Telecommunications & The Internet Basic Telecom Model

Public Networks AOL

• 1991 AOL for DOS
• 1993 AOL for Windows
• 1997 bought CompuServe
• 1999 10 Million users
• Estimated to have distributed over 1 Billion discs of over 1,000 different disk/CD styles

Internet Statistics

• http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
• User Counts, updated daily
• http://whois.sc/internet-statistics/
• Domain Counts, updated daily

The Keys to Internet Growth

• 1991 WAIS and Gopher provide Internet search and navigation
• 1992 WWW hyperlink software released
• 1992 NSF relaxes its restriction on commercial Internet traffic
• 1992+ explosive growth in usage

Internet Capabilities

• Communications
• E-mail
• Usenet
• Chatting
• Telnet

• Information Retrieval
• Gopher
• Archie
• WAIS
• FTP

• http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/info/guide/Using_archie_Today.html

World Wide Web

• Set of standards for storing, retrieving, formatting, and displaying information using a client/server architecture
• Hypertext markup Language (HTML)
• browser
• search engines

Putting It All Together

• AT&T

• Level 3

• Centurylink

• I29

• Cable One

• Consumer

• Consumer

• Consumer

Some Upper Tier Providers

• AT&T
• Bell Atlantic
• Bell South
• Cable and Wireless
• Cable One
• GTE

• IBM
• MCI
• Pacific Bell
• QUEST
• Sprint
• US West

Tier 1 Networks

• The largest backbones on the Internet:
• Centurylink, Telecom Italia, Verizon, Sprint, TeliaSonera International, NTT Communications, Deutsche Telekom, Level 3, AT&T
• These top branded backbones only trade peering traffic among themselves.