Posted by Richard Crowley on 02/09/07 22:28

"Gene" wrote ...
> Sorry, I REALLY am not trying to be argumentative - I just
> do not understand what you are saying.
>
> I do not think you fully understand the history of the internet,
> or how it is currently structured. The internet was initially
> funded to send a message (in parts) via telephone line
> links so that it would be secure.

I was there. I worked in the scientific computing center
of a university which had a link to the original ARPA net.
The network did not use "telephone lines". It used very
expensive data lines. There were no "modems" at the
time except very slow (55-110 baud) things for teletypes.

The network was not secure, either. Unless the sender
explicitly encrypted something anybody could read any
of the traffic. The "internet" came several years after
this experimental network, and is no more "secure" today.

> The internet is nothing more than a lot of computers connected together
> via telephone & other links. My ISP is one, your ISP is one, if I had an
> old PC in my back room connected to the internet, it would be a node. The
> nodes usually have hard drives attached, some have tape drive backup(s),
> there are a lot of data storage possibilities.

There are NO data storage possibilities unless you
explicitly arrange for them yourself.

> When I hit return on THIS text message, it will go to my ISP, and from
> there "who knows" where it will be routed.

It went to sisna.com's NNTP server which has peering
arrangements with other NNTP servers which have
peering arrangements with yet other NNTP servers.
Within seconds (or minutes?), it ended up at the NNTP
server I subscribe to and I was able to read it.

> If I am not mistaken, they still break up this text message into at least
> two parts, for security. THIS text message will be spread over the
> internet, in pieces - who knows where. However, it will eventually be
> patched back together and displayed in this newsgroup as a string of text.

NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol) is essentially
an ancient (pre-"internet") voluntary, peer-to-peer
message sharing system that was developed back in
the days of ARPA/DARPA. Messages may be broken up
into packets (as all internet traffic is), but not for security
purposes. Indeed there is NO security for NNTP news
postings unless you personally encrypt it before you
send it. Messages are not "broken in half for security"
except in espionage fiction.

> Bits and pieces of THIS text message may remain on certain nodes for some
> time - never looked into how long each node retains said pieces.

NNTP servers may retain messages for as long (or short)
as they wish. There are no requirements at all. Some
(like Google) retain them "forever" as an archive. Others
may keep them around for only a few minutes hours.
I doubt that many of them deal with "pieces" of messges.

> What I "thought" you initially suggested was that I place my family A/V
> data onto the internet as a better solution to my burning the MiniDV tapes
> onto DVD-Rs at my home for permanent storage.

It must have been someone else who suggested "internet
storage". The idea sounds daft to me.

It certainly could have been me that said that I have ZERO
faith in field-burnable optical disks as any kind of "archival"
storage medium. I have no more faith in hard drives for
"archival" storage. My only faith is in digital mag tape.

> If I placed my camcorder data on the internet, (other than FTP it to some
> place like my ISP or other computer) then it would be scattered all over
> the USA and possibly the world.

The "internet" is only a transport medium. The "internet"
does not "store" anything except for a few seconds during
transport.

> How would you ever retrieve the pieces tomorrow, let alone 20 years from
> now? My A/V data would presumably make it to a final destination, like my
> ISP's hard drive(s), etc.,

If you actually wrote data to your ISP's hard drives.

You can't "place data on the internet" any more than you
can just "send a letter" They both need an explicit destination.
In the case of our Usenet postings, the explicit destination
was our respective NNTP providers new servers. The news
servers then shared the messages with all the other NNTP
servers on the planet.

>or some company that provides storage space.

Yes, indeed, there are providers on the internet who
will store data for you. Some will allow you to share
still and even video images with your friends (or even
with the planet). Some just provide raw disk space
for you to use as backup, or transfer or whatever.
Some provide automated backup service where they
will back up data of your choice over the internet to
their servers. They then provide a way of retreiving
those files back. But the "internet" is only the connection
between you and them.

> All of the packet data on the internet would eventually be erased, except
> for the data at the final destination.

Within seconds.

> There is no enormous storage space out there called the www or internet,
> or whatever that permanently stores your data for 20 years.

Exactly.

> Your data goes to a storage device, presumably at your ISP, or other
> computer that you choose. There, it gets archived onto disk, tape, or
> whatever storage media for storing for the 20 years. It would have to be
> stored on random access media to be easily down-
> ded for your use, else you would have to send in a request for certain
> data to be copied from your archive tape to hard drive, so you could
> download a video clip.

This only happens if you pay some particular provider (your
ISP, some backup provider) explicitly for this service. This
is not some automatic mechanism that happens "on the
internet".

> I do not believe that any company can stay in business providing 1GB of
> data storage for 20 years for a total of $0.06/USD, which is my current
> cost to burn a high quality DVD-R at my home.

INHO, your 25-cent DVD will be mush in 20 years and you
will have wasted your time making the disks, and then be
dissapointed (or devestated) when you can't read them.

OTOH, I guarantee that if you keep your DV tapes cool,
dry, and away from strong magnetic fields, the bits will
be recoverable in 20 years sufficiently well for the DV
error detection/correction mechanism to function well.

> Sorry if I misunderstood what you were initially suggesting,
> I'm really confused by your comments.

You may have confused which remarks came from who.
I agree with you that there is currently no inexpensive
vendor of bulk (> a few GB) archival storage online.

However, the notion that field-burnable optical discs are
"archival" is just silly IMHO. Sure, I have a lot of data
archived to CDR and DVDR, but I re-write them to new
discs every 2-3 years. If ANY CDR or DVDR discs from
today are readable in 20 years, I will be very pleasantly
surprised.

> Hmmmm - I'm not sure if FTP breaks the data into packets or not? I just
> assumed that it was packets
> too, just never thought ~ it until today:-)
> Academic, but anyone know?

ALL network traffic is broken up into packets. That is
how "the internet" (or even your home LAN) manages
to handle everyone's traffic at the same time. Some
small messages fit within a single packet. Most don't.

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