None was directly compatible with any other, but all offered
???bridges??? to other systems.
Today the problems for computer scientists in networking are different. For the most part, the world
has agreed on the IEEE 801 standards and the TCP/IP protocols for the Internet. The problems now have
to do with expanding the number of Internet addresses without disrupting the operation of the older ???installed
base,??? adapting to new and much faster physical connections such as optical fiber, increasing the speed of
wireless connections, which are by nature slower and more susceptible to interference, managing larger
data transfers such as movies, which also require strict real-time performance so the movie doesn??™t stop
midaction, and providing low-power, low-cost protocols for the ad hoc connection of hundreds or thousands of
digital sensors.
Supporting almost all applications today is database technology. The dominant database model is the
relational database, first offered for commercial use in the 1980s. Computer scientists develop algorithms for
storing and retrieving information quickly from absolutely enormous reservoirs of data. How is it, for example,
CHAP. 1] INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER SCIENCE 3
that Google can call up almost instantly more than 400,000 images of a ???red barn??? from over 1.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26