giants of the era

Chapter 257: The Internet Era Is About To Begin!
At 1 o'clock in the morning on January 10, the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States announced the establishment of the NSFNET network, which will connect six supercomputer centers in the United States through 10kb/s communication lines to achieve resource sharing.

When Li Zetian heard the news, his heart moved, and he immediately asked Dongfang Yuqin to collect more detailed information.

The next day, Dongfang Yuqin gave Li Zetian a detailed information about NSFNET.

After reading the information, Li Zetian said: "NSFNET adopts a wide area network with a three-level hierarchical structure. The entire network system consists of a backbone network, a regional network and a campus network. The host computers of each university can be connected to the campus network of the school, and the campus network can be connected to the nearest Connected to the regional network, each regional network is connected to the backbone network, and the backbone network is connected to ARPANET through high-speed communication lines. In this way, any host computer in the school can access any supercomputer center through NSFNET and ARPANET to realize Information exchange between users!"

Dongfang Yuqin nodded: "Yes, Mr. Li, you are absolutely right!"

Li Zetian laughed and said, "Since the National Science Foundation of the United States has started to act, it is time for us to act too!"

Dongfang Yuqin didn't know Li Zetian's plan very well, and showed a trace of doubt on her face: "Mr. Li, what are you going to do?"

"Backbone network, we don't have the right to build and operate it now, but..." Li Zetian paused and said, "We can build a metropolitan area network that connects ordinary people!!!"

After all, Dongfang Yuqin has been with Li Zetian for so long, and she can get through at one point. She was surprised: "Mr. Li, you mean, we buy local telephone companies and borrow their telephone lines to connect to the Internet?"

"Yes, that's right! As long as there is a modem (Modem), users can dial-up the Internet."

Telephone lines can only carry analog signals, and computers only understand digital signals.

A modem is a device for converting signals between a computer and a telephone line, and consists of two parts: a modulator and a demodulator.At the sending end, the modulator is a device that modulates the digital signal of the computer (such as a file, etc.) into an analog signal that can be transmitted on the telephone line; at the receiving end, the demodulator converts the analog signal into a digital signal that the computer can receive .

Data communication between computers is accomplished through modems and telephone lines.

Optical fiber does not need to rely on analog signals, but directly uses digital signals, so the speed and broadband are very high, but the construction cost of optical fiber lines is very high. In the eighties and 90s, they basically used telephone lines to access the Internet, and then as the price of optical fiber decreased As well as the improvement of transmission speed, this gradually became popular.

At present, Li Zetian will not sacrifice the basics and spend a lot of money to lay optical fibers. Instead, he will enclose land to seize users first, and then update the hardware level.

This year is definitely very lucky for Li Zetian.The U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to split AT&T in accordance with the "Antitrust Act", splitting it into a new AT&T company (specializing in long-distance telephone business) and seven local telephone companies (namely "Bell Seven Brothers"), which inherited the name of the parent company. The US telecommunications industry will enter the era of competition from then on.

Before the split, AT&T almost monopolized the intrastate, interstate and international telephone business in the United States, and it was a veritable super giant company.Its turnover in 1983 exceeded the sum of the turnover of the other three large American companies (Exxon, Mobil, and General Motors).And these three major companies are all top 30 companies in the top [-] companies. It goes without saying how much AT&T is.

Right now is a godsend opportunity for Li Zetian to enter the telecommunications industry! ! !

In fact, Li Zetian has not entered the telecommunications industry before, just waiting for the split of AT&T.This antitrust lawsuit began in the early 70s and lasted for more than 10 years. AT&T is obviously powerless.

At this time, Li Zetian ordered: "Dongfang Yuqin, pay close attention to AT&T's anti-monopoly case, and notify me as soon as there is a result!"

"Okay, Mr. Li."

Li Zetian thought for a while, then stood up from his chair, "Go to Yinhe Network Company. I told Tian Shuai before that Yinhe Network Company will develop modems. How is the development going?"

Dongfang Yuqin nodded and immediately followed behind him.

……

More than an hour later, Li Zetian and Dongfang Yuqin rushed to Yinhe Network Company, and then called Tian Shuai and Zhang Hao into the office.

Li Zetian said, "Do you know that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is going to set up the NSFNET network?"

"Well, I see!" The two nodded.

Li Zetian said: "As long as NSFNET is established, we can use the modem to realize the function of networking with telephone lines. How is the development of the modem now?"

Tian Shuai said, "A quarter of the work is done."

"So slow??" Li Zetian expressed doubts. Yinhe Network Company has a lot of talents and strong research and development efforts, so the development speed should be very fast.

Zhang Hao explained at this time: "Mr. Li, don't worry, there is a reason for the slow development progress. Currently, the fastest commercial modem is Bell212, which uses more stable transposition keying technology to transfer data The rate is increased to 1200 bit/s."

"What is the transposition keying technology?" Li Zetian asked.

"Oh, transposition keying technology is a technology that uses two tones to represent 1 and 0..." Zhang Han gave a brief introduction, and then continued, "At first, when we were discussing, we also planned to use a technology similar to Bell's. The Bell212 system, but the products produced in this way are not much better than Bell212. Mr. Li, you must be dissatisfied, so we overturned the original plan and decided to develop a faster modem. After a period of research and discussion, we It is decided to adopt a new scheme, which can increase the data rate of the modem to 2400bit/s."

Li Zetian was shocked when he heard the words, and asked curiously: "What plan?!"

"The system is also similar to Bell212, but we use bi-directional signal collection on 4 pairs of dedicated lines to achieve 2400 bit/s."

It sounds a little unclear!
However, Li Zetian understood that the speed of the two-way signal set was doubled. Of course, it was easier said than done, and it was understandable that the development progress was a bit slow.

Li Zetian thought about it. It will take a long time for the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to build the NSFNET network, and it will take some time for him to acquire the local telephone company. There is enough time for Galaxy Networks to develop the modem.

"By the way, Galaxy Networks can't stop researching and developing optical fiber for a moment! The bandwidth of telephone lines is too small, and the data transmission rate is too low, so it will definitely be replaced by optical fiber. I hope Galaxy Networks can develop a low-cost, but Optical fiber products with very powerful data transmission capabilities!" Li Zetian said.

Tian Shuai and Zhang Hao looked at each other and nodded.

"Don't worry, Mr. Li, Yinhe Network Company will definitely attach great importance to the development of optical fibers!" Tian Shuai assured.

Although a small optical fiber involves many cutting-edge technologies such as materials and optics, it is still very difficult to develop.

(End of this chapter)