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.
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...
The World Wide Web started as an idea that focused around the government’s need to communicate if there was a real war. In 1964 the Cold War was at its peak, the Advanced Researched Projects Agency, or ARPA began researching and developing a way to get computers to “communicate with each other,” this is how it all started (The Internet's History and Development). The government scientists who were, “developing networking technology in the 1960's knew that what they were building would be far bigger than themselves; nobody, however, could have predicted the explosion in Internet access and interest in the past several years” (The Internet’s History and Development).
Born in the mind of an MIT professor in the early years of the 1960's, "the internet-or net, for short"(Jonscher,154)-has been maintained as the information-technology center throughout the closing of the twentieth century connecting people and ideas throughout the world in little more than the stroke of a key and faster than the blink of an eye . Imagine the possibility of transferring one bank account to another with the click of a mouse-from New York to Hong Kong, or buying a car or even a house off a computer screen, or talking to a long-forgotten aunt on the other side of the globe for hours upon hours at zero cents a minute, or, especially, the unimaginable possibility of delivering a message to everyone in the world, one person at a time and as fast as that message can be forwarded: these were the dreams of J.C.R. Licklider; the dreams that became reality (Jonscher, 154). In 1966, just four years after the origination of the first idea, Licklider's dream of the Internet was adopted by Larry Roberts, project manager for the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and together they became the pioneers of the "Galactic Network". When Robert's proposal was accepted by the other members of the agency, a plan went into effect to create the "ARPANET", which in time became what we know today as the Internet. The first remnants of the Internet began with defense contractors and universities, beginning with UCLA in 1969. (jonscher, 155)
The Internet was deliberately designed using a mesh topology to allow sites to communicate during a nuclear war.
The internet as we know it developed from a government project to send secure information from one remote computer to another. The DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) began work on the internet in 1973 under the guiding influence of Larry Roberts. He designed the Arpas first network where a machine called an Interface message processor (IMP) would connect individual sites, route messages, scan errors and confirm the arrival of messages at their intended destination. A number of innovations led to the development of the modern internet. First was the development of the computerised bulletin board (today's message boards) by Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss, second was the standardisation of internet access through TCP (transfer Control Protocol) and IP internet protocol, and third was the development of software for information retrieval which would become the WWW. World wide web. (Moschovitis et al)
"In the Beginning, ARPA created the ARPANET. And the ARPANET was without form and void. And darkness was upon the deep. And the spirit of ARPA moved upon the face of the network and ARPA said, 'Let there be a protocol,' and there was a protocol. And ARPA saw that it was good. And ARPA said, 'Let there be more protocols,' and it was so. And ARPA saw that it was good. And ARPA said, 'Let there be more networks,' and it was so" (Cohen, 1989)
The Internet was started over three decades ago as a US government sponsored project. The Internet originally connected several universities and the government; it eventually grew to include some private companies/research labs. As such, the initial users of the Internet were scientists/technologists who were well versed in the workings of the network (and who did not have the malicious intents of modern hackers). The motivation of the Internet at this time was to provide a robust nationwide communication network and to allow for the sharing of scientific research/resources around the nation1. The original architecture of the Internet is often described as an end-to-end architecture. The end-to-end architecture is a decentralized one in which a “mechanism should not be placed in the network if it can be placed at the end node” 2. This type of design keeps the core of the network simple and generic.
The Internet is an outgrowth of a military program called "ARPANET," which began in 1969. The ARPANET no longer exists, and today the Internet is an international network of interconnected computers. The Internet is "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." People can access the Internet from many different sources, several major national "online services" such as America Online, or CompuServe provide access to their own networks as well as broader li...
“The Net’s beginnings went largely unnoticed by the public. For all its technological brilliance, the Internet of today is far removed from the concepts that propelled initial research. And the Internet’s story- which has become the World Wide Web’s story- has not been so much one of planned development as of individual genius, at least until recently.” (Gilster. 1997).
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 1975 ARPANET was transformed by the Defense Communication Agency to make secure connections among the different military branches, which became known as MILNET. ARPANET then became dedicated to research factors and was renamed the Internet and in the 1980’s the Defense Department wanted to commercialize the Internet and there for financed computer manufacturers. By the 1990’s most computers had netwo...
The Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) wanted to install an advanced network based on the principles in the US. The network was called ARPANET and consisted of four high speed computers (nodes). In 1969, the first node was installed in UCLA. By 1971 there were 23 nodes on ARPANET.
The internet is a total of medium¢s which are connected between them with channels of communication. The internet is actually an internet after it connects smaller networks of many countries. The internet rouses the computer and the world of the communications like nothing else before. The invention of the computer, of the telephone, of the telegraph etc, place the stage of this unprecedented completion of faculties. The internet becomes right away a world capability radio broadcast, a mechanism for the distribution of information and a means for the cooperation and the interaction between the individuals and their computers, being indifferent to the geographic place. In 1958 the American ministry of defence created a department called "Advanced Research Projects Agency" – ARPA. Its goal was 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 in volume computers.
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.
The internet has come along way since its birth back in 1969, from its start as a government network to the everyday life; it has proven to be one of the greatest inventions ever discovered. It has helped many people with an array of task ranging from everyday government usage, and personal web pages to the ever so expanding horizons of technology still being produced today. Between the good and the bad, the internet has improved the way of life, and will continue to improve throughout time.