Network Stacks and the Internet – Computerphile

49 thoughts on “Network Stacks and the Internet – Computerphile”

• At about 4:20 (how appropriate), he is saying "IP, on top of that", and the closed caption rendered it as "I pee on top of that". As someone with hearing problems who uses the CCs when he can, I could not help being thoroughly distracted — I guess in a sort of good way — by that closed caption. But it is a trifle undignified for this excellent video.

• You are a gentleman and scholar!

• I think we need a video on the evolution of the RPC and how it came to be (historical narrative).

• Incredible! thanks.

• Anyone watching this and wanting to know more about it, should google OSI layers.

• Great video! Sub'd! 🙂

• Very nice video, except for the part where "Ethernet" seems to be going over wifi to the router.

• Nice, this video made it quite clear.

  :^)

• The video overly simplifies things a lot. Most routers keep "maps" (routing tables) of IPs/IP ranges so that when a request to an IP comes in, it already knows exactly where to send it. Also, whenever a new router is connected to a network (whether locally or on the Internet) there are protocols for these routers to communicate so that they may update their routing tables to make effective use of any new routers on the network (and similarly if a router is removed).

• I think you're confusing NDIS with something else. NDIS is a specific API for NIC drivers and is used primarily by Microsoft Windows. And yet, the behavior you're describing is equally applicable to non-NDIS systems, like Mac, Linux, etc.

• lol all I got from this video was Brit's say "rooter", everything thing else was over my head.

• I remember (fondly) a bunch of cheap realtek based gig-ethernet cards – that all had the same MAC adress.

  Caused a lot of fun in the network back.

  Thankfully, changing the mac was always easy with linux.

• i luv how he says router 😀

• To be fair, some of the misconception results from a poor naming choice. Computer science is neither specifically about computers nor is it science. It should be called Computational Maths.

• Your comment should be a quote of history… really, heh.

• Dear Youtube,
  Stop marking comments as spam just because you don't agree with the poster; it's rude and bigoted.

  Sincerely,
  Dylan

• Well thats basically how it works. its just that the website you are trying to go to probably doesnt use the same isp you do. so you send your info to your isp it looks at it and figures out which other isp to send it too, then that isp sends it to the server you are looking for. the reason we dont have one giant isp that covers the whole planet has to do with economics more then computer science.

• Well … No and yes. When I was working for a big company, every single machine connected to the network was assigned a unique, private, MAC address. This is done while the OS is loading, at the time the OS is initializing your network card. It does not replace the actual MAC address, it simply changing it while the PC is powered up. This change is lost when you shut your PC down and has to be redone when booting up again.

• Why can't every "central hub/ router (not the one in your house)" know where every other server is? So for example if i would like to get to XYZ.com i type that in, the information goes to my local "server hub"of some kind, which scans though its library, sees XYZ.com and sends it straight to it. I know VERY little about computing and was simply wondering. Would such a system lower latency and reduce package loss?

• You don't even know how to properly use the caplock so your arguments are moot.

• Were you dropped on your head as a child or thrown? Don't be jealous that I've only studied Networking and could understand this, you should read up on it. He's talking about NETWORKING not PROGRAMMING, dolt.

• It is important to learn these basic concepts first but this is not the channel to learn it from. If you search YouTube you can find basically any novice concept that you want and a brief description of it's function. If you want to learn a bit faster, just use trusty Wikipedia!

• It has been 3 weeks, have you decided to not be lazy and just google it?

• More like A+, Networking to fully understand. I don't program in C++ or even Java and this made perfect sense to me.

• Will there be a free audiobook for people in e.g. Germany? 🙂

• Brady – get the brown paper out for the computer people!

• 50 people are unhappy the videos don't end with /computerphile

• Actually, I think these videos are targeted towards people with little understanding of computers. This one was pretty basic and could have had more information about routing (but then it would have been more complex for some people).

• That doesn't necessarily mean you are closer. There's no reason why a packet can't travel around the world to get somewhere in the same country you send it.

• There is no way (as far as I know, I may be wrong). They just know where it should be sent next. The only one who knows the chain is over is the device just before the destination.
  Of course, this means that sometimes packets get lost because they were sent through a wrong route or things like that. However, to avoid sending those lost packets indefinitely, they have a time to live. After some time, if they haven't reached the destination, they are discarded.

• Oh I know how routing works, it's my job lol I was just making a comment on the video's content for the benefit of other people, that's all.

• It's a common misconception that computer science has much to do with pushing electrons down wires and learning any particular language syntax and semantics. Computer science is the science of computation. In fact one of the fathers of computer science, Edsger Dijkstra, disliked computers and wrote almost all of his manuscripts by hand with a fountain pen. The administration at UT Austin forced him to get a computer so he could respond to email since he was the computer science chair after all.

• Search wikipedia for "Dijkstra's algorithm" for information on how ideal routing (i.e. solving the shortest path problem from graph theory) would work. In the real internet the Tier 1 and Tier 2 ISPs tend to not implement any form of ideal routing though. They implement "hot-potato" routing which finds the shortest path out of their network that makes progress towards the destination.

• This was presented poorly. He needed to explain the concept of protocol stacks and the 5 layer internet protocol suite before launching into a haphazard example. Search for "Internet protocol suite" on wikipedia to for a better understanding of the example in this video.

• ipcyb.org

• "… to understand the content of this video such prior knowledge is necessary."

  Really? What prior knowledge do you think you need? I thought it was very clearly explained but, to be honest, I've studied it.

• As I watched this I kept thinking of the overhead to send the data (i.e. the headers on the packets at each layer). Then I realized we've all started using SOAP, REST, etc. for everything … so who cares about the traffic!

• check out elithecomputerguy, be prepared they are not short videos(most around an hour) but he teaches very well and you will know what is up by the time it is done

• I was just thinking the same thing but from the opposite: I understand what he say, but that's because I already know it. A greenhorn would be totally lost in the first 45 seconds.

• Seriously this is the best description of networking I've ever heard! Please keep making these!!!

• A video version of Joel Spolskey's article on "leaky abstractions" could be good.

  TRiG.

• That would be great, assuming they wouldnt stop doing ones like this one

• Sweet did not know this channel existed 😀 subbed and enabled automail 😀

• Well the problem is i have some computer knowledge and the way he explane it is complicated. It not that complicated to begin with.Althought internet is a mess, it is driven by logic …..

• Indeed: Gladwell misspells eigenvalues as "Igon values". Clearly, a man who doesn't bother to learn things even superficially before writing about them.

• So it's basically about a balance between lag (ping) and throughput (kbps). Small packets don't accumulate lag as much, but have overhead, and big packets accumulate lag more, but have less overhead.

• Packet loss is not the only reason. Another reason is that a packet must be transmitted fully between two servers before it can be transmitted further (to check its integrity). That means that big packets would have a lot more lag between EACH node of the net.

• Well this is the problem with computing. Knowledge is accumulative so after a while you're just interested in the next step.
  I think people who require grounding in specific areas/terms just need to hit up Wikipedia and other YouTube channels.
  I like that this gives us a more useful overview that joins all these things together. Come back when you know more about the basics 🙂

• Are they using post-it note carrying hamsters as a network medium?

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