Welcome to "The Big Picture" of connecting through the Internet to reach
online resources. The purpose of this page is to answer the question:
"What are the major pieces of the Internet, and who are the major players
in each segment?".
This page displays the main pieces of the Internet from a User's PC...
extending all the way through to the online content. Each section mentions
the most significant parts of the Internet's architecture. I also provide
links to the top "couple of vendors" in each category, and then an external
link to a more extensive lists of vendors.
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User
PC - A Multi-Media PC equipped to send and receive all variety
of audio and video.
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Sound Board /Microphone/Speakers for telephony, MIDI ,Creative
Labs/SoundBlaster, Yahoo's
List for Sound Cards.
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Video/Graphics for 3D graphics, video, playback . Matrox,
Diamond Multimedia, Yahoo's
List for Video Cards.
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Video camera - Connectix, Yahoo's
List for Video Conferencing, Yahoo's
List for Manufacturers.
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Voice recognition - Yahoo's
List for Voice Recognition.
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User's Communication
Equipment - This is the communication equipment located at the
User's location(s) to connect the Users' PC(s) to the "Local Loop" (aka
Customer Premise equipment - CPE)
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Phone line - Analog Modem (v.90=56K) US
Robotics , Rockwell,
Yahoo's
List for Modems.
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Phone line -ISDN(128K) Yahoo's
list for ISDN.
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Phone Line - DSL (6 MB) , Yahoo's
list for DSL., ADSL Forum.
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Cable Modem (27 MB) Cable Modem University
(and their neat table of Modem
Vendors)
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Electric Line (1 MB) Digital
PowerLine by Nortel
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Satellite (400 Kb) DirecPC
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LAN - 3com, Yahoo's
list of Network Hardware.
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Routers - Cisco, Ascend,
Bay Networks, Yahoo's
list.
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Firewalls - TBD Vendors, Yahoo's
list for firewalls.
User services - Many corporations also provide "User services" to their
employees such as DNS, Email, Usenet, etc. Links for these services are
described further down this diagram in the user
services section. |
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Local Loop Carrier
- Connects the User location to the ISP's Point of Presence
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Communication Lines -RBOCS: (Ameritech,
Bell Atlantic, Bell
South, Cincinnati Bell, NYNEX,
Pacific Bell, Southwestern
Bell, US West),GTE,
LEC's,
MFS, TCG,
Brooks,
-
Cable - List of Cable ISP's.
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Satellite - DirecPC.
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Power line - Digital
PowerLine by Nortel.
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Wireless - Wireless Week, Wireless
Access Tech Magazine, Yahoos'
List for Wireless networking.
Equipment Manufacturers: Nortel, Lucent,
Newbridge, Siemens. |
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ISP POP-
This is the edge of the ISP's network. Connections from the user are accepted
and authenticated here.
-
Remote ports Ascend (Max
Product), US Robotics (3com), Livingston
(Portmaster),
Cisco, Yahoo's
List for Routing Technology.
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User Services
- these are the services that most users would use along with
Internet Access. (These may be hosted within a large corporate LAN) (Webhosting
is discussed under the online content section)
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Domain Name Server - BIND,
DNS Resources Directory.
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Email Host -,Sendmail ,Microsoft
Exchange
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Usenet Newsgroups (NNTP) - INN,
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Special services such as quake, telnet, FTP
-
User Web Hosting - See the online content section
for details.
-
These servers require fast interfaces and large/fast storage.
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ISP Backbone
- The ISP backbone interconnects the ISP's POPs, AND interconnects
the ISP to Other ISP's and online content.
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Backbone Providers - UUNET, MCI,
SPRINT, GTE,
Russ Haynal's ISP Page,
Boardwatch Magazine.
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Large Circuits - fiber Circuit carriers, AT&T,
SPRINT, MCI,
Worldcom (MFS, Brooks),
RBOC's,
C&W, Qwest,
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Routers - Cisco, Ascend,
Bay Networks, Yahoo's
list.
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ATM Switches - Fore, Newbridge,
Lucent, Ascend,
Yahoo's
List of ATM Manufacturers.
-
Sonet/SDH Switches - Nortel, Fujitsu,
Alcatel.Tellabs , Lucent and Positron
Fiber Systems.
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Gigaswitch - Gigaswitch
from Dec, Yahoo's
List.
-
Network Access Points - Russ
Haynal's ISP Page
The Broadband guide (links
to 4,000 vendors) |
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Online Content
- These are the host sites that the user interacts with.
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Web Server platforms - Netsite, Apache,
Microsoft, Yahoo's
List of web servers.
-
real-player Servers - real.com.
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Hosting Farms- Many online resources are hosted at well-connection facilities
such as This
list from Genuity, Global Center or Exodus
-
These servers require fast interfaces and large/fast storage.
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Origins of
online content - This is the original "real-world" sources for
the online information.
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Existing electronic information is being connected from legacy systems.
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Traditional print resources are being scanned and converted into electronic
format
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Many types of video and audio programming is being broadcast via the internet.
For example, look at this
list of over 500 radio stations who bitcast their programming onto the
Internet.
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Internet telephony is growing on the Internet Start with VON
and then explore this
list from Yahoo.
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Look at this
list of interesting devices connected to the Internet.
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Here is a large picture of
the world map (connected to the Internet)
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