Incoming links: IP address
A switch is a box with a bunch of Ethernet wires coming into it:Except that it doesn't have to be Ethernet, e.g. it would also be a Wi-Fi.
+--------------------+
| +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ |
| |1| |2| |3| |4| |
| +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ |
+--------------------+What the switch does is:After the destination is found, a confirmation is somehow sent back to the switch, which then learns which wire to send each MAC address to.
- an Ethernet request came in from wire 1
- decide which wire to send it out on, e.g. wire 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. You likely don't want to send it back through 1 where it came from.
A switch is a bit like a router but it is a bit dumber/operates at a lower level: it basically operates only on MAC addresses, not on IP addresses.
The Internet service provider boxes most people have at home combines a switch for the local network and a router for the ISP communication.
It runs one instance of the Linux kernel and has one IP address. Each node is therefore a complete computer. As such is must also contain RAM memory, disk storage and a network interface controller.
bitcoin.org registration: 2008-08-18
2008-08-22: first private contact to Wei Dai email. Reproduced at www.gwern.net/docs/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto on gwern.net from address
satoshi@anonymousspeech.com. Email provider shutting down entirely on 2021-09-30 as per archive.ph/wip/RRNKx, homepage now juts contains useless Bitcoin stuff.First public Bitcoin whitepaper announcement: 2008-10-31 www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-October/014810.html linking to www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf, email sent from from satoshi@vistomail.com. Claimed one year and a half development time. Provider apparently closed in 2014: www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h80mi/vistomailcom_closed_and_domain_changed_owner_in/, as of 2021 just reads:
Once upon a time a man paid me a visit in cyberspace, at this very domain. He planted a seed in our heads that would become the path we are walking today.
Replies in November: www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/thread.html#14863 under satoshi@anonymousspeech.com claims source code shared privately by request at that point.
First open source release: 9 January 2009. Announcement: www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/014994.html "Windows only for now. Open source C++ code is included" Arghhhhhh how can those libertarians use Microsoft Windows??? Had a GUI already.
2011-04-23 Satoshi sent his last email ever, it was to Martti Malmi. www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/business/decoding-the-enigma-of-satoshi-nakamoto-and-the-birth-of-bitcoin.html mentions:
May 2011 was also the last time Satoshi communicated privately with other Bitcoin contributors. In an email that month to Martti Malmi, one of the earliest participants, Satoshi wrote, "I've moved on to other things and probably won't be around in the future."
How Satoshi hid his mining IP address:
Hal Finney:
- Jan 11, 2009 twitter.com/halfin/status/1110302988 "Running Bitcoin"