http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Stevens

Thank you for taking me to a place I’ve never been before, please allow me to reciprocate:

For a few years, I deposited company money in a high-security vault in the back of a bank, very few customers even knew it existed.

Past armed guards and inside the security door, across a long, empty hallway and beyond yet another security door, there was a small unventilated room, one wall had assault-rifle-proof glass with bank employees on the other side, and a safety slot with time-delay doors to move cash and papers back and forth.  No chairs, if you wanted to sit, you did so on the floor.

We were a small group of clients with large deposits, some perennially hung over, and weirdly, all rules were left behind those security doors.  Everyone smoked like crazy in that tiny enclosed space, and the bank employees actually passed along chilled 40-ounce beers with watercooler paper cups.
It was always too early in the morning for me, so I declined every time, now I kind of regret not seizing those bizarre moments. Kind of.

Tube hoarding is a terrible thing.

that tube system is centrally controlled.  Still not like the Internet.

PaulR – do you always reply without paying any attention ?  Above I wrote:

capsule routing is global rather than dynamic with each packet containing its own address

Yet, that tube system is centrally controlled.  Still not like the Internet.

No, pneumatic tubes are point-to-point.

Did you look at the vid I attached of a modern tube system that DOES have a switching system?

I’m sure many of the older tube system were hub-and-spoke which meant that operators at the hub could help a capsule go between any terminals.

That, and the video wasn’t quite precise enough.  The router in Telehouse North doesn’t know that the destination IP is in Los Angeles.  It has almost no idea where it is. 

But it know that that IP is somewhere West, so it sends it along the undersea cable. 

Likewise for the receiving router in NYC.  It just knows that it’s somewhere West and/or South and sends it along.  Rinse, repeat.  Eventually, the packet ends up at a router that knows who has that (range of) IP addresses and sends it there.

A better analogy is the road system.  Not superhighways, the whole road system: dirt roads, streets, boulevards, highways, etc.

On a related topic, the discussion of what can go wrong for the communication process in general (what happens if one of the packets doesn’t make it in time, what happens if someone tries to tamper with or fails to pass on a packet, etc.) could also make a good, informative video.