely than it would necessarily using an UM less
(13:55):
adept technology. And eventually we can hope to see the
sort of network capability extend to our Internet. Again, when
we're talking about why is in our Internet as fast
as there's there, don't not to make an US versus
them sort of thing. But for Internet to you've got
(14:17):
to remember this is going to some very specific schools
and some resource organizations, and that's about it. So the
network does not have to be as broad as it
would have to be for consumers. It doesn't have to
stretch into various neighborhoods it's going to very specific locations,
so when you're laying the fiber, you don't have to
lay it everywhere like you would with a more widespread approach.
(14:38):
So you know, to to try and develop that for
an entire nation would be very expensive. And and that's
another thing is that there's a lot of money that's
going into this project, and it's being raised by various foundations, organizations, donations,
some of the companies are donating time and uh um
(15:01):
resources to this, so it's not like a more widespread
nationwide fiber network is going to just pop up out
of nowhere. And the the Internet Too, is a nonprofit
organization too, so it's uh you know, completely dedicated to
research and Internet research. So now grant this hasn't stopped
(15:23):
people from trying to use it to do naughty things.
I read a report about students at various universities who
had created a site on Internet too that or they
didn't create it, they were they were using a site
that was a file sharing site meant to share research files,
(15:47):
that sort of thing, to distribute videos and music and
things of that nature. So again, you know, once again,
you you've got the fast network access. There's someone's going
to use it to download a movie. And uh, of
course at that speed you can get a high definition
film and a couple of minutes. It's not the same
thing as if you were dialing up over Kazaar or something.
(16:12):
So yeah, the I'll imagine if it takes you a
couple of hours to download a film, whether you're doing
so legitimately or otherwise, we'll only take you a minute
or two maybe using this connection. I can see why
some people were tempted to do that, although you know
it's not what it was intended for. No, not at all,
(16:32):
but it happens. That's about all of God. Oh good,
because I'm done too. But that, of course brings us
to listener me. Yes, and this listener mail comes from
j s a k A Mac Daddy, Chris and Jonathan.
(16:54):
I have listened to every one of your podcasts, which
get me through the daily monotony of commuting two and
from work. I have an English literature degree, but gravitate
to all things tech. I heard your challenge or a
Spencerian Sonnet, so I felt compelled to give one a whirl.
I am an avid Mac user, but use Windows XP
Pro at work. I do love my Max, my MacBook,
(17:17):
my wife's MacBook, and my daughter's iMac all work great
with a virtual Windows machine on them. But I can
assure you that Microsoft isn't the monster that most Mac
freaks make them out to be. I'd be lost without
Microsoft Office for both Mac and Windows. And so here's
the sonnets, the war between the giants, waging a war
of Apples and Windows. Who'll win their dumb be all
(17:40):
and ind all brawl competing for markets? Frustration grows the
more you see and here, the more you stall. The
world was made for Windows, after all, but Max are rising,
gaining every day. For Apple needs no quarter. After all,
we buy more iPods and i phones today for tomorrow.
Apples won't go away, but find a niche it every
market share and soon, well soon will their trails converge.
(18:04):
As you say, so they both will operate in the air,
both move along the same old dusty road, fighting so
hard for their tragger load. Thanks JS, that's awesome. The
Apples versus Uh Microsoft in in poletic form. I liked it.
I like you very much, and I agree. Uh. You know,
Microsoft Office for Mac is. I think it's good. I
(18:26):
think it's a fantastic product. Well there you go. So
it's got the endorsement from Mr Blatt endorse anything. I
just I like it. Yeah, so send those checks to
how Sta care of Johnson Strickland. Hey, I'm just I
don't want you to get overwhelmed by mail. Uh So
this is one of several sonnets I've been sent in.
(18:48):
We are going to eventually get through all of them.
I think it's amazing that our listeners have done this,
And thank you all. Thank you JS for listending this one.
