Background

What is the Internet? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet is a network of networks. The Internet protocols allow many different network technologies from local area networks (LANs) to wide area networks (WANs) to be interconnected seamlessly for communication among many different types of applications. The unique technical capabilities of the TCP/IP protocols allow the Internet to become very large, but still be manageable.

How did the Internet start? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet began in 1969, created by Department of Defense researchers and contractors working for the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). The original network was called the ARPAnet. ARPAnet use was restricted to researchers who had ARPA contracts. The ARPAnet technology was introduced to a larger audience by the efforts of computer scientists and engineers through Cypressnet and CSnet. CSnet was the National Science Foundation's first TCP/IP Internet service offering started in the early '80s and it proved to be very successful. As the demand for ARPAnet grew, ARPA handed the baton to the NSF, which combined the networking needs of its suite of national supercomputer centers with a backbone service for the emerging academic regional networks. Thus the NSFnet was born in 1985.

Who runs the Internet? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet is a cooperative endeavor much like the worldwide telephone network. No single organization is responsible for all aspects of the Internet. The US Federal government, through ARPA and NSF, continues to support the InterNIC and IETF. Equipment vendors support the Internet through their product development and participation in the Frame Relay Forum, the ATM Forum and the IETF. Internet Service Providers cooperate with each other, the NSF and ARPA and equipment vendors to provide ubiquitous connectivity.

The sum of these cooperative efforts is the worldwide Internet, which appears to each user as a seamless universal access network to global Internet resources.

Who gives out Internet addresses and Domain Names? [ Back to Top ]

Addresses and names are managed by a central authority, the InterNIC, in order to ensure global uniqueness in the assignment of names and addresses.

The InterNIC can delegate portions of the address and name space to other international NICs and Internet Service Providers (ISP). Therefore, you may be registered for an address or domain name with the assistance of your ISP.

What is the Internet Society? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet Society is the first professional society dedicated to those who build and manage the Internet and the services it carries.

How fast is the Internet growing (users)? [ Back to Top ]

Various estimates suggest that the annual growth rate falls somewhere between 100% and 200%.

Is all the content on the Internet free? [ Back to Top ]

Much of the content of the Internet is free, but that is changing very rapidly as encryption and accounting technology is applied to the problem of exchanging the credit and debit information of Internet commerce safely and securely.

The technology for electronic commerce is well developed, but it will take time for new fee-based services to develop.

Can I make telephone calls on the Internet? [ Back to Top ]

Yes, but the sophistication of the service is more like the early telephone services of the 1880's than of the telephone service of the 1990's. It is technically possible to place and receive telephone calls on the Internet today, but there are not yet any Internet-based directories and the performance of an Internet-based telephone call is more like that of a cellular call in a congested metropolitan area than the quality of a standard telephone call.

Does the Internet support voice and video? [ Back to Top ]

Yes, in a variety of ways. The Web supports audio and video clips as well as text and images.

The Internet technology supports interactive voice and video conferencing, but Internet Service Providers typically either do not support general access to voice and video conferencing or they support a limited public voice/video conferencing system called the "MBONE", or Multicast BackBONE.

Key Terms

What is the World Wide Web (WWW)? What is a Home Page? [ Back to Top ]

The World Wide Web is an Internet-based distributed system of information servers (sources) and information clients (subscribers). The Web provides a point-and-click interface to text, images, sound and movies that has proven to be powerfully intuitive and easy-to-use.

A home page is a Web document at the beginning of a set of Web documents, or pages, that comprise a single, distinct Web service. People advertise their web home page as the natural starting point for clients to browse their server. Any web server may have many home pages and web pages may be cross-linked in arbitrary ways, but home pages are the signposts of the World Wide Web and the directions that Internet users pass to each other to navigate the Web.

What is Internet access? [ Back to Top ]

Internet access is a service provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which allows a client to attach their local networks or even a single machine to the ISP's network, which is then in turn connected to the global Internet.

What is a newsgroup? [ Back to Top ]

Newsgroups provide a free exchange of ideas, opinions and comments usually confined to a specific interest. Newsgroups are an invaluable source of information. You visit a newsgroup, read messages that provoke a response, post new messages when you want to propose a topic, and revisit when you want to see who responded.

Unlike e-mail, there is no mail involved with newsgroups. Most of the activity occurs while you are online, including reading and responding to messages. For this reason, most people find that newsgroups are more interactive and conversational than e-mail.

There are more than 40,000 public newsgroups presently on the Internet. To subscribe to a newsgroup, review the USENET newsgroups offered in our menu of newsgroups. If you do not see the one you are looking for, send us a request to include it in our selection.

