Week 7 Readings

1.) Tyson - Internet Infrastructure

This was a good article but it seems that it may have been more useful to read it last week. It didn't really repeat anything from the articles last week but it did repeat what was said in class. The information in this article was already talked about by Dr. He in class last Tuesday.

The article talks about networks and the internet infrastructure. Nobody technically owns the internet - it is just a global connection of networks. Many different ISPs are interconnected at NAPs (network access points) and they agree to communicate with each other. Networks rely on NAPs, backbones, and routers to communicate with each other. Routers determine where to send the information from computer to computer. Backbones are fiberoptic trunk lines.

IP (internet protocol) addresses are a unique identifying number for every machine on the internet. The numbers in IP addresses are called octets and there are a total of 32 numbers. DNS's convert the IP address into human readable words. Caching will essentially "save" the IP address from the DNS root server so that it doesn't have to contact the root server each time.

2.) Pace - Dismantling ILS

I'm not exactly sure what the argument in this article was. It was talking about ILS and problems with interoperability in regards to ILS, but I'm not sure what the author was trying to convey exactly.

ILS was essentially changed in the early 90's when libraries began embracing the web. Interoperability in library systems is a problem. Many people believe that the technology in libraries is interoperable, but it really isn't. Current ILS's are not doing the job libraries need them to, and libraries often have to find their own solutions or buy standalone products. Some libraries are exploring open source software to solve some of their problems - but these also create interoperability problems.

I think the article was implying that vendors need to be making a better product with better interoperability between not only their own products but other brands products as well, but I'm not really sure if that was the gist of it or not.

3.)Inside the Google Machine Video.

This was an interesting video, and cool to hear about Google as a company from the founders. I'm not really sure what the relevance of it was to our class though. It was intersting and informative, but didn't really have that much to do with information technology as far as I could see.

The most intersting part of the video in my opinion was the 20% rule. Google alows their employees to spend 20% of their time doing and working things they feel are useful or important. This is a really cool and interesting idea and they say it is how they keep new and innovative ideas coming. This is an idea that other companies may want to try to implement in one way or another. I know all companies can't afford to do something like this, or may be in an industry where it wouldn't be advantageous too, but for somebody like Google this is a great idea to keep the creative juices flowing in their employees.