INTERNET DAEMONS ELECTRONIC MEDIATIONS Series Editors: N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Krapp, Rita Raley, and Samuel Weber Founding Editor: Mark Poster 56 INTERNET DAEMONS: DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS POSSESSED Fenwick McKelvey 55 WHAT IS INFORMATION? Peter Janich 54 DECONSTRUCTION MACHINES: WRITING IN THE AGE OF CYBERWAR Justin Joque 53 METAGAMING: PLAYING, COMPETING, SPECTATING, CHEATING, TRADING, MAKING, AND BREAKING VIDEOGAMES Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux 52 THE PERVERSITY OF THINGS: HUGO GERNSBACK ON MEDIA, TINKERING, AND SCIENTIFICTION Hugo Gernsback, Edited by Grant Wythoff 51 THE PARTICIPATORY CONDITION IN THE DIGITAL AGE Darin Barney, Gabriella Coleman, Christine Ross, Jonathan Sterne, and Tamar Tembeck, Editors 50 MIXED REALISM: VIDEOGAMES AND THE VIOLENCE OF FICTION Timothy J. Welsh 49 PROGRAM EARTH: ENVIRONMENTAL SENSING TECHNOLOGY AND THE MAKING OF A COMPUTATIONAL PLANET Jennifer Gabrys 48 ON THE EXISTENCE OF DIGITAL OBJECTS Yuk Hui 47 HOW TO TALK ABOUT VIDEOGAMES Ian Bogost 46 A GEOLOGY OF MEDIA Jussi Parikka 45 WORLD PROJECTS: GLOBAL INFORMATION BEFORE WORLD WAR I Markus Krajewski 44 READING WRITING INTERFACES: FROM THE DIGITAL TO THE BOOKBOUND Lori Emerson 43 NAUMAN REITERATED Janet Kraynak 42 COMPARATIVE TEXTUAL MEDIA: TRANSFORMING THE HUMANITIES IN THE POSTPRINT ERA N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman, Editors (continued on page 321) INTERNET DAEMONS Digital Communications Possessed FENWICK McKELVEY Electronic Mediations 56 University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the generous assis- tance provided for the open access version of this book by the Concordia Open Access Author Fund. Portions of chapter 7 were published in a different form in “Algorithmic Media Need Democratic Methods: Why Publics Matter,” Canadian Journal of Com- munication 39, no. 4 (2014): 597– 613. Copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McKelvey, Fenwick, author. Title: Internet daemons : digital communications possessed / Fenwick McKelvey. Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2018] Series: Electronic mediations ; 56 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018001934 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0153-0 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0154-7 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Internet programming. Classification: LCC QA76.625 .M3825 2018 (print) | DDC 006.7/6–c23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001934 UMP BMB CONTENTS Abbreviations and Technical Terms vii Introduction 1 1 The Devil We Know: Maxwell’s Demon, Cyborg Sciences, and Flow Control 23 2 Possessing Infrastructure: Nonsynchronous Communication, IMPs, and Optimization 45 3 IMPs, OLIVERs, and Gateways: Internetworking before the Internet 71 4 Pandaemonium: The Internet as Daemons 93 5 Suffering from Buffering? Affects of Flow Control 135 6 The Disoptimized: The Ambiguous Tactics of The Pirate Bay 161 7 A Crescendo of Online Interactive Debugging? Gamers, Publics, and Daemons 185 Conclusion 209 Acknowledgments 229 Appendix: Internet Measurement and Mediators 233 Notes 239 Bibliography 267 Index 309 This page intentionally left blank ABBREVIATIONS AND TECHNICAL TERMS 3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project ACE Application Control Engine ACK Shorthand for “acknowledgment,” often used in packet switching ACM Association for Computing Machinery ANS Advanced Network Services ARPA Advanced Research Projects Agency ARPANET A packet- switching digital communication system by Advanced Research Projects Agency ASN Autonomous Systems Numbers AUTOVON A secure telephone system designed by AT&T for the American military. BBN Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc. BBS Bulletin Board System BE Best Efforts delivery guarantee BEREC Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications BGP Border Gateway Protocol BIRD An internet protocol– routing project targeting Linux and UNIX- like systems. Its acronym stands for “BIRD Internet Routing Daemon,” a nod to GNU standing for “GNU Is Not UNIX.” BSD Berkeley Software Distribution, an operating system derived from UNIX CAIDA Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis CAIP The Canadian Association of Internet Providers CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CDN Content Distribution Networks . vii CGO Canadian Gamers Organization CIDR Classless Inter- Domain Routing, a standard that includes a notation method for IP addresses CMTS Cable Modem Termination System CRTC Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission