Establishing an identity on the Web

Let's start with a green frog. This is your Web identity. It is not very efficient as a Web identity so you have to think about how you can change that green frog to give you an effective Web presence.

The first step is to turn the green frog into a computer. Next is to connect this computer to the Internet. Seems perfectly straight forward, after all there are three hundred million others who are connected, so, it must be quite easy. Right?

Here is where you encounter your first knowledge gap. You'll need to ask somebody how you get connected. They give you some algorithmic instructions which involves getting a modem and making arrangements with a company who will give you more algorithmic instructions to set up your computer so that you are connected.

Most likely, you won't have the faintest idea as to what is going on. It all seems so complicated that you'd rather not know. You are just relieved, and amazed at some point when you discover you are connected and you can send and receive e-mails and visit Web sites. Pretty soon you are so overwhelmed with the huge variety of different information you are exposed to that you forget all about that initial first step you took in becoming connected.

As a casual user of the Internet it may not concern you very much how you are connected. You have a direct connection to another computer (your ISP — Internet Service Provider) linked directly or indirectly to the whole of the network. It works fine, so there is no need to go into details as to how it all happens.. However, as a professional user, someone who is going to use the Internet as part of their professional business life, it may be prudent to take the trouble to look more closely at what is happening.

For starters, the initial connection you made was probably opportunistic. A decision made in ignorance. Was it the best choice you could have made? How easily can you change if you realise there is a better choice elsewhere? What if you wanted to change? Your e-mail address is likely to be valid only while you are using your current ISP.

In a world of constant change, flexibility is vital. If your ISP goes down or becomes slow because it is trying to handle too much traffic you are handicapped. What insurance have you got that your ISP won't suddenly go out of business. If you change your ISP you lose your e-mail address and will have to notify everyone you know. You'll have to resubscribe to e-mail discussion forums, change the details on many Web sites that recognise you through your e-mail address. If only you'd known a little more when you connected to the Internet, you could have saved yourself all these potential problems.

By appreciating that you have knowledge gaps, you can take precautions. In the first place you can think of your first connection as simply a temporary expedient to get on to the Internet to be able to get enough information to connect more efficiently.

There are thousands of Web sites that will give you information, but, it is likely to be thoroughly confusing. The best way is to find some e-mail discussion forums to join and ask questions. Strike up on-line acquaintanceship with knowledgeable people and ask their opinions. It is essential that you ask several people because everyone has knowledge gaps and you'd have no way of knowing whether you were getting the right advice unless you could make comparisons.

In my own case, I was very slow at understanding what the Internet was really about. I had a vague mental model as to how it all worked and this had served me faithfully for years. But, as I contemplated the possibilities of being involved in an e-business situation I became consciously aware of many limitations.

It was a chance e-mail discussion I had with a contact in Canada that first opened my eyes. This contact, Yvan Caron, was investigating the commercial possibilities of P2P (person to person) file transference. He sent me an e-mail enthusing excitedly about the business opportunities it opened up. His e-mail contained so many terms I was unfamiliar with that I couldn't understand what he was talking about.

I confessed my ignorance and he went to a great deal of trouble to explain how the transference was organised. I didn't follow all the technicalities, but it was enough to totally change my conception of how the Internet worked. It provided me with a new insight and at the same time made me acutely aware that for years I'd been using the Internet without really understanding how it worked.

As I understood from Yvan Caron's e-mails, the Internet isn't about computers talking to each other, it is about applications talking to each other. This may be obvious, but, it is such simple changes in emphasis that can lead to greater understanding. As he explained, application programs send each other messages and listen out for messages being sent to them.

The problem, however, was that although Yvan's explanation had given me a valuable new insight, it had totally destroyed the mental image I had built up over the years. I now had to start from scratch to create a new model.

I was reluctant to start going into much technical detail because it is so easy to get sucked into weeks of hard study. I wanted to stay away from the detail and work with broad concepts; this might not make me technically competent, but, at least I might be able to see through the fog.

In trying to form a new mental model of how the Internet works, I discovered many different kinds of knowledge gaps. Try as I might, I couldn't get a complete picture into my head. Fortunately, I belonged to a very techy e-mail discussion forum (www.evolt.org) where many Internet gurus and Web site designers hang out. To this forum, I sent the following post:

I'm trying to figure out a neat mental model to explain how the Internet works without having to involve any technical detail. I thought I had a good idea as to what goes on under the hood until I tried to write down a simple explanation. The more I try, the more knowledge gaps I discover.

Starting from the beginning, I make a connection to my ISP. I guess some application does this by making a telephone connection and in computer speak identifies itself and presents an appropriate password. The ISP then allocates my computer a temporary IP address.

Presumably, the ISP then listens out for any messages for this temporary address and passes them straight on to me. If I send out messages where do they go? Does the ISP computer simply pass them on, adding my temporary IP address? If it passes them on, where does it pass them on to? How do they get to a destination I want them to go to: 1) when I send someone an e-mail; 2) when I specify a link with my browser?

Once I'm connected, does my ISP computer keep listening to my connection to see if I am sending any messages? How does my ISP computer detect the messages that are being sent to me? Are these messages being routed directly to it or is it just listening to all messages on the Internet and selecting those that apply to its own clients?

It's a very hazy picture I have. Every time I think I'm beginning to understand, I get stumped with another knowledge gap.

I'd be grateful for a little light...

peter

There were three responses. The first from Anthony Baratta, President of KeyBoard Jockeys, he described how the initial contact was a shout to your ISP to give you an identity (a temporary IP address). Your application then sends this identity in a short message to a universal database that is constantly recording who is currently on the Web and where they are (the database can tell where you are by the route the message takes through different computers to reach it).

A mystery had been cleared up. I had always wondered how messages found their way around the Internet. The answer was so elegantly simple: you created an identity when you log on and this identity is placed on a map that resides in a computer that every other computer has access to. If an application wants to send a message to somebody, it just routes it through the computer that has the map.

(Note: the map is in fact duplicated on many computers around the Internet. These computers are in constant communication with each other, exchanging updated information at least every thirty seconds. Each collects information about computers in their own locality: to know which are currently connected, their identity and where they are located. This information is then passed on to all the other computers holding a "map", so within a few minutes of logging on, every computer in the world knows how to find you.

The second response was from one of the people in the virtual cafe, Scott Dexter, from California. He is also one of the more active members of evolt.org and is involved in the construction and content of the www.evolt.org Web site. He explained the Internet in terms of a metaphor of the cafe, explaining how messages get passed from one computer to another as they pass from the sender to the receiver.

He explained how messages get sent with a lot of extra information (in a header), which is read by all the computers that handle the messages. This information includes the name of the sender, the time it was sent and the name of the intended recipient. It is this information that enables computers to know if a message is for them, or, if not, to know where to pass the message on so that is gets nearer to the intended recipient.

The third response came from Miraz Jordan, who runs Internet education courses in New Zealand. Besides directing me to his own lecture notes on the Web, he pointed me to a very authoritative Web site (www.livinginternet.com) that explained the Internet in a reasonably non technical manner. Although it contained a great number of pages of detailed information, by spending a whole day on this site, I found most of my knowledge gaps closing and I was at last able to construct a new mental model of how I understood the Internet to work.