The Network is the Computer (with with appologies to Sun Microsystems)

I am an RC5 junky. Can't get enough of it- I check my stats daily, and gripe whenever there is a glitch with the stat box or (heaven forbid) I lost some ground in the rankings. For those of you who are unaware of the distributed computing project, distributed.net is a method of distributing computing tasks across multiple (hundreds of thousands?) processors, using the internet is the distribution and collection medium. This is incredibly effective- DES challenge 3 was broken in 22 hours! What is the DES challenge you ask? Well, every six months or so, RSA Data security (the folks behind the ìsecured connectionî on your browser) issue a challenge- Crack a message we encrypt using 56bit DES (The encryption standard the US Government adopted in 1977 and uses to this day) and we'll give you $10,000. They do this to press the government that DES encryption is weak and easily crackable.

Here is the real beauty of the distributed.net project- the client software you need to run in order to participate has been compiled to VIRTUALLY EVERY PROCESSOR AND OS PLATFORM USED. And all is made possible with the internet. The network has been changing the way we've been communicating, and in the process changing our entire civilization. I want to discuss this a bit, along with a simplified How-to.

The biggest and most prevalent networking medium used today is Ethernet. Ethernet's success was due largely to its incredible flexibility as a multiprotocol medium- which means it can route many different network packet types at the same time. Very simply put, Ethernet is a specification to ìpacketize,î or to create equal chunks of data with CRC info to a digital stream of information. With the invention of the multiprotocol router, companies became able to standardize on Ethernet as their transport wiring of choice, regardless of what type of networking protocol (be it IPX used by Netware, Appletalk used by Apple, NDIS/SMB used by Windows, or TCP/IP used by Unix) they were using. Economies of scale made Ethernet cheaper and cheaper, enabling the networking renaissance we are enjoying today.

Ethernet is remarkably simple to implement. The two wire types most commonly used are Coaxial wire and twisted pair (similar to phone wire, except with more stringent quality and noise specifications.) Coaxial wire functions without a hub, and utilizes its own internal resistance as a guide. Each node (or network interface controller, NIC for short) connected to another has its own unique serial address (MAC), so each packet sent to another machine has its originator's address attached, and broadcast along the network. At the end of the coaxial chain, a ìterminatorî is placed to connect the two leads of the wire together at a higher resistance and return the packet along the ìreceiveî lead, completing the cycle. The receiving computer will respond if the packet passing through its NIC is addressed to it, and the whole thing starts again. The problem with coax cable is that its expensive and its only functional for a limited length before the resistance becomes too great, much like SCSI cabling. Twisted pair is much cheaper to cable, but requires some arbitration in the signaling, since the wires don't have the type of internal resistance necessary to simply ìterminateî. This arbitration device is normally referred to as a ìhub,î and it properly routes the packets across all computers connected to it by taking the packet from the sending computer and reversing the poles for sending (the ìterminatorî function.) Add the multiprotocol router, and you can connect these ìsubnetsî that are created by hubs across a variety of digital mediums- and a network is formed.

TCP/IP is fast becoming the protocol of choice for networking, primarily because it was the most freely available (not tied to any particular computing platform) and because it was the most suited for a large number of addresses. It is not perfect by any means, nor is it able to handle the enormous growth of nodes the Internet has fostered, but the need for network standardization has rendered its weaknesses irrelevant. The internet has shown that your type of computer is irrelevant to communication and commerce, forcing all the computer players to recognize that their proprietary solutions will quickly send them to oblivion- Either adapt or perish.

Larry Ellison was perhaps ahead of the times when he called for a new (old?) paradigm in computing, where all the software resides centrally and the end user PC acts as a data processing station- The existing network infrastructure is simply not capable of handling this load yet. But the fact remains that the network is revolutionizing our way of life by connecting our computers, and our homes, businesses, and services by inference. The potential of every home in the world having a windows to every other home is mind numbing. Incidentally, this also proves that as we shift the computing focus from the monolithic content creation ìapplication typesî that still proliferate to the computing landscape to more of a communication and commerce functions, what brand your computer is becomes increasingly irrelevant (lead in to the purpose of these articles ;)

Oh, By the way- If enough folks are interested, we should start an xlr8yourmac RC5 team- I'll throw in my modest 4000Kkeys/Sec - drop me a message!

Links for more reading:

• www.distributed.net
• http://www.rsa.com/pressbox/html/990119-1.html: RSA's press release annoucing the results of the DES-3 contest.
  
• http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19981210.html: Robert X. Cringley's excellent article on the history of Ethernet. You might want to read some of his other articles on his site, too.
• http://www.macopinion.com/fi.cgi?url=/columns/macskeptic/jan99/990119.html: Jeff Lewis' excellent article about cross platform misconceptions
• http://muq.org/~cynbe/rants/lastdino.htm: Jeff Rothero's analysis of Linux growth, really good insight on the inevitablity of open standards.