Week 7 reading notes

How Internet Infrastructure Works
By Jeff Tyson
(http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm/printable)

This article basically explained in simple terms how the internet works, how it is essentially a series of connected networks. It talked about how companies attach their own networks to the internet, and how internet networks rely on Network Access Points (NAPs), backbones, and routers to communicate with each other. It went into details about how routers work, and what their purpose is – making sure information gets to where it needs to be, and keeping information from going where it isn’t needed. This is how information is sent to separate networks – it joins two networks together, passing information from one to the next.

More quotes:
“Internet Backbone:
Today there are many companies that operate their own high-capacity backbones, and all of them interconnect at various NAPs around the world. In this way, everyone on the Internet, no matter where they are and what company they use, is able to talk to everyone else on the planet. The entire Internet is a gigantic, sprawling agreement between companies to intercommunicate freely.”

“The IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is the language that computers use to communicate over the Internet. A protocol is the pre-defined way that someone who wants to use a service talks with that service. The "someone" could be a person, but more often it is a computer program like a Web browser.”

“In 1983, the University of Wisconsin created the Domain Name System (DNS), which maps text names to IP addresses automatically. This way you only need to remember www.howstuffworks.com, for example, instead of HowStuffWorks.com's IP address.”

“Internet servers make the Internet possible. All of the machines on the Internet are either servers or clients. The machines that provide services to other machines are servers. And the machines that are used to connect to those services are clients. There are Web servers, e-mail servers, FTP servers and so on serving the needs of Internet users all over the world.”

“Any server machine makes its services available using numbered ports -- one for each service that is available on the server.”

“Once a client has connected to a service on a particular port, it accesses the service using a specific protocol. Protocols are often text and simply describe how the client and server will have their conversation. Every Web server on the Internet conforms to the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).”

I liked how this article was apparently aimed toward readers without possibly a lot of knowledge about the terms and processes. How the internet works seems pretty abstract to me – it’s not a physical thing like a letter being mailed from one place to another, it’s information being sent invisibly across great amounts of space in small amounts of time. If you’re like me and still have a hard time wrapping your head around that huge concept, it seems almost like magic – clicking on things or typing in words, making things appear on your screen intangibly and instantaneously from nothingness. This article did a good job of describing how exactly the internet works to retrieve and communicate information from network to network without getting too bogged down in technical terms that might become confusing.

*&*

Andrew K. Pace. “Dismantling Integrated Library Systems,” Library Journal, vol 129 Issue 2, p34-36. 2/1/2004
(https://sremote.pitt.edu/ehost/,DanaInfo=web.ebscohost.com+detail?vid=2&hid=105&sid=3f9c9661-29b4-4cd7-be06-47e0a0b294c7%40sessionmgr104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=hch&AN=12125485)

The link in the syllabus didn’t work, but I was able to find the article through Pitt’s ULS article search.

This article talked about how libraries are dismantling older systems and creating new ones “out of frustration with the inflexible and nonextensible technology of their proprietary systems.”

More quotes:
“Librarians and their vendors have created a tougher world for themselves, with interoperability the only solution.”

“In the newly dismantled library system, many expect that new modules will communicate with old ones, products from different vendors will work together, and a suite of existing standards will make distributed systems seem transparently whole. But in an ironic twist, most of the touted interoperability is between a vendor's own modules (sometimes) or between a library's homegrown solutions and its own ILS (sometimes). Today, interoperability in library automation is more myth than reality. Some of us wonder if we may lose more than we gain in this newly dismantled world.”

“Whenever one tinkers with either the back or front end of such a sophisticated system, there is a temptation to start from scratch. This can be daunting, even crippling…. Not only is creating a completely new ILS unrealistic, but Roland Dietz, Endeavor's president and CEO, suggests that even "incremental functionality improvements [to existing systems] are more and more expensive." Moreover, libraries no longer want to search myriad information silos but desire one-stop search and retrieval.”

“Librarians are also motivated to seek solutions because of healthy competition with peers and disparate information resources. When libraries try to meet new needs with technology, such as federated searching, their ILS can rarely answer the call. Libraries are forced to look at new technology and create a solution themselves or purchase a standalone product.”

“Libraries don't pay enough for their ILS. Compared with fees for other technologies--relational database management systems, server hardware and software, desktop replacement cycles--ILS maintenance fees are cheap. However, librarians' resistance to paying for development is often cited for the lack of technological advancement within the traditional ILS.”

“Some of the best ideas in online library services have come not from vendors but from librarians themselves… Open source software (OSS) has offered libraries the freedom to experiment with, develop, and offer innovative services. Nonetheless, a full-scale OSS library system that would work for the largest institutions has yet to emerge. Efforts like Koha have success with only the most basic functionality.”

“Our future, like our past, lies in integration. Maintaining standalone modules with loosely integrated or moderately interoperable functions is too expensive for libraries. This is why libraries sought integrated systems in the first place.”

“Library vendors have two choices. They can continue to maintain large systems that use proprietary methods of interoperability and promise tight integration of services for their customers. Or, they can choose to dismantle their modules in such a way that librarians can reintegrate their systems through web services and standards, combining new with the old modules as well as the new with each other.”

*&*

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google machine.
(http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sergey_brin_and_larry_page_on_google.html)

This was a video of a talk with Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the creators of Google. They begin by showing a model of the earth and how strong internet activity was in various places in the world during a particular time of day. Also how different areas of the world are wired to each other through internet activity, the strongest being across the United States and from North America to Europe.

Sergey Brin says that the way to expand the Google company is to get more searches, and he talks a little about the Google Foundation and what organizations they were involved in. Larry Page talks about some projects of Google like Googlette, and also different innovations of Google like Google Deskbar, Google Answers, Froogle, and Blogger. He also talks about AdSense, which puts relevant ads on websites instead of random ads, so it’s a little more useful to the reader and generates more money for the author. He gives the example of people generally thinking Google is smart when it isn’t really, it’s just programmed to give automatic answers based on the content of a page. Also how algorithms were giving people offensive responses that seemed like they were being written by real people, when it was really an automatic response the algorithm gave based on the person’s blog’s content.

I thought it was very interesting and funny, and a good look at the inner workings of the Google company.