[Common Tator]

Not prose for the ages, granted. But I don't think anyone believes Stevens was suggesting the Internet is actually composed of tubes. Seems that he had the concept of a pipeline in mind, a first-in-first-out protocol. In any case, certainly nothing offensive, other perhaps than to some San Francisco techno geeks.

The internet is made up of packets of data that are transmitted over the internet. One message or web page can be made up of many packets. If just one of several packets get held up the entire page or message can be worthless.

IT IS NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES A FIRST IN FIRST OUT PROTOCOL.

One way to describe the way the net works would be is individual tubes of data. Each packet or tube is free to find its own route from source to destination. They are not required to arrive in the order sent. Each tube or packet of data, has a number that is used to put the received packets back in sequence. When the internet gets too busy the loss or delay just a few tubes or packets can bring the internet to its knees.

Trying to trash liberals by by revealing your own ignorance does not contribute to the conservative cause.

[ClearCase_guy]

IT IS NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES A FIRST IN FIRST OUT PROTOCOL.

No need to shout my good man. Mark made a simple (small) error when referred to "first in first out". He deserves some slack.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Senator was talking about bandwidth issues, and you also note the impact that large amounts of data can have on net traffic.

Getting hung up on "tubes" or "FIFO" really misses the point. Let's not be pedantic.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Trying to trash liberals by by revealing your own ignorance does not contribute to the conservative cause.

That was nasty. I was not offering my own description of the internet. I was venturing a guess as to what Stevens had in mind. And even if he was wrong, it's hard to see how it's going to hurt his career.

[HawaiianGecko]

IT IS NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES A FIRST IN FIRST OUT PROTOCOL.  Trying to trash liberals by by revealing your own ignorance does not contribute to the conservative cause.
 

I believe the author Mark Finkelstein said that not the Freeper who posted it, and Finkelstein clearly was referring to Stevens. The quote is: "But I don't think anyone believes Stevens was suggesting the internet is actually composed of tubes.  Seems that he (Stevens) had the concept of a pipeline in mind, a first-in-first-out protocol."

Now why Finkelstein thinks that Stevens had FIFO in mind is beyond me, he doesn't explain it in the article, but it wasn't the Freeper that said it.

[Dracian]

IT IS NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES A FIRST IN FIRST OUT PROTOCOL.

One particular protocol, TCP, has numbered packets which can be re-ordered, but real-time streaming data, such as carried by the UDP protocol depends on a FIFO underlying pipeline. In streaming media, packets that arrive out of order are discarded and a hole appears in the data -- a glitch in the sound or video image.

Therefore in reality, FIFO *IS* the underlying internet as much as possible. Out of order arrival of packets is a rarity. Multiple routes from source to destination is a rarity. While these sorts of things are conceivable and tolerable with protocols like TCP, they nevertheless seldom occur anywhere on the internet.