Shocking Pink ([info]fionnghuala) wrote,
@ 2008-06-02 23:54:00
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Current mood: demanding

ARPAnetz

   Despite all the hype, technoscience is not the Greatest Story
   Ever Told, but it is playing powerfully to large, widely 
   distributed audiences.
- DH

Have just been reading Donna Haraway's thought-provoking thow-away comments (can that woman do no wrong?) about the implications of the internet originating in military contexts, then NSFnet and university contexts, etc, etc. And suddenly I realised, I have heard this ancient history story a million times, but I have no idea about the infrastructure of the internet right now. What computers does it run on? Who do they belong to? How is it funded? How come we hear tons about google and microsoft and gang their hold on the internet, but never anything about this material stuff?

Then I realised you wise lot on my friends list are sure to know the answers to these questions. So I am asking you...

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[info]doctor_nemesis
2008-06-03 08:02 am UTC (link)
I'd have thought that would be a relatively easy piece of research for you, what with the internet! He he.

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[info]crocodilewings
2008-06-03 11:39 am UTC (link)
This might get boring. The short answer is "private industry". The long answer is...well, long.

In this country, all the physical cables and most of the high-end routing equipment that makes up the physical infrastructure of the internet is owned privately by telecoms companies. If you have telephone broadband, or use dialup, you will be using physical infrastructure owned and maintained by BT. You may notice a lot of offers for ISPs say you need a BT line in order to use their service. This is because they're exclusively telephone broadband ISPs. They lease the use of that infrastructure from BT.

Cable infrastructure ownership is a little more competitive following government pseudo-legislation in the 1990s, but is still quite geographical in its constraints. Most of the cable infrastructure in the North West and West Midlands, for example, is owned and maintained by Telewest.

Telewest used to be an ISP and cable service provider, so they'd stick a box in your house and dictate what TV channels you could watch. At this point we need to distinguish between ISP (who give you a box) and telecoms company (who look after and rent out wires in the ground). Most telecoms companies will have their own ISP, but these tend to be distinct bodies under the same company name. The telecoms companies still make money from other ISPs using their infrastructure, and ISPs are exposed to a competitive consumer market, so they get money and we get choice.

All in all, this is actually quite a good system. Consumers exercise choice on who provides their service, but for the sake of consistency the physical infrastructure it runs on shouldn't be subject to that much competition.

Was this actually what you wanted to know?

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[info]fionnghuala
2008-06-03 03:34 pm UTC (link)
Yes, that's very interesting! But I also wondered where the cool stuff actually comes from to go down those wires?

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[info]doctor_nemesis
2008-06-04 07:41 am UTC (link)
I thought you were asking an infrastructure question as well..!

The short answer would be: Potentially any computer connected to the internet, but in reality servers which people pay money to get space/bandwidth on.

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[info]fionnghuala
2008-06-04 12:37 pm UTC (link)
Yes, that's more what I'm getting at, servers, although I'm not even sure that 'server' is the word.

My unsureness is because I don't know exactly what the word 'server' means.

So I am interested in infrastructure, but of the machines that are actually running programs and storing the information. The stuff Rik has mentioned is also very interesting, but I think slightly more accessible. I knew bits of it already.

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[info]doctor_nemesis
2008-06-04 01:40 pm UTC (link)
I think the problem is that you've already answered your own question, which is why it looks like your asking about the physical infrastructure!

Anyone can add a server to the internet, and servers are just a computers. Any computer, doesn't matter as long as you can get a standards compliant network interface on it. Servers are just normally high powered computers.

As for who owns the servers with their programmes and storage, that's where you've answered your own question. Microsoft own MSN/Live/Hotmail, and Google own everything Google, etc.

If you want to know exactly what kind of computers each company uses, then you'd have to scour the technology press to see whose been ordering what, but you'd be disappointed to hear most of them seem to be based on the same boring old technology as your desktop PC. Just better! And lots of them!

As for funding: Google is funded by advertising, as a lot of things are to some extent.

You don't hear about the material stuff, because it's not really of any interest to you. If it was, you'd read the technology press!

Or if it really is of interest to you, start reading the technology press! The Register is a good start, although beware it's not exactly "neutral press". The different authors each have their own differing view points, which can make the site seem psychotic if you read every article!

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[info]fionnghuala
2008-06-04 04:34 pm UTC (link)
So the whole of the internet is run on relatively small scale servers, of which I am somewhat familiar from using university networks ?

---

To say: "this isn't a little known fact, because it's talked about in this very specialist media" doesn't make any sense ;)

That's like saying post-structuralist theory isn't obscure, because you have three books about it in your corridor that I lent you ages ago.

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[info]doctor_nemesis
2008-06-04 05:04 pm UTC (link)
Except that's not what I said at all. I said:

"It's not a hard to find fact, your just not sufficiently interested in finding it."

The internet is littered with well known technology sites, all containing articles about whose bought what and what people think MS and Google are up to with their long term server plans.

Major internet outfits have in fact thousands of physical machines, on a scale far larger than your University IT department could possibly imagine. Although not your Computer Science department, because it's their job to know about these things! They also try and sum the power of their machines in clever ways, so they don't waste a drop of resources...

But the principle is the same as your university internet services! Since your on the user rather than administrator side of the university network divide, I doubt you've had much exposure to their internet serving gubbins, although they might co-exist on the same physical network!

I only have two books by the way!

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[info]fionnghuala
2008-06-04 09:30 pm UTC (link)
Major internet outfits have in fact thousands of physical machines, on a scale far larger than your University IT department could possibly imagine.

This is what I was imagining. I have heard the term 'server farm', which is quite evocative.

So would those be ISPs? So the guts of the internet is run on a relatively small number of ISPs? Which are financed by the people who subscribe to those ISPs ?

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[info]doctor_nemesis
2008-06-05 09:02 am UTC (link)
Relatively few? I suppose so. There must be thousands of ISPs, which is a relatively small number...

But only large ISPs will have servers listed in the hundreds, and small ones might have a dozen.

Google need thousands of servers because they deal with millions of search requests each day and millions of people's e-mail. Same with MS and Yahoo. Facebook needs thousands of servers because of it's millions of users and (to my mind) poor design.

Most ISPs are hosting personal websites that no one looks at! They don't need much power at all in the scheme of things...

The internet is everything you can do over it, and as far as I know, no one company provides all services (do Google or MS do VoIP?). Companies usually have their own servers, and sometimes choose to run their websites, e-mail, etc, from them. So whilst they're getting a physical link from the ISP, they're not using any other facilities.

Your question is massively broad! I'm afraid you won't be able to boil it down to a simple one sentence answer. Sort of like asking "what is the world made of?" Well, geologists can answer you, but for any accuracy they can't in one sentence. It requires a build up of knowledge!

Asking:

"How come we hear tons about google and microsoft and gang their hold on the internet, but never anything about this material stuff?"

Is like asking about cars:

"How come we hear tons about new models of cars coming out, but never hear anything about what's in the factories used to make them?"

There is lots of stuff in the factory, but most people are massively un-interested in what that actually is. They care about the car that comes out! So you don't hear about it. All you hear in mainstream news is if they're building a plant or closing it. Same with Google and it's data centres. That and what is inside both is confidential company stuff, although you still get to hear about it if your interested...

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