The Fox and the Spider II

As Alexander pondered on it, maybe it was because of some children's story called titled "The Fox and the Spider".

Once upon a time, there lived a sad Fox.

He had no house and no friends.

And... that was it...

It's basically a story about how a sad Fox finds an unlikely home... with a spider. Probably.

Never really got around to reading the rest of it.

He was rich but he wasn't about to waste 3 dollars and 19 cents on something childish that he just stumbled upon while stumbling across something weirder like The Spider and the Kitsune-like Lion.

Anyways, how does this relate to his deal with the big shots with Fox?

Not too much really.

Alexander can just attest that he sure had been doing a lot of negotiations lately.

Normally, he would have delegated it. To either Mr. Legalities, a professional negotiator, or just good Old Sullivan.

Then again, there's just times when he's got to do it himself.

Like fixing up the mess he had with his girlfriend and "girl friend".

He kind of didn't expect that he'd make a quick jump from that... and straight up confront the likes of Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch.

These two sure weren't easy picking, were they?

They were even ready to eat up all that he's worked hard on, right then and there.

Fortunately, Alexander got through it with baiting and glib.

And everything just pushed through as it should have.

With 79 affiliate stations that reached up to 80 percent of homes in the United States... the Fox Broadcasting Company was able to really broadcast under a unified network.

With a late-night talk show hosted by comedian Joan Rivers, aired on October 9, 1986.

Not too long after that, the localized syndications of TMNT and Dragonball followed suit as well.

Effectively making it a win-win for those involved.

Of course, there's also that adage regarding those live-action shows.

To put it simply, Alexander had a grand plan for those. It's just that the logistics and nuances were too much for him to handle as of current.

Animated cartoons are pretty much taxing as it is. Ambitiously tackling sitcoms and the like would just add to the complexity of it.

The hungry, hungry foxes of Fox gave him an opportunity though.

Instead of shelving them until the time is right... why not entice just the right people that would really want it?

Production could actually happen and it would be someone like Barry Diller that will work on it. Potentially with Rupert Murdoch paying for it.

All that Alexander had to do was provide the copyright and the improved script... then he'll make money with it.

Granted, the deal wasn't actually as lopsided as that.

However, Alexander got what he wanted.

Out-wily-ing wily foxes of Fox and a shot at truly plundering television classics... just when he thought that he'll have nothing to show for.

And yeah... an influence at a wide-reaching network... just when he thought that he'll have to wait quite a long while to have something like it.

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Now, that's a productive October in just about anyone else's opinion.

However, it's actually going to get much more productive.

With a different kind of network involved... Alexander's long-awaited goal was close at hand.

This time, he was sort of forcefully invited... again.

Only that he was much more eager for what it was. Even though it was going to be quite the 5-hour drive.

With that said, Mr. Driver was busy driving him around. Not to some Fox Headquarters in Beverly Hills but actually to Berkeley.

Berkeley, California. Specifically UC Berkeley. Which is quite special among all the Californian Universities.

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What was happening here was actually both simple and not simple as it seems.

After all, for the better part of 1986, the burgeoning Internet was nearly two decades old and had 10,000 users.

Hidden beneath this glory, it was actually facing imminent collapse!

At the time, workstations would send data at 10 megabits per second to routers, which then fed the data onto the Internet, which had a capacity of 56 kilobits per second.

It had to be said that 56 kb/s is already unprecedented in this age.

Then in this October of 1986, that stream actually slowed down to a trickle.

Making the transmission rate between Berkeley Lab and the University of California at Berkeley, only a quarter-mile away, slowed to 320 bits per second.

Mail that had gone through in minutes before now took an entire day. Threatening the whole concept of network communication.

Many were even saying that the great Internet couldn't scale.

Effectively affecting not just this Berkeley's network but threatening to trouble the great inter-network as a whole.

At each onramp, traffic was already backing up.

Multiply this by the thousands of users using the network simultaneously... a "traffic jam" was inevitable.

As the traffic had increased on the Internet, the systems that many users had relied on just amounted to self-destructive behavior.

In their attempts to break through the network gridlock, it just got worse.

Because of the congestion... the packets of information would that should have been transmitted would actually just return right back to the sender.

Computers had been programmed to deal with this by just immediately trying again... repeatedly resending the message until it went through.

Like pouring gasoline on a fire, the situation only got worse.

Users and experts all over the country were incredibly puzzled over how to revive it...

Marking the whole process to be quite of importance.

It's the Internet's very first congestion collapse, after all.

Historically, it would actually take them six months to puzzle over and finally solve it.

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That was old history though...

An anomaly just had to change things up.

Said anomaly, is, of course, Alexander, who was here to join in on tackling the situation.

Mr. Eager Scholar's call card didn't come in handy because it was actually the guy that phoned in the favor.

The scholarly man must have figured that a kid whose ChaosNet has near half-a-million users would know what to do in this scenario.

It just so happens that Alexander knew what to do. He even knew the whole sequence of what's about to be discovered after these turn of events.

[Congestion Avoidance and Control]. A paper submitted by Van Jacobson and Mike Karels.

Analyzing algorithms and pretty much smoothed out all the network conjestions to come.

With solutions like the "polite protocol" and "slow start" to back it all up.

Enabling the Internet to expand in size and match up the exceedingly greater speed demands that grow more and more as the years go by.

Alexander just had to advice here and there... and Mr. Eager Scholar need not doubt any further.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratorists and network researchers just had to make quick work of what they've been told.

Some of them nodding helplessly.

They're quite accomplished in their fields and technically professors, how did any one of them expect to be humbled by a little kid on a field that they're proud of?

With that said, they quickly got to work...

And by following little Alexander Creed's guidance on congestion avoidance and control... the tricky problem was understood in a matter of days.

A full fix would still be a long while, however, it's as good as settled already.

To this, guys like Van Jacobson and Mike Karels and their other peers can't help but just be appreciative and impressed.

Not knowing that these were actually solutions that they themselves should have been the ones to come up with.

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Of course, Alexander wasn't too guilty about what he's done. If anything, he was ready to double down on it some more.

Which was why he was here... scouting the place... responding positively to the DARPA representative's invitation... and establishing himself as quite the timely help.

Weaving the narrative and pulling some strings once again.

This time, he was going after something bigger, after all.

Bigger than the Fox network. Other than an inter-network, what else could it be?

Which is why, out of nowhere, he asked.

"Have you guys ever considered hypertext and hyperlinking?"

The eager scholar was confused. "Considered it for what?"

"Well, I have an interesting idea that came to mind but I'm not too sure if it will work." Alexander simply supplemented. "It sort of ties back to the network congestion issues that you guys had just come across though."

To which, the scholar was more than eager to know. "Haha! After you're random solutions worked out like a charm, I'd be foolish if I wasn't interested in this one! What is this one about then?"

"Well... it actually just goes along the lines of a World Wide Web."

"A world wide web?!"

"Yep... A World Wide Web." As Alexander said so, it kind of ties back to being a spider, doesn't it?

And yeah... it's one of the rarest instances where a spider trumps a Fox. Not in a sense of nature but comparing in terms of networking should still count, right?