[hazov]

I'm not a network engineer but I believe Tier 1 and Tier 2 networks are needed for the Internet to exist. They do not act as a central authority, but the Internet itself needs them to work like it do now.

I simply do not understood what you wanted to say by your last paragraph.

EDIT: To clarify my point is that I believe the internet is poorly decentralized, it simply means some guys has too much power to shutdown traffic from entire networks to even reach the Internet if they wish or when it's convenient to them, if we ever have another large scale global war I believe this will happen.

[weavejester]

My understanding is that's more an artefact of how the Internet is physically laid out, rather than as something inherent to the TCP protocol itself. If we took all the machines on the net and put them in one huge building, we could construct a far more decentralised network architecture.

Regarding my last paragraph, both the English language and TCP/IP could be broadly said to be protocols for distributing information, but are also obviously so completely different it makes little sense to draw any parallels between them.