The Evolution of the Internet
So you believe Al Gore created the Internet? Well that’s not possible, because I did. Yes, it’s true, a few years ago I was sitting in my basement with nothing to do and suddenly the idea came to me: why not create an inter-connected network of networks that will allow users to send mail instantly, download copyrighted songs, and order pizza, all from the comfort of their own living room? OK, so maybe I didn’t exactly invent the Internet, but neither did Al Gore.
So who was the genius behind the information superhighway, you ask? Well let’s take a step back to the sixties, a decade when Cold War tension caused nationwide fear of nuclear warfare. Early in the decade, two groups of researchers, privately owned RAND Corporation (America’s leading nuclear war think-tank) and federal agency ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), grappled with a bizarre strategic mystery: in the event of nuclear war, how could political and military officials communicate successfully? It was obvious that a network, linking cities and military bases, would be necessary. But the advent of the atomic bomb made switches, wiring, and command posts for this network highly vulnerable. A “nuclear-safe” network would need to operate with missing links and without central authority.
In 1964, RAND Corporation’s Paul Barran made public his solution to the problem. Essentially, the concept was simple. Barran’s network would be assumed to be unreliable at all times. Information would be broken into many small pieces called “packets” and then sent to various points, or nodes, in the network until they reached their destination. ARPA embraced Barran’s idea for three reasons. First, if nuclear bombs blew away large components of the network, data would still reach its destination. Second, it would be relatively secure from espionage, since spies tapping into parts of the network would be able to intercept only portions of transmissions. Lastly, it would be much more efficient because files and transmissions couldn’t clog portions of the network.
Only five years after Barran proposed his version of a computer network, ARPANET went online. Named after its federal sponsor, ARPANET initially linked four high-speed supercomputers and was intended to allow scientists and researchers to share computing facilities by long-distance. By 1971, ARPANET had grown to fifteen nodes, and by 1972, thirty-seven. ARPA’s original standard for communication was known as “Network Control Protocol” or NCP. As time passed, however, NCP grew obsolete and was replaced by a new, higher-level standard known as TCP-IP, which is still in use today.
With the launch of Sputnik in 1957 the U.S. became aware of the growing threat to National Security and Intelligence. In February 1958, by order of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), a division of the Department of Defense (DoD) was established. Then on February 7, 1958 DoD Directive 5105.15 was signed (Darpa web site, 2014). Its primary purpose was to maintain U.S technological superiority over potential adversaries and to develop new technology for the United States military (Mallia, 2013). With ARPAs increased responsibilities and fast pace environment the agency need a better way to stay connected and share “packets” of information. The agency started to experiment with inter-office connections. In late 1969 those efforts paid off and the first “Advanced Research Projects ...
The Cold War lasted 46 years and had those apart of both Democratic and Communist states at their feet. Paranoia spread throughout the nations and in the United States they introduced various programs that would allow them to still go on if the Soviet Union had infiltrated them. One of those programs being the APRANET. The invention was meant to help government agencies still be able to communicate with one another if the USSR had taken over their telephones. Little did anyone know that the APRANET would blossom into what we now know has the internet. Today, the internet is not just exclusively used for communication between one another. It has taken over many of our lives and helps us complete many of our day to day aspects, such as buying
The government’s idea of an easier way to communicate during wartime became a reality slowly but steadily when “On January 2, 1969, designers began working on an experiment to determine whether computers at different universities could communicate with each other without a central system.” The first places to have access to the new “network” were some of the most prestigious colleges in the United...
The National Security Agency, better known as the NSA, has always been a vital asset for the United States. Ever since its inception in 1962 by then-President, Harry S. Truman, for the sake of deciphering messages sent between Germany and Japan, the role of the NSA has been to gather information on the United State's adversaries as well as protect information of its citizens such as credit information from theft. However, the NSA also has a third role which makes it a pivotal asset during wartime: carrying the tasks of the operation code-named Network Warfare. Over the past six decades, the NSA has created a reputable reputation for itself from deciphering messages during World War II to finding acts of terrorism beforehand via the Internet.
The internet was created to test new networking technologies developed to eventually aid the military. The Arpanet, advanced research projects agency network, became operational in 1968 after it was conceived by Leanard Roberts (Watrall, T101, 2/2). Ever since the Arpanet began in 1968, it grew exponentially in the number of connected users. Traffic and host population became too big for the network to maintain, due to the killer application known as email created in 1972. The outcry for a better way sparked the development of the NSFNet. The National Science Foundation Network replaced Arpanet, and ultimately had many positive effects. This early division of the internet spread its netw...
