In 1990 and 1991, I made three trips around the world
to write a "technical travelogue." The result was
the book Exploring the Internet, originally
published by Prentice-Hall. Perhaps because they
felt the Internet trend had passed, or more
likely because of the less-than-mainstream appeal,
they allowed the book to go out of print. I decided
to republish the book on the Internet in the hope
that perhaps it retains some minor historical interest.
When I wrote the book, the Internet was just about ready
to explode. Most of the people I visited have
remained key players in the development of the
global network. Many of them have become steadfast
friends, and I am still grateful to them for opening
up their homes to let me in.
At times, the book has a slight edge to it and there
are still some people that are a bit sore.
I wanted the book to be more than many fine lunches and
dinners (and I made a point of finding the most unusual
of these to try and relieve the tedium of too many
acronyms (TMA)). In some cases, such as the focus
of OSI, my wrath was directed at things that have
ended up in the dustbin of history. In other cases
though, such as the importance of making standards
available or the importance of a bottom-up approach
to building networks, I believe the issues are still
crucially important.
I didn't censor myself, and wrote a fairly straightforward
narrative. I did leave one thing out, though. When
I was in Switzerland, I stopped by CERN to learn about
X.400 mail gateways, a concept that has become as
relevant to today's Internet as the rest of OSI.
Brian Carpenter suggested that I stop by a lab and
look at a little program running on a NeXT computer.
There, I met Tim Berners-Lee who showed me his
not-yet-announced concoction, the World Wide Web.
Interesting little program, I thought to myself,
but not very relevant. My thought, as I walked
out of the office was "it won't scale," so
I left it out of this book. Everytime I hear
a pundit with a definite opinion, I remember
that experience. We are all still trying to
understand the implications of the Internet and
anybody who has the answers is asking the wrong
questions.
After I wrote this book, I decided to stop
writing for a while and build a network. The
result was the Internet Multicasting Service,
a non-profit research group that spent four
years building services on the Internet.
As part of that experience, I was able to
draw on the friendships I made while writing
this book. Four people in particular who are
profiled in this book–Rob Blokzijl,
Simon Hackett, Jun Murai, and Mike Schwartz–
ended up working with me on many of the
Internet Multicasting Service projects and have
become some of my most valued friends. It is
to them that I dedicate this electronic edition
of Exploring the Internet.
I also want to thank Dan Lynch, Mike Millikin,
and Ole Jacobsen of Interop, who paid
for my travel expenses on this journey. It
is not often that a corporation is adventurous
enough to fund an avant-garde professional
reference book and I remain thankful for their
support.
Carl Malamud
carl@malamud.com