Pervasive networking and the modern Internet
The modern Internet is a vast interconnected collection of computer networks of many different types, with the range of types increasing all the time and now including, for example, a wide range of wireless communication technologies such as WiFi, WiMAX, Bluetooth (see Chapter 3) and third-generation mobile phone networks. The net result is that networking has become a pervasive resource and devices can be connected (if desired) at any time and in any place.
Figure 1.3 illustrates a typical portion of the Internet. Programs running on the computers connected to it interact by passing messages, employing a common means of communication. The design and construction of the Internet communication mechanisms (the Internet protocols) is a major technical achievement, enabling a
program running anywhere to address messages to programs anywhere else and abstracting over the myriad of technologies mentioned above.
The Internet is also a very large distributed system. It enables users, wherever they are, to make use of services such as the World Wide Web, email and file transfer. (Indeed, the Web is sometimes incorrectly equated with the Internet.) The set of services is open-ended – it can be extended by the addition of server computers and new types of service. The figure shows a collection of intranets – subnetworks operated by companies and other organizations and typically protected by firewalls. The role of a firewall is to protect an intranet by preventing unauthorized messages from leaving or entering.
A firewall is implemented by filtering incoming and outgoing essages. Filtering might be done by source or destination, or a firewall might allow only those messages related to email and web access to pass into or out of the intranet that it protects. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are companies that provide broadband links and other types of
connection to individual users and small organizations, enabling them to access services anywhere in the Internet as well as providing local services such as email and web hosting. The intranets are linked together by backbones. A backbone is a network link with a high transmission capacity, employing satellite connections, fibre optic cables and other high-bandwidth circuits.
Note that some organizations may not wish to connect their internal networks to the Internet at all. For example, police and other security and law enforcement agencies are likely to have at least some internal intranets that are isolated from the outside world (the most effective firewall possible – the absence of any physical connections to the Internet). Firewalls can also be problematic in distributed systems by impeding legitimate access to services when resource sharing between internal and external users is required. Hence, firewalls must often be complemented by more fine-grained mechanisms and policies, as discussed in Chapter 11.
The implementation of the Internet and the services that it supports has entailed the development of practical solutions to many distributed system issues (including most of those defined in Section 1.5). We shall highlight those solutions throughout the book, pointing out their scope and their limitations where appropriate.
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