Censoring the Internet The internet offers a huge wealth of information both good and bad, unfortunately the vary nature of the internet makes policing this new domain practically impossible. The internet began as a small university network in the United States and has blossomed into a vast telecommunications network spanning the globe. Today the internet is ruled by no governing body and it is an open society for ideas to be developed and shared in. Unfortunately every society has its seedy underside and the internet is no exception. To fully understand the many layers to this problem, an understanding of net history is required. Some thirty years ago the RAND corporation, Americas first and foremost Cold War think-tank faced a strange strategic problem. The cold war had spawned technologies that allowed countries with nuclear capability to target multiple cities with one missile fired from the other side of the world. Post-nuclear America would need a command and control network, linked from city to city, state to state and base to base. No matter how thoroughly that network was armored or protected, its switches and wiring would always be vulnerable to the impact of atomic bombs. A nuclear bombardment would reduce any network to tatters. Any central authority would be an obvious and immediate target for enemy missiles. The center of a network would be the first place to go. So RAND mulled over this puzzle in deep military secrecy and arrived at their solution. In 1964 their proposed ideas became public. Their network would have no central authority, and it would be designed from the beginning to operate while in tatters. All the nodes in the network would be equal in status to all other nodes, each node having its own authority to originate, pass and receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets, each packet separately addressed.
With an entity as vast as the Internet, it is not surprising that a variety of unanswered questions will arise. I’m positive that the Internet will continue to confound scholars as it continues to quickly evolve. By analyzing the views of the celebrants and skeptics, I have been able to understand the potential that the internet has. By using the PEC, I have been able to understand how democracy and capitalism relate to the issues of the Internet. In the future, I hope that society can develop a further understanding of the Internet and move toward the Internet that the celebrants had hoped for.
The United States federal government funded new developments in computer science, which resulted in the creation of ARPANET, a project that connected computer systems at five universities with the intent that if one server was destroyed, the connection would remain due to the four other locations . This fundamental structure of the internet was developed as a peer-to-peer system, which means that there is no central control point in the network, therefore the internet is arranged like a web, in which all pieces of information travel as equals. The interconnectivity of the internet resulted in the creation of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, which is an internet program that developed the internet into a massive, interactive mass medium
According to the SciTechConnect blog [1], “In today’s network infrastructures, it is critical to know the fundamentals of basic security infrastructure. Before any computer is connected to the Internet, planning must occur to make sure the network is designed in a secure manner. Many of the attacks ...
The history of the internet shows that the internet is not a new medium. The internet was initially created in the 1960's to as a way for the United States to stay connected in case of a nuclear fallout due to the possible consequences of the Cold War. F...
The Internet was first introduced in 1969 when a program called ARPA or Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA had provided a way to communicate, through a network, with the country in case of a military attack had destroyed traditional communication. It also connected four United States universities and was used for research, education and government organizations. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson introduced E-mail. In 1973, Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) became the standard for computers to communicate over the Internet. In 1982 the word Internet is used for the first time. The domain name system (DNS) is introduced in 1984, which identified network addresses with .com, .org, and .edu. From that point on everything began to rapidly change. Things like America Online was developed, viruses start...
But where did this all came from? Just when did we start using the internet the way we use it today? Clearly, these sorts of questions can be answered in simple, concise way. The internet was born in 1969 as a segment of research project of Department of Defense. Back then, the internet was known as ARPANET, a forerunner of the internet. Since the birth of the internet up to 1980's, Internet was used mostly by Universities and experts who knew their way around its complex systems and workings.
In 1958 the American Ministry of Defence created a department called "Advanced Research Projects Agency" – ARPA. Its goal is to create new technologies. In 1968 they created the ARPAnet, a network of computers. For 20 years the internet was a network with precise and enormous volumes of computers. In 1989 the things changed and ARPA ceased to exist.
In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. It then expanded to other governmental agencies and then to higher education. This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks, which emerged from the research, was known as the "Internet." Al Gore is described as "an advocate of the information superhighway". He helped bring it to our national attention that he invented the Internet. It is not true that he invented the Internet but it is true that he had a small part in its development. Since the early sixties, when Al Gore was still in high school, the development of networking technology had already started. It is true that the Internet has grown and flourished tremendously during Gore's tenure, but that hardly means he caused it to happen.
This project was originally conducted under the Advanced Research Projects Agency to counteract the USSR’s launch of the Sputnik. After the creation it had been called the Arpanet, and would be used specifically for government networks until the early 90’s. In 1990 the World Wide Web had been created as an online public network for everyday civilians to use.