And if any of you have any comments, question and
epic poems uh I don't know, um jokes, you could
write us our email addresses tech stuff at how stuff
(19:09):
works dot com. Just don't throw us any tech support
issues because you're not likely to get the help you
need at the speed with which you need it. Yes,
no tech support requests please, because chances are we have
no idea what the heck went wrong with your iPod
unless you dropped down the toilet, in which case you
need to get a new one at any rate. If
(19:30):
you want to learn more about the Internet and computers
and things that interact with the Internet and computers, I
highly recommend this great website really, what is it how
stuff Works dot com? Oh my god, Yes, it's fantastic
and we will talk to you again really soon for
moral this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
(19:51):
stuff Works dot com? And be sure to check out
the new tech stuff blog now on the House Stuff
Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve cameras. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how Stuff Looks dot Coming hither everybody,
and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette.
I'm an editor here at how Stuff works dot com,
and as usual, I have sitting next to me senior
(00:21):
writer Jonathan Strickland. Hid ho, Okay, that's a new one. Yeah.
I like to bust on a new one once in
a while to keep you on your toes. All right, then,
uh so let's see. Um. Yeah, I got some special
to start this one off. You know what's coming. We
all know what's coming. Listen. It's listener mail, all right,
listener man, you got it. We're happy now, Okay, that's
(00:48):
oh all right, I'm just stunned. Yeah, I'm sure our
listeners are too. Okay. This one comes from Scotty. Scotty
says I would like to know more about the Internet
to project. There's a website, but not that much to tail.
Thank you, Thank you Scotty for that listener me, I
really appreciate it. That was so we thought we'd talked
about internet too. Oh right, do you want to jump. Yeah,
(01:11):
I think maybe, uh, I shouldn't have written it down
as Internet t o O. So this this mean I
need to start. Yeah, it's funny that you brought that up, Scotty,
because this is one of these things that you know
people here about from time to time, but nobody ever
really talks about. It was supposed to be this big
(01:31):
thing back in the in the mid nineties, because everybody
was talking about the imminent collapse of the Internet and
how it's all going to blow up, and how the
educational users of the Internet, we're all gonna go off
and start their own thing called Internet Too and you
can keep this Internet. We're gonna have our own. I'm
(01:51):
taking my ball and going home. So yeah, it didn't
exactly work out that way, but there is still an
Internet Too. Yeah. So there are a lot of miscau
receptions about it, mainly because, again, let's Chris pointed out,
not very many people chat about it that much. So
Internet Too it's it's it's two different things. First of all,
if you're thinking like there's a super secret Internet that
(02:14):
exists below our current Internet, that's not what Internet Too is. Now,
that's something else. Entirely we can't talk about it. We
can't that's the dark net. We can't go into that.
So anyway, the Internet too, that's it's really a consortium. Yes,
it's a group of universities, research institutes, corporations that have
got had They've come together to create an environment wherein uh,
(02:38):
these these different organizations can utilize a network, a very
high speed network for purposes of research and sharing knowledge,
that kind of thing. So sort of the same thing
that the original and you know what, the original intent
of the Internet was, go way back, and there there
is it is kind of from what I could tell
(02:58):
in my research, Um, there is kind of a second
Internet along the lines of the regular Internet that they use.
They all have high speed fiber optic connections. But it's
not a separate internet. Um, so they are. They are dedicated,
it's dedicated hardware what you're talking about. Yeah, but it
is part of the Internet as a whole. It's just
(03:19):
that they are the only ones who have access to that. Yeah,
they were talking about very special routers. We're talking about
special a special backbone, a fiber backbone for this this
Internet that stretches thirteen thousand five miles if I remember correctly,
from my little sheet of facts, and um the kilometer
(03:39):
conversion not because I did it just before we came
in here. So so I'm sorry to all of our
friends in other nations, but we're talking about United States
centric thing anyways. So Internet to the the idea here
is that we they these research organizations. Let's let's take
a quick step back into the way back machine and
talk about the origins of the Internet and UH and
(04:03):
networks in general. If you go all the way back
to our panet, you're talking about several research institutions uh
networking together and sending information from one massive computer to another.
