"First Internet message" and ...

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Richard Pope

    > Isn't the proper term for my network of computers here at home:
    > internet

It depends on what's inside it.

An 'internet' is a collection of disparate networks tied together with packet
switches which examine the internet-layer headers of the packets passing
through them (such boxes are now known as 'routers'). The "internet layer"
doesn't appear in the ISO 7-layer model, since the concept didn't appear
until after that was done; but you can imagine it as layer '3A', crammed in
between 3 ('Network') and 4 ('Transport').

Note that there are a number of networking protocol families that include the
internet concept; CHAOS, PUP, XNS and DECnet among them (although there are
several versions of DECnet and I no longer remember the details of most of
them, so take that one with the proverbial grain, but several had internets).

Does does the network in your house use router(s) to tie it together? If so,
it's an internet; if not, no. If you have a wireless hub, connected to a CATV
modem, you probably have a small piece of 'the Internet' in your house. (See
below.)

Note that there are still internets (and networks) which are not connected to
the Internet - Google for "air gap".


    > and the term : Internet the proper term for the worldwide collection of
    > networked computers?

Originally 'the Internet' was the large TCP/IP internet centered around the
ARPANET, and later the NSFNET.

These days, the concept is more diffuse - there was some discussion recently
on the internet-history list:

  http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/

about it, but I'm too lazy to track down the exact messages.

	Noel