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.
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.
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.
But what really accounts for its success is not the relatively simple transport of data packets.
Stateful inspection specifies the kinds of data packets it will accept or drop.
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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.
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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.
Skype's so-called peer-to-peer technique involves the trick of distributing data packets to relatively precise ports on the network.
Under QOS, the data packets that comprise the back and forth of a voice conversation can't be late--or the conversation breaks up.
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.
Instead of firewalls and virus checkers, the company pitches a network that monitors individual data packets, shuts off rogue computers and isolates questionable users.
When data is sent over the Internet, it's broken up into countless tiny packets of information which travel willy-nilly to their destination.
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