The further assumption seems to be that being connected is a persistent condition; once connected, an individual can then participate fully in the online world.
What is called 'a TCP connection' is in fact a pair of data structures at two endpoints that store the values of a number of variables which characterize the state of communication between them.
TCP timers provide a very simple example of how the resilience of Internet applications is in fact reduced by making assumptions.
The specification of the Internet Protocol (IP) does not include any discussion of successful delivery metrics or guarantees, so any Internet link which ever has a non-zero rate of successful datagram delivery is 'connected.'
Collection
[
|
...
]