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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="3">Game 
                        Networking 101</font></i></font></b><br>
                      
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 
                        <a href="mailto:jsimpson@ravensoft.com">Jake Simpson</a></font></div>
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                  <td width="45%" align="right" valign="top"> 
                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 10 <br>
                      January 31, 2000&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <loonystart> 
              
              <p align="right">&nbsp;</p>
              <p align="left"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Anyway, 
                back to packet switching. When you send a file over the Internet, 
                you don&#146;t actually send the whole thing in one big chunk. 
                It's broken up into small packets -- like postcards if you want 
                to continue the post office simile -- and each one is transmitted 
                one after the other. The beauty of this is that the routers can 
                handle many, many of these little packets, without ever having 
                to know what's in them (or indeed, the order they are transmitted 
                in). So your packets get mixed in with someone else's, and the 
                data stream gets maximum efficiency. All your machine has to do 
                is create the little packets, number them so they get re-assembled 
                on the other end in the correct order, and send them out to the 
                router. Of course they need an address too. </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's 
                where IPs come in. An IP is a unique address for your machine 
                on the Internet. It&#146;s a 4-digit number, all of which are 
                between 0 and 255. For instance 204.57.198.32. All those www.whatever.com 
                names are actually converted into IP addresses when packets are 
                exchanged with another machine on the net. Sometimes these are 
                specific and constant on one machine, more often than not they 
                are dynamically allocated by the host system. Every time you log 
                onto you service provider, they send you an IP address they have 
                free from a range that's been allocated to them. For instance, 
                your ISP may have the range 204.198.32. 0 to 255, which gives 
                them 256 possible IP addresses. 256 people can all be using the 
                system at once, but no more than that. When you log in, the system 
                looks to see what IP's are free, and sends you one. That way more 
                than 256 people can be on the books for this Host, but only 256 
                can use it at once.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The alternative 
                to this would be the phone system approach, which would mean creating 
                dedicated routers that would reserve an entire line for you to 
                send data to and from the other computer, but that would not get 
                used most of the time, especially if you are doing stuff like 
                typing in real time. You may think you are a fast typist, but 
                in the time between a message going to and from your machine to 
                another, the network could have transmitted War and Peace several 
                times. A good simile that I heard used is, &#147;like reserving 
                the entire Interstate road system to drive a car from Washington 
                DC to LA.&#148; You would never dream of doing that, instead you 
                share it with other car drivers. Just like on the Internet. Maybe 
                that dumb 'super highway' label thing has some merit after allJ</font></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm sure 
                you can see how sharing lines with others and breaking messages 
                into small packets is the most efficient use of network time and 
                data streams. The same system is in use today as was originally 
                designed for the ARPANET way back when. Why? &acute;Cos it works 
                real well. :)</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Where 
                do ISPs come into this? Lets think of it this way. The routers 
                are machines that sit attached to mainframes and stuff that we 
                are treating as big post offices. An ISP (Internet Service Provider) 
                is one step removed from that - like the postman himself. They 
                are attached to a machine that often has a router (not always), 
                but they also have a ton of modems attached to them. Your little 
                PC at home uses its modem to call up the modem attached to the 
                ISP's machine, which then accepts your packets and forwards them 
                in bulk and mixed in with everyone else's, to the Internet with 
                a capital I.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cable 
                modems, ISDN and DSL are pretty much the same thing, except that 
                the modem-to-modem part is removed, and faster bandwidth communication 
                devices are used instead. In fact DSL is basically just a faster 
                modem with a better phone line anyway. :)</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></loonystart> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 2000 Costas (<a href="http://www.freespeech.org/darkpathimages/dpathmain.htm">Darkpath 
  Images</a>) and Andy, This article is &copy; 2000 Jake Simpson. All other content 
  is &copy; 2000 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. 
  So don't do it, or we'll give you really, really, bad lag.</font></i></p>
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