About Me

microformats hcard approaching

is a Professional Geek for Microsoft Australia. More info lives underneath the About Box...

-33.831416, 151.222526
MrCell+61.417.212181
Work:
1 Epping Road
North Ryde, NSW 2113
Australia
photo of nick hodge

Stuff

View Nick Hodge's profile on LinkedIn

msdn channel 9

A Life in Packets

By Nick Hodge | March 24, 2007

TCP/IP is the low level stuff that has changed the world. VoIP, Web, Web 2 and all that stuff require TCP/IP to work. When I was first intro­duced to this pro­tocol in 1987 (late bloomer, here) I wasn’t that overwhealmed.

What has TCP/IP have to do with life? TCP/IP pack­et­izes data. Instead of have a chan­nel open (like TV, Radio) and stream­ing con­stantly — TCP/IP puts bits into dis­creet pack­ages at one end, throws them out the net­work, and expects the other end to re-assemble to get the data.

Maybe life and work comes in pack­ets, too? Bursts of energy and bursts of reflection

Why is there a 5 days work, 2 days week­end imposed on us by some dis­tant hierarchy?

Another key concept is latency, or the space between the pack­ets. Keep­ing the latency pre­dict­able, or as low as pos­sible, is another life skill.

Life and work comes in pack­ets and latency, that get munged. 

Topics: observation, personal | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “A Life in Packets”

  1. LD Says:
    March 24th, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    Some­times we need to apply QoS to pack­ets ensure that pri­or­it­isa­tion occurs. In life also. ;-)

  2. hodgenick Says:
    March 25th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    agree on QoS.

    Also, I wander what my TTL is.

  3. mike seyfang Says:
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

    Shit — has been nice know­ing you — ttl=50

    Ping has started …

    PING http://www.nickhodge.com (208.97.134.179): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 208.97.134.179: icmp_seq=0 ttl=50 time=247.127 ms
    64 bytes from 208.97.134.179: icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=247.105 ms
    64 bytes from 208.97.134.179: icmp_seq=2 ttl=50 time=246.053 ms

    http://www.nickhodge.com ping stat­ist­ics —
    3 pack­ets trans­mit­ted, 3 pack­ets received, 0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 246.053/246.762/247.127/0.501 ms

  4. hodgenick Says:
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:26 pm

    I am not that old in yrs, but way older than 50ms :-)

  5. nickhodge.com | mungenet » Learning Technology Challenge. It’s not the Technology. Says:
    March 26th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    […] Unless you are stuck on a deser­ted island, your life is going to be col­lab­or­at­ive. Work, too. In a con­nec­ted world, this is amp­li­fied and packetised. […]

Comments