Now that is a very interesting one!

It's sort of related to the question:

"How much of the Internet is accessible from any given point (location, locality, etc.) at any given point of time?"

Which is sort of unknowable, at least, without attempting to connect with every possible connection point on the Internet, which (if it could be done) would still consist of a range of time, and every point in time following that point would bring changes, perhaps small relative to the whole -- but accruing over time -- more and more, as more time elapses...

Observation: That same (or possibly similar!) phenomena would seem to be at play with respect to the measurment (observation) of quantum systems, i.e., the more certain you are of position, the less certain you are of velocity, and vice-versa...

Well, the more you measure the connectivity to all points of the Internet at one point in time, the less certain you might be of the state of the entire system as more time elapses from that point in time...

But now, why?

Observation: Generally speaking, the larger a system is, the more degrees of freedom it has, in attempting to "lock down" (know by observation, be "certain" of) the entire state of that system at one point of time, the more the parts of the system with degrees of freedom (how many degrees of freedom does the entire Internet have?) will change/evolve/move/"be subject to change" as more time evolves the state of the system... in other words, if you can know position (instantaneous state) with certainty then you can't know velocity (where it's heading to and/or future state and/or that which predicts future state) with certainty!

Sort of like you can know the instantaneous state of the Stock Market and its history... but no one can exactly predict its future (it has many, many degrees of freedom, all of which are subject to change in various unpredictable and bizarre ways!)

Which brings us back to #7:

>"7. If we fail to connect to a well-known remote host, then we must be offline."

We might be offline... but then again, we might not be! (Ping, ICMP, UDP, Telnet and Gopher anyone?)

But then again, we might be!

The Internet's online/offline status (is it really off if it is off? Is it really on if its on?) -- is much like some modern relationships, that is, "It's complicated!" :-)

The Internet is a Black Box!

It's Schrodinger's Internet!

You know, "if a TCP packet travelling at 99.44% of the speed of light on a westbound train track meets a UDP packet travelling at 99.43% of the speed of light on an eastbound train track, then when do they meet?"

You know, "solve for x..."

You know, "assume that the speed of light is constant and that quantum effects are not present!" :-)