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In the maze of private networks that makes up your global internet, getting from here to there isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. Consider a company in Paris aiming to reach customers in India with a new web product. Its data needs to cross the globe expeditiously to make sure there’s a good experience in India, but the reality, according to Dyn, an internet performance company, is that data sent from Paris to Mumbai has a 40% chance of going through London before turning east, adding about 8 milliseconds to the time it takes their user to see that data. 8 ms may not sound like a lot, but when it comes to internet traffic, every little bit of latency-the amount of time you wait between sending a command and getting a response back-matters. Dyn has a handle on this because it has put in place a network of 150 sensors around the world that constantly monitors the speed and route of data traversing the internet; today marks the public unveiling of this service.
The map above shows the location of Dyn’s sensors, as well as the time it takes for data to travel from California’s Bay Area around the world. Note that while the internet may have “flattened” the world, it has not made geography obsolete-just more complicated. Jeremy Hitchcock, Dyn’s CEO, says he expects many companies to use this tool when planning expansions of their network infrastructure to ensure that the physical location of a data center matches its most efficient placement on the network. But the ability to map the path of their data could also help companies keep ISPs and other transit providers honest. Look at this trouble-shooting report Dyn created for data travelling from Seoul, South Korea to San Jose, California: Each dot represents a single packet of data. By revealing these disparities, companies can take action to change how their networks work or pressure their ISPs to do the same. While ISPs provide some measurement services like these, there is a natural conflict of interest. Dyn’s product, Hitchock says, will allow companies to call out networks for poor service. For example, ISPs will sometimes avoid the fastest route for data if they can send it more cheaply through a slower connection, bolstering their bottom lines at the expense of customer performance.
The Internet has revolutionized the way we communicate. E-mail has been the most rapidly adopted form of communication ever known. Less than two decades ago, not many people had heard of it. Now, many of us e-mail instead of writing letters or even calling people on the phone. People around the world send out billions of e-mail messages every day. But sometimes even e-mail isn't fast enough. You might not know if a person you want to e-mail is online at that moment. Also, if you're e-mailing back and forth with someone, you usually have to click through a few steps. This is why instant messaging (IM) has become so popular. You can IM with anyone on your buddy list or contact list as long as that person is online. You type messages to each other into a small window that shows up on both of your screens. In this article, you will learn about the history of instant messaging and how it works.
You will also learn what the major IM programs are, what makes them different from each other and what the future holds for IM. The major online services, such as America Online (AOL), Prodigy and CompuServe, were the main way that ordinary people could connect and communicate with each other online. Online services provide the actual interface that you use when you're connected to the service, which creates a targeted experience for users. In the early 1990s, people began to spend more and more time on the Internet. Creative software developers designed chat-room software and set up chat rooms on Web servers. In a chat room, a group of people can type in messages that are seen by everyone in the "room." Instant messages are basically a chat room for just two people. That's when Mirabilis introduced ICQ, a free instant-messaging utility that anyone could use. ICQ, shorthand for "I seek you," uses a software application, called a client, that resides on your computer.
The client communicates with an ICQ server whenever you are online and the client is running. In 1997, AOL, considered the pioneer of the online community, gave its users the ability to talk in real time with each other through chat rooms and instant messages. In June 1998, AOL acquired Mirabilis and ICQ. The ICQ model is the basis for most instant-messaging utilities on the market today. In the next section we'll examine how these services work. You go to the download page and get a copy of the free software client for your computer. You install the software and open the client. The client tries to connect to the server. It uses a proprietary protocol for communication. Once the client is connected to the server, you can enter your name and password to log in to the server. If this is your first time on, you can sign up for an account and immediately begin using it.
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