CSEC Communications Security Establishment of Canada CTSS Compatible Time- Sharing System, one of the first time- sharing operating systems CYCLADES French packet- switching project developed in the 1970s DAEMON A computer program running in the background of a computer system as an automated process rather than being under the direct command of a user DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, what Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is now called DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP DDoS Distributed Denial of Service attack DHT Distributed Hash Tables DNS Domain Name System DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (enable broadband over coaxial cable) DPI Deep Packet Inspection DRM Digital Rights Management DSLAM Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer E2E End- to- End principle eBGP External Border Gateway Protocol EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation FCC Federal Communications Commission FIDONET A worldwide communication network between electronic Bulletin Board Systems FTP File Transfer Protocol GATEWAY Generic term to describe hardware that interconnects different systems. The core internet requires gateways to interconnect autonomous systems. HCI Human– Computer Interaction HOST A device connected to the internet HSIS High- Speed Internet Service HSPA High- Speed Packet Access viii . Abbreviations and Technical Terms HTML HyperText Markup Language HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol Hub Obsolete piece of network infrastructure that interconnected computers and forwarded packets. Hubs forwarded packets to all ports, unlike their successor, switches. I2P The Invisible Internet Project IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority iBGP Internal Border Gateway Protocol ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IETF Internet Engineering Task Force IMP Interface Message Processor IoT Internet of Things IP Internet Protocol address IPRED Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive IPSec Internet Protocol Security IPTO Information Processing Techniques Office, part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency IRC Internet Relay Chat IRE Institute of Radio Engineers, predecessor to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ISP Internet Service Provider ITMP Internet Traffic Management Practices, a term used by the Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission ITU International Telecommunications Union LTE Long- Term Evolution MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology M- Lab Measurement Lab, an open platform for internet measurement Modem Modulator- Demodulator, device used to send digital signals over analog lines MP3 MPEG- 2 Audio Layer III, a coding format for digital audio MPAA Motion Picture Association of America MPLS Multi- Protocol Label Switching NAC Network Analysis Corporation NCC Network Control Center at BBN NCP Network Control Program at University of California, Los Angeles Abbreviations and Technical Terms . ix NMC Network Measurement Center NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol NPL National Physical Laboratory NSA U.S. National Security Agency NSFNET National Science Foundation Network OLIVER On- Line Interactive Vicarious Expediter and Responder OSPF Open Shortest Path First routing protocol P2P Peer- to- Peer PBE Priority Best Efforts delivery guarantee PCC Policy and Charging Control architecture PPPoE Point- to- Point Protocol over Ethernet PPTP Point- to- Point Tunneling Protocol PTS Policy Traffic Switch QoS Quality of Service RAND The Research ANd Development corporation RFC Request for Comments RFNM Request for Next Message RFQ Request for Quotations Router Generic term to refer to hardware capable of maintaining routing tables and forwarding packets between networks RSVP Resource reSerVation Protocol SABRE Semi- Automated Business Research Environment SAGE Semi- Automatic Ground Environment SCE Service Control Engine SDN Software- Defined Networking SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol SRT System Response Time Switch Generic term to refer to hardware that forwards packets between devices in a local area network. Switches are intelligent enough to send packets only to the appropriate port for the packet to reach its destination, unlike its predecessor hubs. TCP Transmission Control Protocol TCP/IP The Internet Protocol Suite (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) TOR The Onion Router TPB The Pirate Bay UDP User Datagram Protocol x . Abbreviations and Technical