Page 250 - Using MIS

218 Chapter 6 The Cloud

Network 3
You in Minneapolis
New Zealand Hotel

Your LAN Network 4 Hotel’s LAN
Network 1
Network 2
Internet Internet
Service Service
Provider Provider
The Internet
Figure 6-7
Using the Internet for a Hotel
Reservation The problem with peering is that some people use more bandwidth than others. Netflix, for
example, accounts for about 33 percent of all Internet traffic in North America between 9:00 PM
3
and 12:00 AM. Carriers argue that they should be able to charge varying rates based on content,
application, or the user requesting the data.
Netflix, eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon.com say this could hurt consumers and innovation.
They believe in the net neutrality principle, where all data is treated equally. They argue that
carriers should not be allowed to decide which sites load quickly, which apps are allowed on a
network, and which content is acceptable. The net neutrality debate is important and isn’t go-
ing away soon.

Internet Addressing

As you can imagine, just like surface mail, every location on the Internet needs an address. For
reasons that are beyond this discussion, an Internet address is called an IP address, which is a
number that identifies a particular device. Public IP addresses identify a particular device on the
public Internet. In order to get on the Internet, every device must have access to a public IP ad-
dress. Because public IP addresses must be unique, worldwide, their assignment is controlled by
a public agency known as ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Private IP addresses identify a particular device on a private network, usually on a LAN.
Their assignment is controlled within the LAN, usually by a LAN device like the one shown in
Figure 6-5. When you sign on to a LAN at a coffee shop, for example, the LAN device lends you
a private IP address to use while you are connected to the LAN. When you leave the LAN, it
reuses that address.

Use of Private IP Addresses

When your computer accesses a public site, say www.pearsonhighered.com, from within a LAN
at, say, a coffee shop, your traffic uses your private IP address until it gets to the LAN device.
At that point, the LAN device substitutes your private IP address with its public IP address and
sends your traffic out onto the public Internet.
This private/public IP address scheme has two major benefits. First, public IP addresses are
conserved. All of the computers on the LAN use only one public IP address. Second, by using private
IP addresses, you are protected from attackers directly attacking you because they cannot send at-
tack packets to private IP addresses. They can only send packets to devices with public IP addresses.

3 Don Reisinger, “Netflix Gobbles a Third of Peak Internet Traffic in North America,” CNET, November 7, 2012,
accessed June 6, 2014, www.cnet.com/news/netflix-gobbles-a-third-of-peak-internet-traffic-in-north-america.