Skynet

[1clue]

You made me laugh out loud.

2011 the year of the conspiracy theory.

Right behind 2010, 2009, 2008...

[3Miro]

Skynet is a backup plan if the Mayans aren't able to sabotage CERN in creating a black whole to eat up the universe...

Yea, it is all on the murals of Denver airport. Glad to see someone else being able to see the truth out there ...

[Shpongle]

I think op may be referring to this http://www.networkworld.com/news/201...ber-range.html

[Bandit]

I'm a Comcast customer. I know what you're talking about, but that's not a special network at all, only a newer one with higher bandwidth.

I was in college when the Internet was made available to the public. I've seen endless changes in speed and features over the years. I remember working for a company who paid about $6000 a month to get a 2400 baud leased line, and thought it was a great deal.

There exists no "free" internet. All you get is a bunch of networks, each with an owner, and some of which allow traffic to cross it to go from one point to another for a fee.

There is no "cloud" that matches what you see in network diagrams. That cloud was shorthand for some network that you either didn't know the details of, or that you didn't want to write down the details of.

As for charging a higher fee, they can't charge too much or nobody will buy into it. With an ISP like Comcast it's really simple to understand. If you can't convince consumers that your network is better than some other network, then you don't get customers. Out of business. The end. As newer equipment comes online, the older "slow" networks will vanish, just because the ISP chooses not to sell access to them anymore. Eventually they will force the existing users who remain to change or they will cripple their bandwidth until they have no choice but to change or cancel service.

With a private company, which creates an internet of their own for internal use, it becomes a bit more complicated.

Trust me I know what your talking about I used to work for one of the first ISPs in the state here back when you was in college.

But back on to what we was talking about, many larger companies such as Microsoft and many many more plus a large amount of congress here in the US are fighting against it making it illegal to charge anything extra other then a standard network usage/maintenance fee that they charge local ISPs. See many folks dont understand how the system works. For example here is Mississippi phone companies such a ATT charge extra for long distance service. Which would be acceptable if you make a call that goes onto another companies network. But if ATT owns the networks between here and say Alabama, why do they charge long distance charges for us to make calls to the next county over or state. Simple.. GREED.. It doesnt cost them a red penny more to make any call, anywhere as long as it stays on ATTs network. But its that GREED that they have that makes them think they are entitled to more money, they think they can essentially tax us more. But federal law prohibits this and this is why they wanted to build a separate world wide web.

[Docaltmed]

All I can say is that if the Doctor has to reboot the universe again, I get Amy Pond this time.

[1clue]

...
See many folks dont understand how the system works. For example here is Mississippi phone companies such a ATT charge extra for long distance service. Which would be acceptable if you make a call that goes onto another companies network. But if ATT owns the networks between here and say Alabama, why do they charge long distance charges for us to make calls to the next county over or state. Simple.. GREED..

Not nearly so simple as that.

They don't just set up the network and leave it there. Equipment breaks down, somebody digs a hole right where the cable went, protocols change in ways that the hardware doesn't support, normal corrosion of lines happens, and all of that has a cost.

If ATT owns the network then they have people in trucks go out and repair or replace old equipment. If they don't own the network then they pay a fee to somebody who owns the equipment.

Even if you are IBM and you have a line from Rochester MN to Poughkeepsie NY, and absolutely nobody except IBM uses that line, then that line costs you a lot of money to build, and then costs a lot more to maintain. Even if IBM dug the trench and strung the cables themselves. Or bought the satellite, or whatever mechanism it is that transfers the data.

[vehemoth]

2011 the year of the conspiracy theory.

I thought that was 2012

[Eiji Takanaka]

Sorry yes of course....link... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14157975

[Eiji Takanaka]

haha perhaps it was my error, i saw scale model in skim-reading and assumed a full-scale model. My bad.

[Eiji Takanaka]

Apologies for an uncharacteristic error on my behalf , it was not my intention to overhype. None the less i think it has encouraged some interesting discussion, about the internet, in general. =) There is a seperate network i can think of, that connects science experiment 'based' computers together, i cannot remember the exact terminology of it, but its basically a super fast backbone, between various academic societal buildings. That is independent of the 'internet'. For example piping the massive amount of information resulting from the experiments at the LHC in geneve, switzerland, to various other countries and universities around the world. It is perfectly feasible then is it not, that there could be more than one other completely isolated 'internet'. But then i suppose we can easily come back to arguing semantics, define an internet. "internet", "inter-network". More than one interconnecting network. Computer networking in this world is far more complex i think than being able to sum up with 'internet'. If we go back to the osi 7 layer model, then the 'internet' is about layer 4 is it not? (correct me if i'm wrong). Therefore what about the layers and network protocols beneath that? Transport layer/link layer/Hardware e.t.c? I think the 'internet' is a very fickle, ambiguous tag for what we call the world wide web. Interesting discussion anyways, thanks for participating guys and gals....=)