And the one of the ultimate goals here was being
able to share knowledge at really really rapid speeds. And
uh so the Internet for a long time, that's really
(04:24):
what was all about. It was mostly schools, universities, research
organizations that was that used these these lines in order
to share information and open up databases so that places
that had a really rich amount of information on a
specific subject could share it with everybody instead of it
just being centralized in one location. Yep. As a matter
(04:46):
of fact, the first time I used the Internet, which
was nineteen and a half years ago. Now, um, you
know that that's you know, nobody had heard of the internet.
I mean people had heard of the Internet, but uh,
you like, if you went up to somebody on the
street and said, hey, you know, what kind of Internet
connection you have at home, they wouldn't have because they
wouldn't have really known about it and what it was
(05:07):
and what it was supposed to be for. But everybody,
and you know, the college where I went, would have
email connections and uh you know, could use chat and
you know, basic basic functions protocols in two colors, green
and black. I have all sorts of colors here. Uh So, yeah,
the that was the the original kind of purpose for
(05:31):
the Internet. And then of course the Internet opened up
to everybody, and then came the World Wide Web eventually,
which again originated as sort of a project on this
this college university environment. But once the Web opened up
to everybody and the Internet really opened up to everybody,
suddenly you've got this this great network. But it's being
(05:54):
used for lots of different things, not just research and
and sending information or or calculating law numbers. And if
you wanted to do that kind of stuff, if you
wanted to do the massive amounts of research or sending
lots of information between one major group and another. Uh,
it meant competing for bandwidth with all these other applications
(06:14):
that everybody else was using. So suddenly this incredibly useful
research tool and academic tool became less useful. Uh not
that it completely was, you know, useless. It's still how
to use. It just wasn't nearly as fast as it
had been because now everybody was on it. Yeah, I
mean there's a lot of commercial traffic now, So all
(06:35):
those other packets were going back to the whole Information
super Highway name that we used to give the Internet.
I don't know how many of our listeners actually remember that,
um I do, but the Information super Highway. Think of
it like that. Like originally the super highway was allowed
only allowed traffic from ten percent of the population on
(06:56):
that highway, and it was lanes wide, exact, there's no
one in the way, you can go as fast as
you want, there's nothing to worry about. And then the
highway opens up for everyone something You've got traffic jams everywhere.
That's essentially what we're talking about here, and that's that's
why everybody was talking about this in the mid nineties
about how the Internet was going to implode under the
weight of all the traffic. Well, it's one of those things. Actually,
(07:19):
I think the the information super Highway at that point
was maybe four lanes wide. But that's the thing, you know, people,
you don't really see this, but as the Internet grows
in traffic, they're also adding on more lanes of super highway.
UM so, I mean it's it's really grown to handle
more traffic as time has worn on. It's just that,
(07:42):
you know, there's infinitely more traffic going on. It's just
like in the real physical world. Yeah, exactly. So so
what's the solution. Well, the solution is to build a
different set of roads for just the universities. UM. Back
in October one in Chicago, a group of they for
university they had salmon for lunch. Thirty four universities. UH
(08:07):
representatives from thirty four universities met in a Chicago hotel
and they committed to this idea of forming an organization
at that time called Internet Too. And the organization would
also be dedicated in to finding ways of dedicating specific
resources to the academic research world and uh academic and research,
(08:29):
I should say, just academic research and UH so that
that kind of set the ball in motion. It wasn't
until we started actually seeing corporations kind of join into
on us and uh and provide the hardware that was
gonna be necessary. You know, you had to have grant
money come in to fund it. And you might say, well,
what how does this benefit the rest of us? I mean,
(08:51):
I'm not, for instance, I haven't been in college in
a long time, So how do I benefit from this
Internet Too thing? While they're a lot of different ways
we benefit, one very simple one is that Internet Too.
You can think of it as the way the way
Internet to his website describes it. You can think of
their network as being four to five years ahead of
(09:12):
our current technology that we use on the Internet right now.
And then, in a on to our sister podcast, High
Speed Stuff, I think of its sort of as a
test track for the Internet. So yeah, you can think
of it like, well, so their technology is why why
don't we have that technology in a more widespread, universal
kind of of of approach. Well, the reason is that
(09:36):
this Internet Too is being used as a as a
test track. You can't be sure that everything is going
to work. In fact, most stuff isn't going to work.