What is an online service provider? Do they offer Internet access? [ Back to Top ]

Online services are converging with Internet services. Some online service providers offer gateway services to the Internet without direct Internet access. Other online service providers are moving toward an Internet-oriented technology.

What is an Internet address? What is a domain name? [ Back to Top ]

An Internet address is a unique number assigned to an Internet-attached computer that allows Internet routers to route data from anywhere in the Internet to any Internet-attached machine.

A domain name is a structured alphanumeric label separated by periods that allows Internet services to be represented by English names instead of hard-to-remember numeric addresses. The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed database that allows the Internet system of names to grow very large while being managed by an expanding base of service providers.

Domain names can represent IP addresses, electronic mail servers (the part of your e-mail address after the "@"), and aliases.

What are FTP, Telnet, Gopher and Mosaic? [ Back to Top ]

These are Internet applications. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was originally developed to allow Internet users to share files across the Internet. Telnet was developed for terminals to access hosts across the Internet. Gopher (as in "GO FOR" information) was developed to provide an easy to use hierarchical menu/directory paradigm that is well suited for users of personal computers and workstations. Mosaic is the name of the first widely popular World Wide Web (WWW) browser. The WWW is a hypertext information system that provides a point-and-click interface to the Internet. It has been proven as user-friendly as the point-and-click graphical user interfaces of the Macintosh operating system, Microsoft Windows, and UNIX X-Windows System.

Another very important Internet application is Network News, also known as USENET news (after the USENET Unix association that manages the USENET newsgroup hierarchy) and sometimes known by its protocol, the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP).

The most popular current Internet application is electronic mail or e-mail, often referred to by its protocol, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, SMTP. You may also hear of the Post Office Protocol (POP) which is a mail transfer protocol particularly well suited to PC users. Many Internet users send their e-mail to their server using SMTP and retrieve their e-mail on demand using POP.

Advanced WWW browsers are able to communicate via FTP, Telnet, Gopher and HTML, providing a single seamless point-and-click interface to the Internet.

What is TCP/IP? [ Back to Top ]

TCP/IP is actually two protocols, the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). IP is a simple, yet powerful, protocol that provides packet services for higher level transport protocols, one of which is TCP.

IP is a simple messaging protocol. Each packet contains the destination address so it can be independently routed across the Internet. The job of the Internet router is quite simple: examine the destination of each incoming packet and determine which of several output ports to use to send the message onward. From time to time, routers communicate with adjacent routers to discover the current state of paths in the network, maintaining a table of destination addresses as they relate to output ports.

The network is not required to reliably deliver every packet. The network may drop or discard packets when overloaded. Routers may fail, communication circuits may fail or become overloaded, and the network of remaining routers will adapt their routing tables to the faults and send packets around the faults if paths are available.

TCP is a more complex, Transport Layer protocol which uses the simple, unreliable IP protocol, adding flow control, loss detection and re-transmission, congestion avoidance and congestion control features that provide a reliable path for the transmission of packets from source to destination. The upper layer applications are assured of delivery with each packet properly ordered and with no packets missing.

The innovative combination of a simple, unreliable IP on a network of switches or routers with a suite of higher level protocols including TCP, provides a very flexible set of data transport protocols that can serve a very wide range of applications over a single network infrastructure.

Security Issues

Is the Internet secure? [ Back to Top ]

On a broad level, the Internet itself is not very secure today. However, Internet access on an individual basis is as secure as each customer makes it. Customers need to implement security options such as encryption and firewalls to protect their data and internal networks.

What kinds of security are available to Internet users? [ Back to Top ]

There are two major types of security available: firewall and encryption.

"Firewall" is a term that describes the security between the Internet, and a business's own internal network. Through a technology partnership with Sun Microsystems, Pacific Bell Internet Services includes as an option the premier firewall security product: FireWall-1 security software.

Encryption refers to special coding (encryption) of data that travels over a network, so that it cannot be de-coded (read) by an unauthorized user. Through an OEM reseller license agreement with Netscape Communications, Pacific Bell Internet Services offers as a dedicated access option Netscape Navigator with its state-of-the-art message encryption.

For a more in-depth discussion of security options, please see our Dedicated Access User Guide.

What is Pacific Bell Internet Services doing to make sure its network affords users security? [ Back to Top ]

Pacific Bell Internet Services will be proactive in monitoring all entities within the network, up to the customer demarcation point. Specifically, all servers which store customer data will be secured by the use of filtering routers and by enforcing stringent host-based security on servers. All connection attempts will be logged and these logs will be evaluated by network support personnel.

