History and development of the internet
History and development of the internetHistory and Development of the Internet
The internet is a global computer network connecting millions and millions of users throughout the world. (Leiner, 2). It has become one of the fastest growing forms of communication today. (Marshall, 1).
The Internet started as a Defense Department Cold War experiment in the 1950’s. (Academic American, 225). The government needed a way to relay information between tanks and headquarters so the APRA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) sought a way to let signals from the battlefield reach a headquarters computer using satellites and radio signals. At the same time the command posts of the nation were located deep underground in mountains in fear of nuclear war. (Diamond, 3). Paul Baran, working for the U.S. Air Force, developed a network that could reroute itself around damage caused by the impact of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile by using "redundancy of connectivity". This meant that in the event of a break in the network the server would re-route the information in an alternate path through a new technique called "packet switching". Packet Switching is a means of breaking up the message being sent into small packets which carry enough information to seek out its destination and sending them out separately towards the destination server. The message after being broken up would take separate routes to the destination and then be re-assembled by the computer at the server where the message was being sent. This was good because with more than one route for information to travel on, the enemy did not have one central point to target their attack to break the lines of communication and in the event of some break in the line information could still travel through. (Diamond, 4).
This all interested the APRA enough to fund the research and development of an experimental computer network with hopes of demonstrating the feasibility of remote computer operation from the battlefield. Vinton Cerf also called "The Father of the Internet", a graduate student working at UCLA began to take interest in the 4 node APRAnet, and in 1973 developed the first TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) software. (Leiner, 4). TCP/IP software converts messages into streams, transmits them across different nodes or networks, and reassembles them at the destination point. In 1977 Cerf began working for APRA and played a major part in the first long distance packet switching network in which a computer in the back of a moving van sent packets through radio, satellite, and landline to a computer 94,000 miles away. This was the point when the military really began to take interest in the project. (Diamond, 5)
When it first started APRAnet was limited mainly to military business by the APRA but soon scientists began to use it to collaborate on research through e-mail. Not long after the first mailing list appeared called SF-LOVERS. The...
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