It's A Series Of Tubes!!!! - Comments

samthedragon: "It's Not A Truck...It's A Series Of Tubes"

nospam@example.com (samthedragon) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:42:04 -0500

Anyone with knowledge of the internet and how servers work would realise that you are pretty much totally and utterly wrong in what you are saying in regards to the internet. What you are saying may be accurate to an extent on a small network but in all honesty it still isnât particularly accurate. The internet is not tubes and they do not get 'clogged up'. If the packet is unable to get through, your router will find another rout and it will continue on its journey. As each little bit of information is made up of many different packets it is not really noticeable. If you are experiencing a slow internet connection can I suggest getting in touch with the ISP and upgrading to a broadband connection or if your router is a shit one that takes like 10 minutes per packet can I suggest buying or (as you seem to suggest a vast knowledge of how routers work) designing a new and better one.

Anonymous: "It's Not A Truck...It's A Series Of Tubes"

nospam@example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 03:02:58 -0500

The internet is simply wires, cables and optical fibres that are all connected together by routers, switches, hubs and any networking device. With Servers, Users, ISPs and other things on ends or in between each end.

If a company decides to stream across mass amounts of data, it would extremely rarely fill a major connection... it was a problem with "Free internet" in the UK, where paid infrastructure wasnt enough for what people used, but now major connections are constantly upgraded and rarely ever get maxed out. Although they still kick off people for "unfair usage" as contention ratios mean you share bandwidth with local people, possibly slowing them down.

Networking devices do inherit a slight latency issue, depended on how its connected under normal circumstances (Eg, if a near by router/switch went down, more trafic will come past near by ones) then only a few ms will be incured.

mc6809e: "It's Not A Truck...It's A Series Of Tubes"

nospam@example.com (mc6809e) — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:17:51 -0600

Anyone with a knowledge of routers and the queuing of packets would see the "Series of tubes" metaphor as a perfect explanation to the layman for how packets move through the internet.

But people seem to be more interested in ridicule than in understanding, though, so this metaphor is lost on them.