Internet

2011-02-27T08:03:24Z

85.177.91.41: Typo.

The '''Internet''' is a publicly accessible computer network connecting many smaller networks from around the world.

It grew out of a U.S. Defense Department program called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), established in 1969 with connections between computers at the University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford Research Institute, the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. ARPANET’s purpose was to conduct research into computer networking in order to provide a secure and survivable communications system in case of war. As the network quickly expanded, academics and researchers in other fields began to use it as well.<ref name="Britannica_Internet">Internet. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/291494/Internet - referenced 2011-01-28.</ref>

The term Internet itself was defined in 1985 by the Federal Networking Council (FNC) as commercial implementation of key Internet protocols (TCP/IP) took off.<ref name="Brief_history_Internet">Leiner, B.M. and Cerf, V.G. and Clark, D.D. and Kahn, R.E. and Kleinrock, L. and Lynch, D.C. and Postel, J. and Roberts, L.G. and Wolff, S. "A brief history of the Internet," ''ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review'', 39(5):22--31</ref> The US National Science Foundation (NSF) created a network called NSFNET in the 1980s to connect academic computer centres. Private networks appeared based on the same technology and interconnected with NSFNET which continued to form an important part of the network until at was shut down in 1995 and an essentially private Internet emerged.<ref>MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey K. and Varian, Hal R. "Economic FAQs About the Internet," ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', American Economic Association, 8(3):75-96.</ref>

The early success of private access to the Internet in the 1990s in the United States can be attributed in part to the availability of unmetered local calls and an earlier determination by the FCC (the “ESP Exemption”) that made it possible for Internet service providers (ISPs) to be treated as end-users of the telephone network, preventing the local telephone operators from charging the ISPs for access to the system.<ref>Oxman, J. [http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OPP/working_papers/oppwp31.txt The FCC and the Unregulation of the Internet]</ref> In most other countries, dial-up Internet access was associated with per minute telephone charges during the same period. By 2011 the FCC had moved in the direction of tighter control and regulation of the Internet, including requiring service providers to give details of how they handle congestion on their networks.<ref>Singel, R. [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/fcc-rule/ FCC Net Neutrality Rules Slammed From All Sides]</ref> This represents a big step away from the FCC's determination over preceding decades '''not''' to regulate data services.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [http://mises.org/daily/2211 Government Did Invent the Internet, But the Market Made It Glorious] by Peter G. Klein, June 2006
* [http://mises.org/daily/3060 Liberation by Internet] by Gennady Stolyarov II, September 2008
* [http://mises.org/daily/3766 Witness the Freest Economy: the Internet] by Dan O'Connor, October 2009
* [http://mises.org/daily/4120 Opening the Internet — with an Axe] by Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez, February 2010
* [http://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/internet.htm The Internet], National Science Foundation
* [[Wikipedia:Internet|Internet]] on Wikipedia

[[Category:Objects]]
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File sharing

2011-02-27T07:59:00Z

85.177.91.41: /* History */ Typo.

'''File sharing''' is the practice of sharing digitally stored information. This involves distributing and providing access to computer programs, electronic books, documents, pictures and multi-media (audio and videos). The main use of file sharing technologies today is to provide access to movies, music, computer programs and games. But it is also used for many other purposes such as sharing academic papers.
File sharing is done by three distinct methods. The information can be physically transfered on a removable media, it can be distributed from a central file server on a computer network or it can be shared on a distributed peer-to-peer network.

==Types of file sharing==

===Anonymous networks===

Anonymous file sharing networks are usually based on peer-to-peer technology. By adding encryption and using intermediaries for data transfer they become safer and peers can not identify who they are receiving or sending data from. Some of these network also provide more control over who you share with and could be described as friend-to-friend networks. Anonymous network are still rather small, some of the more popular alternatives are Freenet and OneSwarm. One can also use regular peer-to-peer protocols with anonymous overlays such as I2P or Tor.

===Peer-to-peer networks===

Peer-to-peer or P2P networks are based on every member of the network sharing content with everyone else. While hosting of content is distributed in the network many P2P technologies still depends on a central server to co-ordinate the peers. The Direct Connect protocol depends on central nodes called hubs for peers to find each-other and BitTorrent depends on trackers. There are technologies who are less dependent on a central node to find other peers such as Gnutella but some co-ordinated way of finding the first other peer in the network to connect to is still necessary in all P2P networks.

===File hosting services===

With a file hosting service all the information is stored on one server and every client must connect to it to download the information. This is a centralized method of sharing information to a network and the most common protocols are FTP and HTTP.

===Removable media===

Removable media file sharing is when the information is stored on a external device such as a USB flash memory and transfered to another machine. Removable media is the oldest type of file sharing starting with punch cards for machine instructions in the 18th century.

==History==

Digital information has been around and been shared since the invention of machine instruction punch cards in 1725. With the launch of compact audio cassette in the 1960s file sharing become a phenomenon to speak of. Music could easily be copied and distributed on these cassettes. The VCR made this possible for movies as well, but the loss of quality in home made copies made distribution less popular with video.

With the development of the internet it became possible to share information without physically moving it and file sharing activity moved to a global scale. The first systems for file sharing on the internet where bulletin boards. In 1979 Usenet was formed<ref>From Usenet to CoWebs: interacting with social information spaces, Christopher Lueg, Danyel Fisher, Springer (2003), ISBN 1852335327, ISBN 9781852335328</ref>, in 2006 Usenet still remained the main source of file sharing traffic on the internet<ref>[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3877] RFC 3877, Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), C. Feather, The Internet Society (October 2006)</ref>. Usenet is a semi-distributed network built around newsgroups.

The next major step was the launch of Napster in 1999 <ref>Kenneth P. Birman (2005). [http://books.google.ca/books?id=KeIENcC2BPwC&pg=PA532&lpg=PA532&dq=napster+first&source=bl&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA532,M1 Reliable distributed systems], p.532. ISBN 0387215093.</ref> Napster was a P2P network but relied on a single server to index and control th entire network which made it vulnerable to legal action and it was shut down following a lawsuit in 2001.
Napster was replaced by the less centralized P2P networks such as the FastTrack network used by the Kazaa client(2001) and the other networks Gnutella(2000) and Direct Connect(1999). Freenet was released in 2000 as the first anonymous network.

In 2002 and 2003 the BitTorrent protocol emerged with the founding of several tracker sites including The Pirate Bay. As lawsuits began plaguing Kazaa and it's users, BitTorrent became more popular and many more public and private trackers emerged. By 2009 internet is dominated by BitTorrent traffic, in several regions over half of the internet traffic is in the BitTorrent protocol<ref>[http://www.ipoque.com/userfiles/file/ipoque-Internet-Study-08-09.pdf Internet Study 2008/2009]
ipoque 2009. Hendrik Schulze, Klaus Mochalskia</ref>

==Uses of file sharing==

Peer-to-peer networks are mainly used to illegally distribute copyrighted content such as movies and music. While legal distribution is more often done with file hosting services. There are many services legally streaming music and video. File sharing is also used in academia to distribute academic journals and share academic libraries.
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==References==
<references />

==Links==
[http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/ OneSwarm]

[http://freenetproject.org/ Freenet]

The Austrian Economics Wiki - User contributions [en]

Internet

File sharing