Appendix A

Initially, a majority of Appendix A glistened over information which was already familiar to me: NICs, servers, clients, network OS, and the like; however, learning more about the intricacy of the IPv4 system, and its inherent flaws, intrigued me. In hindsight, it’s ridiculous that they expected 4.2 billion addresses to be enough, considering the already-growing population and the rapid advancement of technology, but they addressed the issue pretty quickly. I never realized the IP system shifted back in 2011, despite being chronically online, until I port forwarded one day and noticed an IPv6 in lieu of the IPv4. If they hadn’t amended the issue, would the IPs begin duplicating, or would they simply be unable to have an identifier on the internet?

Domains are very rudimentary as well, considering every single website requires one, but knowing its initial purpose and subsequent privatization is amusing; while the internet originally being a military asset isn’t surprising, knowing companies tried to block each other out of connectivity sounds par for the course of the business, unfortunately. Again, most of the appendix is known information, but it’s nice to learn more about the origins and gather a bit more of a technical understanding when it comes to the network we access daily, such as the modulation and demodulation of signals on a modem and the hierarchy of service providers that never really dawned upon me until now. Considering that each ISP has to buy access from a NAP, it makes me wonder: whose fault is it for poor connectivity, even in the dead hours of night?