A funny banner ad…
http://mainframe.timmins.net/~noweb4u/IP%20address.gif

"Security alert: Your computer is currently broadcasting an Internet IP address. With this address, someone can begin attacking your computer!"

Oh no, sound the f*cking alarms! my computer has an IP address!

ugh.

14 thoughts on “”

  1. How Ironic.. I had a girl from one of the companies we provide help desk support for call me yesterday and read that exact message off to me. I just said "close it and carry on with your business" I hung up the phone.. and sighed

    1. yea, my dad asked me about one of those "warning your computer isnt' going as fast as it could be" ads.

      those things should be fucking illegal.

      1. I think parents should be legally precluded from asking moronic quasi-trade related questions to their kids. My father asks me about once a week about weither dsl or cable is faster, or can he run his telephone, and fax, and fucking toaster through his (as yet non existant) broadband connection and "not havta pay the phone company".
        This shit wouldn't annoy me, but it's always the same thing, just slightly modified. I should start logging the time/date and subject of the questions. I'm sure theres a hidden pattern to his insanity.

        1. ok, now this prolly stems from my not fully understanding the internet, but where is the final connection to the internet, and how I do get access? Like where the ISPs and phone companies/cable companies get their access?

          1. There is no real "internet backbone" per se, as a single entity.

            The internet exists as a mesh of interconnections between large networks.

            UUnet connects to AT&T, Sprint, and Verio
            Verio connects to AT&T, Sprint, and UUnet
            Sprint connects to UUnet, AT&T, and Verio
            This goes on with every ISP, to an extent.

            Most of these interconnections are actually free to the ISPs. They call the service "peering" – basically they all exchange information about how to reach each other via a protocol called Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP for short.

            You'll often hear about "tiers" in marketing. There's no such thing in the real world. Noone's a Tier 1, 2, or 3. The internet isn't laid out like that.
            It's all about how many interconnections you have. You want redundancy, and to be able to reach every network endpoint in the minimum amount of hops possible.

            It all helps if you keep in mind that the internet was designed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the DOD. (you'll often see references to ARPAnet in history. The ARPAnet was renamed to the "Internet") The purpose of the network was to create a network that was redundant and had no single point of failure. Don't think equipment failures, think atomic bomb detonations. We wanted a network where it couldn't all be taken out by bombing a single building. Remember, this was all created in the height of the cold war.

            I could go into greater detail if you'd like, but hopefully this gets you started. 🙂

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