The first time out, you're gonna have to tweak it,
and you're gonna have to adjust it, and I'll and
that's eventually the the successes are going to trickle down
into everything that we use. It's just gonna take a
(09:58):
few years. But the the fact that this exists allows
researchers to create new applications, new uh coding. I mean,
there's all sorts of things that they can do you
over this network that they couldn't do over the regular Internet. Yeah,
and it's you know, now that the Internet is such
a big part of all of our lives. Um, if
(10:18):
they tried to, you know, throw the switch and convert
everybody over to a new technology overnight, it's bound to
take out a large section of the Internet worldwide. And
that's you know, that's the reason for needing to keep
that in a separate test environment. But there are already
some things that that we're seeing, you know, that have
been developed from Internet to technology. I mean, they were
(10:40):
pioneers in i p v six technology, which is the
newer version of the Internet Protocol address UM. Basically, to
accommodate the number of people on the Internet, you have
to have you know, everybody's got an address where your
information is sent, and uh, you know, there are so
many people and only so many I P numbers that
(11:01):
they can use, so they basically tacked on a couple
of octets on the uh the IP address. I mean
I'm oversimplifying here, but this is one of the things
that they tried out on Internet to was, you know,
will I PV six work? And uh, you know, now
gradually it's sort of making us way over into the
real world. Yeah, and you're you know, we we talked
(11:23):
about the the speed of this network. You might be
wondering how fast is it. Well, the backbone can support
speeds of up to a hundred gigabits per second. That's
a little fast. That's amazingly lightning fast. If for a comparison,
I looked up Verizon's FiOS service Yes, Yes, which comes
in several different tiers. The first one, I believe is
(11:46):
fifteen megabits per second. That's megabits as opposed to gigabits.
You know, we're talking about orders of magnitude here. Uh.
And the fastest that I saw, which may not be
Verizon's fastest because I just did this very quickly, was
fifty combits per second, which is still tiny. Now. Now
(12:06):
the hundred gigabits per second we're talking about, that's the backbone.
That's just the information being able to travel across the
backbone of this network. The interfaces that people are actually
using do not go that fast, um, although they're trying
to support interfaces that would support go up to around
forty gigabits per second right now, as I recall UM,
(12:26):
which is again lightning fast. And you may say, well,
why do they need speeds that high, Well, some of
the applications are using involve enormous numbers and calculations. For example,
the Large Hadron Collider when it finally goes online, assuming
it ever does, uh, that data is going to be
shared with scientists from around the world. And it's not
(12:49):
just going to be the people who are at the
CERN facility. They're gonna be other laboratories. They're going to
use this information to really take a look at what
makes our universe tick. So we're talking about big, big
questions here, which coincidentally require big big numbers when you're
when you're crunching the data, and so all of the
(13:09):
information that's coming out is going to take up huge
amounts of bandwidth and so without a dedicated network, uh,
it would take ages for that information to get to
where it's going. Another thing they work on on Internet
too is middleware. They have a middleware initiative and that
Uh it's not very sexy, I gotta admit. UM basically
(13:31):
it's a it's a type of software, but it negotiates connections.
I mean it involves UM things like authentication, identification, security,
UM directories. It's the kind of thing that will help you,
you know, get one packet to the other end of
the network and back, uh, you know, more smoothly and
and securely than it would necessarily using an UM less
(13:55):
adept technology. And eventually we can hope to see the
sort of network capability extend to our Internet. Again, when
we're talking about why is in our Internet as fast
as there's there, don't not to make an US versus
them sort of thing. But for Internet to you've got
(14:17):
to remember this is going to some very specific schools
and some resource organizations, and that's about it. So the
network does not have to be as broad as it
would have to be for consumers. It doesn't have to
stretch into various neighborhoods it's going to very specific locations,
so when you're laying the fiber, you don't have to
lay it everywhere like you would with a more widespread approach.
