Word: router
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There's not much glamour in the Internet router business. The VCR-size boxes that weave computers into networks belong to the realm of techies. Late at night, when corporations sleep, "geek squads"--the human infrastructure of the information age--stuff routers into closets, under desks or anywhere out of sight. It is not a business that produces headlines...
Just as Microsoft and Intel achieved exponential growth by riding the revolution that put a computer on millions of desktops, Cisco hopes to dominate the business of connecting those PCs. Cisco's routers and switches, which sort packets of information as they fly through the ether, are the guts of the Net. If you send E-mail from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, odds are it will pass a Cisco router. With close to 70% market share, Cisco owns the horses of the fastest-growing Pony Express in history...
...this point, your data may go one of several ways. Say you've opened a telnet session to fas to read newsgroups. The Science Center router will see that the packet heading towards it is destined for "140.247.30.30," the IP address for the fas server. The router then dutifully sends your packet on to fas, which processes the data and sends a response packet...
...trying to communicate with a system outside the Harvard network, like the CNN Web site or an ftp site in another country, your packets get sent on by the Science Center router to the top of William James Hall. (And you thought that ugly white building wasn't good for anything...
...router dance continues from here, as your packets are passed from router to router via telephone lines, fiber optics and even satellite links until they reach their destination. In response, packets are sent back to your computer, back to the Science Center and out to your router, then your hub and finally the computer on your desk...