Pacific Bell Internet Services also requires the use of an Internet Protocol (IP) router at each dedicated access customer site. This router can be configured to act as a screening router, which will allow for access restrictions to be imposed at the customer's request. Since Pacific Bell Internet Services is providing an Internet service, it cannot implement further security without impacting the service itself. Therefore, we strongly recommend that additional security be implemented at the customer site, taking into account each customer's specific security requirements.

Finally, we will stay on top of security issues and alerts that may be announced by industry-leading security groups and experts. We are available 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week if customers have any security questions or problems.

Are there software viruses on the Internet? [ Back to Top ]

Yes.

What will Pacific Bell Internet Services do to ensure these viruses aren't passed on to computers? [ Back to Top ]

Computer viruses are usually proliferated by one of two methods: 1) They can be planted by unauthorized persons who have gained access to client computers as a result of poor host-level security; or 2) The viruses travel hidden in a seemingly harmless file–which is transferred or copied–and eventually they are activated or unleashed through the activation of a commonly used command.

Pacific Bell Internet Services will install only legitimate software obtained from valid sources on its servers and suggests that customers do the same. Also, stringent host-based security will protect our servers from unauthorized access, thereby protecting them from virus planting by hackers.

What precautions should be taken to prevent transmission of viruses to customer computers? [ Back to Top ]

First and foremost, computers need to be configured with the most stringent host security available. Second, software from unknown sources should never be accepted, including software from electronic bulletin boards. Third, disks should never be read without first scanning them for viruses. Finally, various virus scanner programs are commercially available, and should be used frequently to scan for, and remove any viruses.

Can the Internet ever really be secure? [ Back to Top ]

Yes, as the Internet matures, so will the concept of securing it. Since the Internet was derived from a "research" type of environment, there was little need for security because such communities felt compelled to share much of their knowledge and experiences.

How will the government police the Internet? [ Back to Top ]

So far the U.S. government does not police the Internet, although there is discussion about how this might be accomplished. Current technology provides for monitoring data connections in a similar fashion to "tapping" a voice telephone line, however, the legality of this has not been decided.

As the Internet becomes more commercialized, the "trust model," that was once a fundamental part of the Internet will be replaced by a security model, in which encrypted communication will be embraced.

Trends

Isn't there a risk that the Internet is growing so fast that the network is becoming congested? [ Back to Top ]

Since the Internet is funded from revenue from users and clients, Internet Service Providers have an increasing base of funds to acquire more bandwidth to support growth.

However, it is true that high growth strains the human capacity to plan and implement, so that from time to time ISPs do experience problems resulting from congestion due to growth.

Isn't the Internet running out of addresses? [ Back to Top ]

Internet growth has been exponential for many years, showing a predictable point in the future that would exhaust resources such as router memory, address space and name space. The Internet Engineering community, through the work of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), has addressed this foreseeable problem through the Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR) work which makes the allocation of the address space more efficient, thereby extending the date when we will run out of addresses.

For the longer term, the IETF is hard at work on a new version of IP with a larger address space and other advanced features. The larger address space is designed to be compatible with the existing, smaller address space, but will provide much more room for future growth.

Is the Internet really ready for commerce (transactions, EDI, etc.)? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet technology is ready for commerce, but the Internet community still has some lessons to learn about security and financial transactions. However, with a well-grounded understanding of the security issues and a well-developed plan and approach to Internet security, many of the risks related to the Internet can be avoided.

Isn't the Internet inherently unreliable and unstable? How could I possibly trust the Internet for important business activity? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet is designed to continue to operate in the presence of failures of various kinds. This capability dates back to the original design goals of the earliest military packet switched networks, which were designed for data to flow around failures using redundancy in the network. Therefore, in a significant and important way, the Internet is more reliable than most other networks. In fact, the performance of the Internet during earthquakes and other natural disasters has led some researchers and public officials to examine new ways to use the Internet during times of disaster and widespread overloading of telephone networks.

Many of the world's largest financial institutions use Internet technology for their most important business activities. While this does not mean that one should bet one's business on the performance of any single network service, the Internet is an important and essential part of many businesses' complete strategy for telecommunications, product development, customer support, and sales and marketing.

Isn't California one of the most active Internet regions? [ Back to Top ]

It certainly is. California has over one-quarter of the registered commercial domain names, and ten of the top twenty-five most Internet-connected cities are in California.

Isn't the Internet a threat to telephone companies? [ Back to Top ]

The Internet is a threat to any company that fails to take advantage of the opportunity the Internet affords.