(14:38):
So you know, to to try and develop that for
an entire nation would be very expensive. And and that's
another thing is that there's a lot of money that's
going into this project, and it's being raised by various foundations, organizations, donations,
some of the companies are donating time and uh um
(15:01):
resources to this, so it's not like a more widespread
nationwide fiber network is going to just pop up out
of nowhere. And the the Internet Too, is a nonprofit
organization too, so it's uh you know, completely dedicated to
research and Internet research. So now grant this hasn't stopped
(15:23):
people from trying to use it to do naughty things.
I read a report about students at various universities who
had created a site on Internet too that or they
didn't create it, they were they were using a site
that was a file sharing site meant to share research files,
(15:47):
that sort of thing, to distribute videos and music and
things of that nature. So again, you know, once again,
you you've got the fast network access. There's someone's going
to use it to download a movie. And uh, of
course at that speed you can get a high definition
film and a couple of minutes. It's not the same
thing as if you were dialing up over Kazaar or something.
(16:12):
So yeah, the I'll imagine if it takes you a
couple of hours to download a film, whether you're doing
so legitimately or otherwise, we'll only take you a minute
or two maybe using this connection. I can see why
some people were tempted to do that, although you know
it's not what it was intended for. No, not at all,
(16:32):
but it happens. That's about all of God. Oh good,
because I'm done too. But that, of course brings us
to listener me. Yes, and this listener mail comes from
j s a k A Mac Daddy, Chris and Jonathan.
(16:54):
I have listened to every one of your podcasts, which
get me through the daily monotony of commuting two and
from work. I have an English literature degree, but gravitate
to all things tech. I heard your challenge or a
Spencerian Sonnet, so I felt compelled to give one a whirl.
I am an avid Mac user, but use Windows XP
Pro at work. I do love my Max, my MacBook,
(17:17):
my wife's MacBook, and my daughter's iMac all work great
with a virtual Windows machine on them. But I can
assure you that Microsoft isn't the monster that most Mac
freaks make them out to be. I'd be lost without
Microsoft Office for both Mac and Windows. And so here's
the sonnets, the war between the giants, waging a war
of Apples and Windows. Who'll win their dumb be all
(17:40):
and ind all brawl competing for markets? Frustration grows the
more you see and here, the more you stall. The
world was made for Windows, after all, but Max are rising,
gaining every day. For Apple needs no quarter. After all,
we buy more iPods and i phones today for tomorrow.
Apples won't go away, but find a niche it every
market share and soon, well soon will their trails converge.
(18:04):
As you say, so they both will operate in the air,
both move along the same old dusty road, fighting so
hard for their tragger load. Thanks JS, that's awesome. The
Apples versus Uh Microsoft in in poletic form. I liked it.
I like you very much, and I agree. Uh. You know,
Microsoft Office for Mac is. I think it's good. I
(18:26):
think it's a fantastic product. Well there you go. So
it's got the endorsement from Mr Blatt endorse anything. I
just I like it. Yeah, so send those checks to
how Sta care of Johnson Strickland. Hey, I'm just I
don't want you to get overwhelmed by mail. Uh So
this is one of several sonnets I've been sent in.
(18:48):
We are going to eventually get through all of them.
I think it's amazing that our listeners have done this,
And thank you all. Thank you JS for listending this one.
And if any of you have any comments, question and
epic poems uh I don't know, um jokes, you could
write us our email addresses tech stuff at how stuff
(19:09):
works dot com. Just don't throw us any tech support
issues because you're not likely to get the help you
need at the speed with which you need it. Yes,
no tech support requests please, because chances are we have
no idea what the heck went wrong with your iPod
unless you dropped down the toilet, in which case you
need to get a new one at any rate. If
(19:30):
you want to learn more about the Internet and computers
and things that interact with the Internet and computers, I
highly recommend this great website really, what is it how
stuff Works dot com? Oh my god, Yes, it's fantastic
and we will talk to you again really soon for
moral this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
(19:51):
stuff Works dot com? And be sure to check out
the new tech stuff blog now on the House Stuff
Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve cameras. It's ready, are you
TechStuff News
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Karah Preiss
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