Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Interesting. Because from what I've seen, all the earlier technologies 
> allow you to connect together maybe a few dozen nodes, and then stop 
> working after you try to scale much beyond that.

Um, you *are* aware that we had a global telephone network *before* we had 
computers, right?

 > They all use their own
> perculiar addressing scheme, and there's no way of referring to a node 
> that isn't on the local network.

Tell me. When you (or  your boss) needs to talk to someone in America, how 
do they do it?  What steps do they follow?

> To me, it seems that the major contribution of IP is that it gives you 
> an addressing system which is independent of the underlying transport 
> technology, and has routable addresses (and definite rules for how to 
> use them). I haven't seen anything else that does that.

You ... haven't picked up a phone lately?

> Oh, and then people whine that it doesn't map cleanly to the ISO/OSI 
> 7-layer model. Oh well...

Exactly. It doesn't map cleanly to the global network that was already 
around for decades before IP was even conceived. It is difficult to manage 
and debug and route compared to the world-wide telephone network everyone 
takes for granted. And they're running out of addresses (actually, probably 
already ran out of addresses) long before every person has an address, let 
alone every piece of communications equipment.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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