HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent
that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything we do; we use
the Internet, ordering a pizza, buying a television, sharing a moment with a friend, sending a picture
over instant messaging, today a click or two is enough to read your local paper and any news source
from anywhere in the world, updated up to the minute. The Internet was no longer concerned with
information exchange alone: it was a sophisticated multidisciplinary tool enabling individuals to create
content, communicate with one another, and even escape reality. Today, we can send data from one
end of the world to the other in a matter of seconds, make online presentations, live in parallel “game
worlds,” and use pictures, video, sound, and text to share our real lives, our genuine identity. But
internet was only a vague idea 50 years ago.

Before 1957 computers only work one task at a time called batch processing, this was quite ineffective.
It was a static network designed to shuttle a small freight of bytes or a short message between two
terminals; it was a repository of information where content was published and maintained only by
expert coders. Computers getting bigger and bigger, so it has to be placed inside a cooled room but then
developers couldn’t work directly on the computers anymore. Specialist had to be called in to connect
them. Programming at that time meant a lot of manual work and the indirect connected to the
computers get to a lot of bugs, wasting time and fraying the developer’s nerve.

That time a remote connection had to be installed, so developers could work directly on the computer.

Time sharing came up also in 1957 the 1st concept in computer technology, to share the processing
power of one computer with multiple users.

On October 4, 1957 during cold war, first unmanned satellite Sputnik 1, sent into orbit by soviet union.
Fear of a missile gap emerged, in order to secure the America’s lead in technology, US found the DARPA
February 1958. At that time, knowledge was only transferred by people so DARPA planned a large-scale
computer network in order to accelerate knowledge transfer and to avoid the doubling up of already
existing research. This network would become the ARPANET furthermore 3 other concepts were to be
developed. Which are fundamental for the history of internet.

Military network, RAND corporation in America

Commercial NPL in England

Scientific Cyclades in France.

Approaches of these concepts are the foundations for our modern internet.

ARPANET, development begun in 1966, university were generally cautious about sharing their
computers, therefore small computers were put on front of the mainframe. This computer the IMP took
over control of network activity while Mainframe, was only in charge of initialization of programs and
data files.

At the same time IMP serves as the interface for the mainframe, since only IMP were interconnected to
the network, this was called IMP-Subnet. For the 1st connections between the computers the network
working group developed the NCP, later on it was replaced by more efficient transmission protocol TCP,
which has special feature, a verification of the file transfer.
Since NPL was designed for commercial basis, a lot of users and file transfer were expected. In order to
avoid congestion of the lines, the sent files were divided into smaller packets which were put together
again at the receiver. Packet switching was born.

1962, American ferret aircrafts discovered middle and long-range missiles in cuba, which were able to
reach the US, this stoked fear of an atomic conflict. At that time, information system had a centralized
network architecture, to avoid breakdown during an attack a decentralized network architecture had to
be developed, which in case in a loss of a node would still be operative, communication still used to
work through radio waves that would have caused problems in case of an atomic attack: the ionosphere
would be affected and the long wave radio waves wouldn’t work anymore, therefore they had to use
the direct waves, which however don’t have a long range, a better solution was the model of a
distributed network. This long distance could be covered with minimum interference,

Development of the French network the Cyclades had a far smaller budget than arpanet and thus also
fewer nodes, the focus was layed on the communication with other network, in this way the term
internet was born, moreover Cyclades concept went further than the arpanet and npl, during
communication between sender and receiver, the computers were not to intervene anymore, but
simply serve as a transfer nodes. Cyclades protocol went through all machines using physical layer, that
was implemented into the hardware providing a direct connection with the receiver, and end to end
structure. Inspired by the Cyclades network and driven by the incompatibility between networks, their
connection gained in importance everywhere. Phone companies developed x.26 protocol which enabled
communication through their server, in exchange for monthly basis charge of course. DARPA TCP was to
connect the computers through gateways and the ISO designed the OSI reference model. Innovation of
OSI was the attempt to standardize the network from its ends, and the channel’s divided into separate
layers. Finally, TCP assimilated the preference of the OSI ref model and gave way to TCP/IP protocol, a
standard which guaranteed compatibility between networks. And finally merged them, creating the
internet. Feb 28, 1990, ARPANET hardware was removed but internet was up and running until now
which Internet revolution is not just technological; it also operates at a personal level, and throughout
the structure of society. The Internet makes it possible for an unlimited number of people to
communicate with one another freely and easily, in an unrestricted way.