Author:![]() | Internet 4 U |
Each little package would know where it was going and would also know where it was going to sit in relation to all the other packages when it got there. Think of it as each little package having a note tagged on it saying where it came from, where it was going to, and where it belonged in relation to all the other packages that were a part of the same communication.
The message, cut up into thousands of small packages, would be thrown out into the computer system. Each little package would have to fend for itself. Each one would have to hunt around for the fastest way to get to the computer that it was told to go to.
Now we are getting to the interesting part. The guys at Rand thought like this: What if there are lots of computers all hooked-up with one another in a kind of real big network. And those little guys (the packages) could take any open road to the place they needed to get to... Why, it would mean that the packages would find an alternative route around that pile of ashes (hmm, I mean Dallas), and get to their destination, be reassembled and arrive whole.
Now, wait a minute! What if a package gets lost? No problem. Each package knows how many packages are being sent, so when the computer at their destination puts them back together again it will know which one is missing (if any) and send a message back to the sending computer telling it to send a new package number 123,567 (or whatever). No problem.
Now, since these computers are connected in a really big network the time it takes for the packages to arrive is very small indeed! So, even if a package has to be re-sent the entire message arrives very quickly. It becomes impossible for the enemy (or anybody else for that matter) to stop it.
This business about packages is really TCP/IP. Look on the Contents page and you will see that there is a special section on TCP/IP.
The politicians in America thought that the boys at Rand had a darn good idea, so they opened the governments purse strings and poured money on top of the people that could get this kind of thing done. The Military got some, and lots of Universities around the U.S. got some too. The Universities were to play an important part in the birth of the Internet as we know it.