But what really accounts for its success is not the relatively simple transport of data packets.
Skype's so-called peer-to-peer technique involves the trick of distributing data packets to relatively precise ports on the network.
The messages are sent as data packets across the internet, rather than being routed through operators' text-messaging infrastructure.
Stateful inspection specifies the kinds of data packets it will accept or drop.
FORBES: Nir Zuk's Palo Alto Networks Is Blowing Up Internet Security
The old delivery systems could be relegated to utilities, mindlessly ferrying data packets from one node to the next.
Transfer data packets from long-haul fiber-optic networks to the electrical power grid and shoot the data (alongside electricity) straight into people's homes.
Under QOS, the data packets that comprise the back and forth of a voice conversation can't be late--or the conversation breaks up.
The gateway then translates the voice into digits and sends the data packets across the Internet backbone, terminating at another gateway in Singapore.
Instead of firewalls and virus checkers, the company pitches a network that monitors individual data packets, shuts off rogue computers and isolates questionable users.
Routers that once just shifted data packets around the Internet now figure out what new item--Internet phones, a laptop, a PDA, possibly an appliance--is joining the network.
Systems being tested now have a range of 750 feet and share data packets 140 bytes long (the equivalent of a few typed sentences) every tenth of a second.
In the widely used cellular protocol known as code division multiple access, or CDMA, data are chopped up into dozens of small, duplicate data packets and blasted out over a range of frequencies.
And while most traffic jams are a result of an accident or too many vehicles (or data packets in the case of the Internet) legitimately trying to get from place to place, they can also be slowed down deliberately, as happened in Brussels last September when about 100 trucks slowed traffic entering the city as part of a planned protest.
FORBES: Dealing with Spam and Cyberattacks: Control Vs. Openness
Ken Silva, the security chief at VeriSign, which runs big chunks of the internet's domain-name system, advocates defences at the core of the network to tackle malicious data-packets before they reach their target.
Packets of data that collided because they were transmitted at the same time were discarded.
The Internet, by contrast, is a connectionless network designed for routing packets of data.
Three years after sending those first packets of data, the network created by Metcalfe and Boggs had 100 machines on it.
Since VoIP calls consist of packets of data that travel, usually unprotected, over the public Internet, they're open to all kinds of manipulation, theft and spying.
So instead of reaching out to the Internet to track down illegally flowing bits of their movies, the studios will sit back while ISP's "sniff" the packets of data coming to and from their customers' computers.
Over the last 20 years, Cisco has come to dominate the business of routers and switches--the specialized computers that shuttle packets of data around a network, and form the backbone of the Internet--and about two thirds of its revenue comes from sales of those devices.
EarthLink will lease the old copper telephone wires connecting homes to their local telephone company, converting calls into packets of data at that point before sending them over telecommunications wholesaler Covad 's (otc: COVD - news - people ) national data network.
Text, voice, and data will begin life as packets, travel through the network as packets, and arrive on customer devices as packets.
FORBES: AT&T Moves Dramatically Towards 'Internet Everywhere'
However, VOIP differs from the usual phone services in that it sends calls as digital packets of information over data networks rather than relying on a dedicated circuit-switched network.
Unlike the data we use to surf the Internet and check our e-mails, which can be slowed down and not affect the results, streaming video services need to be able to stream at a certain data rate and while some dropped packets can be tolerated, at some point the movie becomes jerky on the screen, and sometimes entire sections drop out.
Its vehicles will be digital packets that haul voice, data and video with equal ease.
The outputs might be numbers represent complex data structures: images, sounds, network packets, etc.
But as data overtakes voice and as voice traffic is put into packets, the Titan line becomes less relevant.
Its custom-made gear keeps the packets flying at telcos and cable companies and the giant data centers delivering the Web.
FORBES: Juniper CEO On Wrestling Through The Sluggish Economy
When data is sent over the Internet, it's broken up into countless tiny packets of information which travel willy-nilly to their destination.
But video poses real challenges, as it consumes considerably more bandwidth than both voice and data, and video quality degrades substantially, often unacceptably, when network congestion interrupts or delays individual packets in traffic streams.
应用推荐