Quote from: adamstgBit on March 31, 2016, 11:10:27 PM

Quote from: exstasie on March 31, 2016, 10:59:06 PM

Quote from: adamstgBit on March 31, 2016, 07:15:11 PM

Quote from: exstasie on March 31, 2016, 07:05:03 PM

Could you point me to the global consensus ledger that Safari, Mozilla and Chrome maintain together? No? Then you're making a terribly foolish analogy.

you mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol

No. Where is the "consensus ledger?"

This is actually quite relevant to the Lightning Network. In the "bitcoin=internet" analogy, the core broadcast network (the blockchain) is equivalent to the Internet layer (IPv4)--the layer that routes most internet traffic. HTTP is part of the Application layer, which is a layer built on top of IPv4 due to IPv4's limited capacities for proper data delivery, sequencing and integrity.

i think the point was that the internet was scaled by adding layers and soft forking
the TCP/IP layer has stay the same, but with the HTTP layer thrown onto and later another layer ( JS / CSS / Flash etc. )
we have managed to get scale the internet without HardForking the underlying protocol TCP/IP
its an analogy that isn't perfect but isn't have bad...

... coming around to the 'right' way of thinking I see?

You need to throw in possibilities for UDP/IP and streaming-like analogies also, they move a LOT of traffic. Tiered-routing, NAT, IPSec, VPNs and others all add to the zoo of layered data solutions all based on IP but expanding its utility, capacity, effectiveness, etc.