(Around Tokyo)The Internet
There are many ways to illustrate the structure of the Internet. One thing sure about it is that it is owned by nobody though it is monitored and maintained by some organizations.
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Since its beginning in 1969, the Internet has grown from four host computer systems to tens of millions. However, just because nobody owns the Internet, it doesn't mean it is not monitored and maintained in different ways. The Internet Society, a non-profit group established in 1992, oversees the formation of the policies and protocols that define how we use and interact with the Internet.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm
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The image of the global Internet connections is however not so simple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Internet_map_1024.jpg
Let’s imagine a huge network of highways.
To get into any highway, you have to pass a toll gate. Between two highways, say, Route 1 and Route 2, there is a crossover gate.
In this architecture, one thing sure is that every car running on a highway can be traced back to the toll gate where it got on a highway and thus the whole network.
However, it would be extremely difficult to identify a route any car has taken from its starting point, namely a garage of a house or an office, to the toll gate, since the car must run through many open and local roads.
Yet, all the toll gates, the whole highways, and crossover gates must be monitored and managed with video cameras that can take a license number of every car for security of the society.
In the case of the Internet, the telecommunications connection from the physical location of a computer to an Internet Service Provider can be regarded as an open and local road in the case of a car.
A car driver can choose and change the root from a garage to a toll gate of a highway every time he gets on a highway.
But, in the case of a computer, especially a server, connected to the Internet, a user cannot so easily change its root from its site, namely physical location, to an Internet Service Provider.
Therefore, technically it is very possible to identify the location of any Internet user.
Yet, the most stringent regulation of the Internet is not this kind of an exhaustive tracing function.
There is no need to disassemble a car to parts and components when passing a toll gate to a highway; it can run on a highway as it is in one piece. But, a file or one unit of data to be sent over the Internet is divided into many parts. And, each part can take a different route to reach a destination computer where whole parts are reassembled to the original file or unit of data.
My idea about the most stringent regulation of the Internet is to introduce super-routers to all the Internet Service Providers, and to have each super-router act like a destination computer so as to reassemble the original file or unit of data being sent from an originating computer of an Internet user and keep a copy of a file or a unit of data when it is necessary to find out a user due to the nature of contents of data he or she is sending or receiving over the Internet.
(Consequently, people will stop using the Internet for criminal purposes or any lawful but sensitive purposes, making the world more safer and peaceful, since it is just like every man's conversation is recorded and kept in the telephone exchange office if encrypted.)
The super-router can also check and confirm validity of source address information, including a domain name and an IP address, by automatic and covert communications with an originating computer. If it finds any intentional modification of source address information, probably to conceal identification of an Internet user, in any portion of data, it can block it.
By way of caution, a router is a device that works like a toll gate or a crossover gate on the network of highways. A router is actually a computer but a special purpose computer.
When this stringent regulation is applied to the Internet, a government can easily identify any Internet user who is using the Internet for any purpose, including blog posting, e-mail sending/receiving, accessing any home page or site, viewing any blog, and just browsing or searching anything.
Internet users from cellular phones are no exceptions.
Now, one of concerns of parties and experts concerned is of course growth of the volume of data being or to be transmitted over the Internet.
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Cisco Systems Inc. is projecting a sixfold jump in Internet traffic between 2007 and 2012, as online video becomes the biggest driver of global data communications.
The networking-equipment maker, as part of a study called the Cisco Visual Networking Index, predicts that Internet video -- which accounted for 5% of data traffic in 2005 -- will represent 30% of total data transfers by the end of this year. That will swell to 50% by 2012, Cisco estimates.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121358372172676391.html
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Yet, statistics about traffic at the Internet Exchange (a crossover gate between Internet Service Providers) for Japanese commercial domains from January 1999 to January 2008 are as follows:
(Click to enlarge.)http://www.qos.tu.chiba-u.jp/lecture/2008/multimedia/lecture4.pdf
Indeed, like global warming or leveraged funds, the volume of data being transmitted is unbelievably increasing in this decade even in Japan.
The Internet data volume on the Japanese commercial domains seems to have grown from 1 giga-bytes to 100 giga-bytes (per certain unit) or 100 times from 1999 to 2008.
We have to address this issue for security of mankind, too.
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That is all for today.
No special miracles I encountered the last weekend.
But, I saw something green, very green, and a lot of green in a dream.
I hope your faith is just increasing as the above figure.
Mat 11:10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
Mat 11:11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is