Presentation Outline
- Background & Motivation
- Complexity of the Internet
- Many layers, each designed to hide the layer below
- Historical concerns complicate its design
- Complex ways of maximizing performance, scalability,
and robustness
- Designed to be used by the public, not understood
- Why the Internet is Nevertheless Important to
Understand
- Political issues increasingly involve the Internet on a
technical level (such as Network Neutrality and Digital
Copyright Policy).
- Thousands of people are taken advantage of online
- Phishing
- Spyware
- Viruses and Trojans (Botnets pose a danger to
society as well)
- The Internet is everywhere
- The Internet is the way of the future for many important
parts of society
- The Internet can be used to solve daunting problems
- Key Topics to Cover
- Packet Switching
- Routing and the Internet Architecture
- Layering
- Emphasis on how the transport layer adds a "flow"
abstraction to a packet-switched network.
- Major Applications
- Important Issues
- Network Neutrality - How Smart Should Routers Be?
- Privacy - Am I Anonymous on the Internet?
- Security - How Safe Am I?
- Competition and Uniqueness
- Much of the literature on the Internet falls into 2
categories
- Technical explanations of the mechanics of the Internet,
most of which assume significant background knowledge
- Non-technical explanations of the Internet which tend to
focus more on what it can do than how it does it
- A significant amount of the material that is in fact aimed
at explaining the workings of the Internet to a non-technical
audience is inaccurate
- Politically motivated
- Oversimplifications and obtuse analogies
- Blatant factual errors
- Goals
- Creating informed citizens for the digital age
- Engendering appreciation for and understanding of one of the
modern world's greatest technical achievements
- Likely Issues
- Balancing depth with readability
- Avoiding condescension while remaining accessible
- Using examples and analogies in appropriate places while
avoiding oversimplifications
