2. Getting Connected
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
–Winston Churchill
Problem
Connecting to a Network
In Chapter 1 we saw that networks consist of links interconnecting nodes. One of the fundamental problems we face is how to connect two nodes together. We also introduced the “cloud” abstraction to represent a network without revealing all of its internal complexities. So we also need to address the similar problem of connecting a host to a cloud. This, in effect, is the problem every Internet Service Provider faces when it wants to connect a new customer to the network: how to connect one more nodes to the ISP's cloud?
Whether we want to construct a trivial two-node ...
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