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MAIN MENU: CALENDAR SYLLABUS DISCUSSION ADMINISTRATION
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Congratulations to the Fall 2001 class for an excellent semester. eCommerce will return next year.

 

L E C T U R E   N O T E S
September 4, 2001

 

[ materials ]

 

 

Technology for the Digital Lawyer I:
The Importance of History

 

1. Basic Design Choices and their Importance

2. Key Moments in the Development of the Internet

3. The Future of History: Administering the Evolving 'Net

 

 

 

Basic Design Choices & their Importance

 

Why were these choices made? What results flow from them?

 

  1. "Open" architecture. Each network (i.e., set of computers) linked to the net would be independently managed and configured -- as long as it communicated properly with the net, it was allowed on the net.



  2. "End-to-End" networking. Communications would be on a best effort basis. If a packet didn't make it to the final destination, it would shortly be retransmitted from the source.



  3. Decentralized control. There would be no global control at the operations level.

 

 

 

Key Moments in the Development of the Internet

 

1.   What was the "real" reason for developing the following technologies:

(a) computer networks

(b) packet switching

When and why did they happen? Who paid for it?

 

2.   Consider the Internet of the mid-1980s. What was it like? Did the various networks interconnect well?

How did the organizers (who were they?) successfully complete the following (and why are they important):

(a) standardization on TCP/IP as the basic internetworking protocol

(b) develop greater private investment (and decrease importance of Federal funding)

 

3. Why did the Internet "take off" in the early 1990s? Was there a particular person or thing that made it happen?

 

 

 

The Future of History: Administering the Evolving 'Net

 

A note on the role of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in current Interent administration.

 

Hypothetical: Assume we're running out of IP address space. An engineer develops TCP/IP, Version 2, which solves this problem. Now what? How do we implement this fix?

Now change the hypo: say Version 2 actually allows for unique identification of the person sending each packet. How does this change the task?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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