The History of The Internet
Fundamentals of eBusiness Bus107

The Internet we know of right now was only a dream about fifty years ago, not many people could have imagined the increase in technology from that time and not many people that where adults during that time can even handle the extreme change; most still have a problem coping with the advancements. The internet has made drastic changes throughout the years and that is what I will be going over during the next couple of pages. It has been said that the USSR was the first in the development of the computer and the internet in 1957. Although, these are only assumptions due to the lack of data recorded and the grudge held by the United States. The USSR launched a satellite called Sputnik to be the first artifical Earth satellite. In response to this, the United States created an organization called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense to compete with the USSR’s advancements in technology. Soon the Advanced Research Projects Agency became the leader in science and computer technology. Later, in 1962 Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation was hired by the U.S. Air Force to do a study in order to find a network that could be used as a military defensive strategy in response to a nuclear military attack. Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal was a packet switched network. Between 1968 and 1972 the BBN had control of a contract awarded to them by the Advanced Research Projects Agency later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). BBN had hubs in 4 relatively close University on the west coast including University of California Santa Barbara, University of Utah, University of California Los Angeles, and Stanford University. These schools were all connected with a Honeywell Minicomputer as the base of the packet switch. In 1972 the first email ever created was sent to Ray Tomlinson of BBN. This was called the ARPANET, ARPANET was currently using the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between hosts running on the same network. In 1973, Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP. A man from Stanford and a man from DARPA started developing a group, headed by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other. Not much longer after the group was created Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn came up with and started using the term “internet” in 1974. Just about at this point in time, technology really started to explode and more was being created to help the invention of the world wide web. Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe developer of Ethernet, which allowed data to move extremely fast through a coaxial cable, was the stepping stone to the LANs invented not much later in time. “Ethernet, a protocol for many local networks, appeared in 1974, an outgrowth of Harvard student Bob Metcalfe's dissertation on "Packet Networks." The dissertation was initially rejected by the University for not being analytical enough. It later won acceptance when he added some more equations to it.” (walthowe.com) The packet satellite project went into practical use. SATNET, Atlantic packet Satellite network, was born. This network linked the United States with Europe. Surprisingly, it used INTELSAT satellites that were owned by a consortium of countries and not exclusively the United States government. UUCP developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.The Department of Defense began to experiment with the TCP/IP protocol and soon decided to require it for use on ARPANET. In 1979The Creation of BITNET, by IBM, "Because its Time Network", introduced the "store and forward" network. It was used for email and listservs. Once the 1980’s internet completion seemed closer than ever. The CSNET was created for schools that were not connected to the ARPANET. The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers. Vinton Cerf also created a inter-network connection between ARPANET and CSNET. The Internet Activities Board was created in 1983, on January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely. In 1984 the MILNET was created strictly for military use so there was no threat of military leaks through ARPANET. MILNET was based off of the ARPANET but used a different network that could not be entered by ARPANET users. The Department of Defense continued using both networks at this time. MCI took it upon themselves to Upgrade to CSNET. New circuits would be T1 lines,1.5 Mbps which is twenty-five times faster than the old 56 Kbps lines. IBM would provide advanced routers and Merit would manage the network. New network was to be called National Science Foundation Network, and old lines were to remain called CSNET. Later on in the 1980’s BITNET and CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking, another work of the National Science Foundation. In 1988, the T1 NSFNET backbone was complete, and traffic became so heavy so quickly that plans to improve the network started almost immediately. In 1990 Merit, IBM, and MCI formed a not for profit corporation called ANS, Advanced Network & Services, which was to conduct research into high speed networking. It soon came up with the concept of the T3, a 45 Mbps line. NSF quickly adopted the new network and by the end of 1991 all of its sites were connected by this new backbone. The 1990’s would be known as the Internet Decade with a large percentage of the world jumping on board with the technology revolution. In 1992 the World Wide Web is released and the Internet Society was created. And in 1993, nterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: directory and database services (by AT&T), registration services (by Network Solutions Inc.), and information services (by General Atomics/CERFnet). Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develops a graphical user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X". No major changes were made to the physical network. The most significant thing that happened was the growth. Many new networks were added to the NSF backbone. Hundreds of thousands of new hosts were added to the INTERNET during this time period. Pizza Hut in way ahead of it’s time and offers pizza ordering on its Web page. From 1995 to present many different forms of the Internet have been introduced, some were favored more than others and some failed more quickly than expected. Some succeed only for a short time due to increase in technology, even now I feel like the every year that goes by the internet is getting faster or the wireless range is increasing. I can only imagine what could possibly be next!

Works Cited

H'obbes' Zakon, Robert H. "Hobbes' Internet Timeline - the Definitive ARPAnet & Internet History." Hobbes' Internet Timeline. Web. 05 Dec. 2010. .

Howe, Walt. "A Brief History of the Internet." Walt Howe's Internet Learning Tree. Web. 05 Dec. 2010. .

Leiner, Barry, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, David C. Lynch, John Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolffe. "Internet Society (ISOC) All About The Internet: History of the Internet." Internet Society (ISOC). Web. 05 Dec. 2010. .