An architect’s view of Internet

An architect’s view of Internet

It’s general, symmetric, a network ...no trees

Control and operation of the network

It’s like the world-wide phone system...(1920 -

It’s like UNIBUS (c1970 -1985)

It’s like Ethernet (c1978 - ??)

It enables SNAP--a world, scaleable computer

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Notes:

As I said, Internet fits my ideal as a wonderful structure. Its general, symmetric, a network and robust. Control is distributed and its size, geography and bandwidth are scaleable.

It's like the world-wide phone system that Theodore Vail formed in the early 1900s under the banner of one system and universal service. It connects any phone anywhere in the world in what is almost a compatible system.

It also reminds me of a system we invented in 1970, called the Unibus to connect computing components to form computers. This is how most all computers are built now.

It's like Ethernet for connecting computers in a local area network.

Finally, it will enable SNAP, a scalable network and platform architecture that Jim Gray and I believe can be built for a world-size scaleable computer. So the network will be the computer, not a slogan.