The Magical World of Internet, Part 1

Well, this is it. It's time to understand how this magical world called The Internet works. You've seen it, you've used it, in fact, it's been almost an inseparable part of your life. But how well do you exactly know it? Before you'll be so sure with yourself, how if you read through the questions below. If you can get it all right, then you don't really need to read all this post. But if you can't, then you might find this post useful.

How are you able to get your file transferred from one computer to the other which is across the globe

How can you be so sure that those files are going to the right destination, in other words, they don't go to anywhere else?

Early days

First thing first, what is exactly the Internet? Truth be told, it was almost nothing before the 70s era. At that time, the brains at the U.S Department of Defense developed a way to enable them to control the communication throughout the world by creating a worldwide network that could remain operational even if parts of the network were destroyed by military action or sabotage.

Continuous innovation and development by academic community resulted in the beginning of commercial use of the Internet in the late 80s. People started to use service like email and mailing list to exchange informations among themselves. It was not until the early 90s when the world saw the beginning of Internet growth, from only 4 computers at U.S Defense Department to more than 300,000 computers. But this was actually nothing compared to what happened during the 90s. More and more commercial Internet service providers (ISP) were opened. The number of internet hosts (computers directly connected to the Internet) grew from less than a million to almost 100 millions.

Behind All This Drama ...

... were these two: a script called hypertext and the software to translate such script into something we, human being, used to read. Hypertext is basically the way to link the information on one page to other information on other pages. It includes the language of HTML, a language full of set of codes to describe the relationships among the text elements. And to read such coded script, we need a software. Such software presents an HTML document in an easy-to-read format. Those icons, graphics, pictures and everything displayed on your browser window are the result of their works.

The Internet and IKEA

But one question remains: how can these all codes and informations be transferred from one computer to other? One possible analogy (and probably the lamest one) is by comparing the set of the informations as one piece of furniture (say, bed) you just bought from IKEA. As you might probably know, IKEA don't give you the whole set of ready-to-use bed, instead they provide you with all the necessary parts to construct the bed on your own.

Let's assume that the delivery guy from IKEA can go to your place by several ways, e.g PIE, BKE, etc. And to make our analogy agrees with the actual fact, let's assume again that there are 8 delivery guys carrying 8 parts of your bed. They all go by using different route, but have the same destination, which is your place.

The assumption I made isn't just for nothing. Imagine, two of eight available routes are blocked due to traffics or accident. If your bed comes in one piece, and the poor delivery guy has no idea whether the route he's about to take is blocked, then chance is you won't get your bed ready by the time you expect it to be. But if it comes in pieces, then at least you still get something (although it doesn't do much for yourself) because some of delivery guys arrive at your place in time.

If you can get what I'm trying to say above, now change the story with the following:

• bed = files,
• bed parts = file chunk,
• delivery guy = routing algorithms,
• the route available = network available,
• bed construction manual = TCP (Transmission Control Protocol),
• your home address = IP address,
• you as the customer who order the bed = user who request the information,
• you as the one who reconstruct bed pieces = software your computer use to display the information.
  

Pretty simple right? It is, but bear in mind, that this isn't totally true. There might be some deviation for the sake of simplicity.

to be continued

The first session: Intro to many new terms

Today's my first E&M Commerce class. Though there's a bit of confusion over how to get to the seminar room where the class took place, I made it there eventually. This course was taught by Prof. Gilbert. I found the way he's teaching the course and how the materials were being discussed very interesting. I hope it will stay this way until the end of it.

Web 2.0

In our first session, Prof. Gilbert introduced us to the concept of Web 2.0. One of my classmate mentioned that basically, it's a term for a phenomenon whereby the Internet has now allowed more and more people to interact with each other through various kinds of features and services, like Flickr or Youtube. The keyword here is interaction.

To be honest, even though I've been using such services for quite long time, I've never heard this term before. I was wondering whether there has been any Web 1.0 or Web 0.0 before people had Web 2.0. Thanks to Google, I learnt that there is actually term Web 1.0, though it wasn't quite as popular as Web 2.0 (and I have suspicion that it might as well be created after term Web 2.0 was born). But that doesn't really matter at all.

Back to Web 2.0. This term refers to all the Internet-based services which enable people to publish whatever they wish to - pictures, video, articles - and make it viewable by anyone. It comprises a lot of services; notable ones are wikis, blogs and social-networking sites, like MySpace or Friendster.

Wiki

Something special about wiki was being discussed. I used to know only one wiki, which is Wikipedia (being an engineering student doesn't guarantee you to be a tech-savvy). Apparently, wiki is more general than a free encyclopedia. It covers all website which allows the user to add, remove or edit its content to make it improved and updated.

To think about it, it actually does make more sense. I mean, old-fashioned encyclopedia only relies on those bookworms, journalists, or in general, the authors. Readers have a limited access to make changes or give updated information about particular articles even though it can lead to articles with better quality. What doesn't sound so good as well is that we have to pay for it too.

Wiki is totally in the opposite side of it. With more and more people now connected to the Internet, more wiki users registered, it's only a matter of time until all publisher-version encyclopedias begin to disappear. Such paradigm, where the invention or appearance of new technology takes over the market for the existing service or product, are being discussed next. It is called Disruptive Technologies.

Disruptive Technologies

Again, another new term for me. I have a feeling that it's not only happening this week. There will be more and more new terms for me to learn during the entire course. Hopefully, I can understand as much as possible.

As mentioned above, Disruptive Technologies happens when the use of new technology alter the way people live their life, or to be specific, do the business. People start to look for easier, most efficient, least costly, and better alternatives offered by the new technology.

After he explained the idea behind it, Prof. Gilbert asked the class to come up with an example. I was in a complete blur of what it is. Short discussion with Damar and Setiawan, my classmates, resulted in a quite silly example: Internet auction like eBay or Yahoo! Auction. We barely had any logical reasons to answer Prof's question on how or why eBay might possibly destroy certain industries. Well, there's always first time for everything, right? And who says it has to be correct? Enough. I think I let my over-rationalization way of thinking do too much of the talking.

VoIP

Fortunately, we all have different ways of coming up with the examples. One of my classmates suggested VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol. Now, this one I've heard and used before. The service is called Skype. It basically uses internet connection to make phone call to other Skype users. At the time I was using the service (around two years ago), I was also able to make a call to the fixed or mobile line users, but it's not for free. Now, people begin to develop a new version of VoIP where people can make a call for free, or at least at lower cost than the traditional phone.

Prof Gilbert says that the potentially losing side is probably the telecom service provider. Since the biggest player in the business here in Singapore is SingTel, Prof asked us to imagine ourselves as SingTel. What will we do if we were them? One possible strategy, which actually has been taken by SingTel is to sell their service in bundles, or lending from its competitor's name: Hub of StarHub. SingTel is now promoting their new service called SingTel Generation Mio. It incorporates all telecom and internet services from fixed and mobile line to broadband connection.

I just saw the TV ad on Channel 5 this evening while watching Prison Break and though I don't have deep background on this area, I must say that it's the right thing to do, even though it's not an original idea. Kudos for StarHub for being ahead from SingTel.

Web 2.0 picture taken from here.

SingTel Mio picture taken from here.