| > That's called a Local Area Network, or LAN. Not internet. Technically it's an internet when the cable runs between two distinct networks. But the point is that it all ran on the same principle in the early days. > That was not the 'Internet' either. That was ARPAnet, which is also not the same as 'the internet'. You originally said "the net". Which in the early days would generally have meant UUCPNET (itself an informal concept) or even just the vaguer notion of "all the computers that are connected one way or another to each other". Either way, it remains something that was well developed long before 1993. > Let me tell you about backbone connections then. If those go down, basically everyone's internet is down. Depends on which ones, which goes hand in hand with your comment here; but ultimately if the right backbones connections go down, it may as well be a shut down of the entire internet since many areas won't be able to access other areas networks If you cut enough connections then you can disconnect the net, cutting it into two or more pieces (and on a small enough scale that happens all the time, as computers on the edge with only one connection do that). But no single connection is an essential part of the net; the concept of a "backbone" is something we use to try to understand the network, not an actual distinction between different types of connection. The US government ran major high-bandwidth connections; without them the net would have been a lot slower and more congested. But it would still have worked; messages still got through eventually when the "backbones" were down. > There are caveats I admit, but the point here is that the internet is not quite as failure redundant as you seem to think it is. If it was, we would have cellular backhaul being used to ensure that at least basic connections can be made for information purposes and emergencies. But that would require world wide 5G and 6G cellular to be used. Which I guarantee you would not be free. You can make your connection to the internet more reliable by connecting to more different nodes - whether by traditional wires, radio, or something else. (Although these days they'll probably charge you for it). That's how the core of the network works - lots of "peers" connected to each other - and always has, and that's why any single network (even the US government) can go down and not take the whole internet with it. > Nothing, is free. Do you believe it's impossible to have a free potluck picnic? Ultimately it has always taken labour and material to run the net, but in the early days that happened noncommercially and without charging people. Unless you define "free" so narrowly that nothing is free by definition, which would make it a rather useless concept, the net was free. |