Re: Cloud? Firewall? Huh?

[Lone Biker of the Apocalypse <jbirkinshaw -at- CC -dot- WEBER -dot- EDU>]

In article <3ff0v1$bct -at- newsbf02 -dot- news -dot- aol -dot- com>,
cjbenz -at- aol -dot- com (CJBenz) writes...
>Many illustrations in Ed Krol's "The Whole Internet User's Guide &
>Catalog" (Second Edition), use clouds to represent groups of computers on
>the Internet. (However, Krol never actually uses the term "cloud" in the
>text.)

>Being such a popular book, perhaps this was the source of the term.

I wouldn't bet on it.  Having taken a few classes in network concepts and
design, it's a very common symbol in the textbooks. The implication is that "We
don't know or care exactly what path any data packet or group of data packets
takes, as long as it gets there." Were we only using circuit switching for
network connections, showing each node in the path might be useful and
appropriate. Given that packet switching is more common, the cloud analogy
seems more appropriate.

Re: firewalls. Aren't they just monitoring programs running over the top of
router hardware, and limiting certain kinds of access? For example, a sysadmin
who wanted to disable outside finger access to their system would do it by
making slight adjustments in the programming of the network router.

asta...
_________________________________________________________________________
JBIRKINSHAW -at- cc -dot- WEBER -dot- EDU (Lone Biker of the Apocalypse) James Birkinshaw
No, no, no. *MURDER* is murder, *MEAT* is lunch.          1972 BMW R75/5