Wednesday, March 2, 2011

State of the Internet Issue #04: Internet Usage

How much time do we spend on the Internet these days? A look at the statistics will show developed nations are understandably the top Internet users. But what used to be a novelty is now a global dependence. The infrastructure providing internet access has ballooned as well. A look at the global internet usage will show the relationship of different countries and their connection to the Internet.

Electricity is key to the Internet. It's essential for the availability of the content and transfer of information from computer to computer. That is why the more developed countries are the top users of the Internet. They typically have the best electrical coverage.

Internetworldstats.com provided the information for the top users of the Internet; which is actually Asia with 825 million, and Europe with 475 million. North America used to be neck and neck with Asia back in 2000, with 108 million users to 114 million users.

Asian countries especially are showing strong Internet usage growth, because of their economic growth. For example Vietnam, now has over 27% of their population using the Internet. What that equates to is a population that is adapting to getting information from a different source than books.

The web is not only a way for people to get information, but it has become a way to organize and become connected to the rest of the world. As the usage has risen, countries like Egypt and Tunisia have used it to stage their political protests and to plea to the rest of the world for freedom. In fact, the Egyptian government had to disconnect the entire countries Internet access in order to prevent the civilians from disseminating their protest information to the rest of the world and organizing on facebook.

The way the people of Egypt has used the Internet for their revolution has changed the way people look at this powerful medium.

That is why the Internet usage increase globally has been a positive thing. Information dissemination now is important and also widely available to a lot of people. It's certainly a way for people to get access to all they might want to know and to stay in touch with other people in the world, making relationships that much more available.

State of the Internet Issue #03: BitTorrent


The word BitTorrent evokes a lot of cynicism and negativity. Over the course of this decade, BitTorrent has been associated with piracy and hackers. It has grown from an altruistic effort to provide efficient file transfer in the form of distributed networks, into this. People now believe the very act of using BitTorrent is illegal. Go to any casual internet user and they will provide you with their perspective of what BitTorrent is. And I can guarantee a majority of them will give you a story about how 'BitTorrent' is stealing movies. That is why I believe I need to give a very different perspective on what this program does and how the file sharing protocol behind it works. The News Media and other sources have provided only one use of BitTorrent. But it deserves more than that. Used properly, it is a very effective and egalitarian way of sharing files.

First you need to know is that, yes, BitTorrent is used to pirate films, music and any file that is of any demand to computer users. That is why the notoriety of BitTorrent is such as it is today.

The protocol behind BitTorrent is called the peer-to-peer protocol. This is how it works.

The peer-to-peer protocol uses networks made up of peers and seeders. Peers are the people requesting a certain file. They rely on people willing to share the files with them; those people are called seeders. The seeders leave their file open and the peer-to-peer program running, allowing others to access the file from the seeders computer.

Once a peer has successfully downloaded the file he/she requested, they too can become a seeder. So as the number of people who have the file increases., so does the availability of the file increase.

This is the whole idea behind peer-to-peer networking. Even if someone were to stop seeding, there would be others to take their place. Unlike a conventional server that can go down and be unavailable to users, the seeders are everywhere and are dependable.

The first users of peer-to-peer was Napster. Although the system they built still depended on a centralized list of addresses to relay to users where to download from, transactions were done between personal computer to personal computer. This was one of the most notorious programs during the late 90s to early 2000s. Napster had significant legal issues to deal with, and were brought down by a court order.

Kazaa was the second program to gain a massive following. It even had a CBS 60 minutes TV segment devoted to it. Kazaa was also vilified and the resulting media portrayal has snowballed into a negative portrayal of peer-to-peer programs.

It may surprise that Skype also uses peer-to-peer networking. Skype uses a peer-to-peer sharing method in order to run their processes on a users computer rather than on their servers. The creators of Kazaa also created Skype. They founded this Internet Telephony company and have garnered positive attention from the world community.

Although Bittorrent is being abused and used for illegal actions, it isn't a bad thing. The bad practices of its users are at fault. It isn't illegal to use Bittorrent.

Bittorent logo from bittorent.com

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

State of the Internet Issue #02: Internet Protocols


You may or may not know that the Internet is comprised of many different protocols. There are many protocols that handles things like, web pages, file transfer, email, and telephony over the internet. Here's an explanation of some basic protocols we all use everyday.

What we use for web browsing is just one of those called http, the hypertext transfer protocol. It transfers the data from a server and then the browser displays the data based on what the http tells your computer. It is probably the most known and used protocol.

Another protocol would be the email protocol. Email actually has a different way of handling data then the way webpages do. Email has to both serve and receive data. When you log in to a server, it displays the information for you. However, when you send messages the protocol actually handles the sending process as well. So there are big differences between the 'web' protocol and email, because http usually just sends you the data of web pages.

These Internet protocols are not only vital to keeping everything working, but some are relatively unknown compared to the more known like http. Why should you care about any of this?

The Internet is a place that is created by its users.

If no one were to produce content and contribute their time and efforts to maintaining it, then there would be no Internet. The IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force, and they are made of volunteers and determine all the standard practices in the Internet. Yet don't mistake them for a governing body. There isn't any. The Internet is pretty much the wild west. Except for a few laws pertaining to child pornography, fraud, and identity theft, there isn't a lot of policing going on in the Internet.

The protocols that are used commonly today were first created by researchers and volunteers. That means anyone can contribute. Everyone can give their ideas. Just take a look on wikipedia of all the protocols there.

You would think that the something as vital as the Internet would need someone to govern it and provide protection, but there isn't. That's because this is the ultimate egalitarian construct. Leading back to my earlier article about Open Source, the Internet provides a medium for people to contribute their time and efforts in order to build interesting and wonderful things. Progress can be made here and not just for profit.

Computer User Essentials - Blogged