>> 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?

And, for the 17th time, you *are* aware that I'm talking about earlier 
_computer_ network technologies, right?

My point, which you seem determined to ignore, is that everybody who 
designed a way to connect computers together designed it to only handle 
a small handful of computers. It seems to me that it wasn't until IP 
came along that you could connect very large collections of computers 
together.

>> 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.

I'm fairly sure the telephone network connects vastly fewer nodes. It 
was also originally analogue, not digital. Not to mention being managed 
by a very small number of companies. But anyway...

> 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.

Isn't that why IPv6 was invented?

BTW, how come nobody uses that yet? And does it replace just the IP 
layer, or the entire protocol stack?

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