History / Evolution of the Internet

Evolution of Internet: Important Milestones
We all know about the modern day internet, almost everybody uses it, and i’m sure you would also have heard about some recent Facebook controversies.

But do you know about the important events and how the internet evolved into the one that we use today?

During the 1990s, the Internet was opened completely for commercial use (after A.R.P.A.NET officially ceased operations in 1990). This was also the period which saw rapid growth in the sale of computers. This, along with the release of Tim Berner Lee’s World Wide Web (in 1992) were the most important events in the evolution of the internet.

It all started from there and gradually started spreading in all directions.

These events led to rapid expansion of the world-wide-web (WWW) network and a highly developed global internet community.

Here are some important milestones around that period:

• By 1994, Pizza Hut began to take orders on their website
• E-commerce software and commercially successful web browsers were launched around that time
• Large number of dot-coms / start-ups started (and about a decade later most of these startups crashed)
• Heavy investments were made in telecommunication infrastructure to make the Internet speed faster.
• Applications like email, search engines, wikis, started becoming popular globally, and in more recent
• years its the social networking sites that has taken the world by storm.

Three Major Players in Internet History

Government . Commercial . Educational

Early Innovations

The creation of the Internet is dependent on mankind’s earlier innovations

1836 – Telegraph by Cooke and Wheatstone
Revolutionized human (tele)communications.
Morse Code a series of dots and dashes used to communicate between humans. This is similar to how computers communicate via (binary 0/1) data today. Although it is much slower!!
1858-1866 – Transatlantic cable. Allowed direct instantaneous communication across the Atlantic. Today, cables connect all continents and are still a main hub of telecommunications.

1876 – Telephone. Alexander Graham Bell Exhibits.
Telephones exchanges provide the backbone of Internet connections today.
Modems provide Digital to Audio conversions to allow computers to connect over the telephone network.

Political Events
1940’s to 1980’s – U.S. vs. Soviet Cold War
1957 – U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik. The US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to build US skills in computer technology.
The start of global telecommunications. Satellites play an important role in transmitting all sorts of data today.

ARPA Created
1957 – In response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military.
1962 – Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head ARPA’s research in improving the military’s use of computer technology.
Licklider was a visionary who sought to make the government’s use of computers more interactive.
moved ARPA’s contracts from the private sector to universities and laid the foundations for what would become the ARPANET.

Packet-Switching is Key
1962-1968 – Packet-switching (PS) networks developed
The Internet relies on packets to transfer data.
Data is split into tiny packets that may take different routes to a destination.
The origin is military : for utmost security in transferring information of networks (no single outage point).
More than one route available — if one route goes down another may be followed.
Networks can withstand large scale destruction (Nuclear attack – This was the time of the Cold War).

The Story of ARPANET – Team
1969 – ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking. The Team included:

Bob Taylor, a psychoacoustician, was director of the computer research program at the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1966 when he hit upon the idea of lining computers together. He was awarded $1 Million to develop the network.
Larry Roberts, a pioneer in computer networking at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. He designed the original four-node network, which was to be based on packet-switching, as opposed to circuit-switching.

The Story of ARPANET – the Nodes
1969 – Four nodes and a test
First node at UCLA
soon after at:
Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
UCSB
U of Utah

The Story of ARPANET – The IMPs

1969 – To connect these four computers – each with its own “language” – Wes Clark suggested to Larry Roberts that 4 small computers that spoke the same language be constructed and connected together.

The small computers were called Information Message Processors (IMP) [Honeywell 516 mini computer with 12K of memory] developed by Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN)

The Birth of the Internet
The plan was unprecedented: Kleinrock, a pioneering computer science professor at UCLA, and his small group of graduate students hoped to log onto the Stanford computer and try to send it some data.

Steve Crocker – developed ARPANET network protocol
Vinton Cerf – developed TCP/IP
Jon Postel – developed Domain Name System, FTP, Telnet, and the Internet Protocol.
Mike Wingfield – Wingfield built the hardware interface between the UCLA computer and the first IMP
Bill Naylor

They would start by typing “login,” and seeing if the letters appeared on the far-off monitor.
Kleinrock : “We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI…,”
“We typed the L and we asked on the phone,
“Do you see the L?”
“Yes, we see the L,” came the response.
“We typed the O, and we asked, “Do you see the O.”
“Yes, we see the O.”
“Then we typed the G, and the system crashed”…
Yet a revolution had began”…
Source: Sacramento Bee, May 1, 1996, p.D1

1971 – Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network. The original program was derived from two others:
an intra-machine email program (SNDMSG) and an experimental file
transfer program (CPYNET)
15 nodes (23 hosts) on ARPANET.
The first e-mail message??
qwertyuiop

1973 – Global Networking becomes a reality
First international connections to the ARPANET: University College of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway)
1974 – Packets become mode of transfer
Transmission Control Program (TCP) specified. Packet network Intercommunication — the basis of Internet Communication.
Telenet, a commercial version of ARPANET, opened — the first public packet data service.
1976 – Networking comes to many
Queen Elizabeth sends out an e-mail.

1979 – News Groups born
Computer Science Department research computer network established in USA.
USENET established using UUCP.
USENET still thrives today.
A collection of discussions groups, news groups.
3 news groups established by the end of the year
Almost any topic now has a discussion group.

1984 – Growth of Internet Continues
Number of hosts breaks 1,000.
Domain Name Server (DNS) introduced. Instead of 123.456.789.10 it is easier to remember something like www.myuniversity.mydept.mynetwork.mycountry
( e.g. www.cs.cf.ac.uk).
1986 – Power of Internet Realized
5, 000 Hosts. 241 News groups.
NSFNET created when NSF establishes 5 super-computing centers to provide high-computing power for all — This allows an explosion of connections, especially from universities.

1987 – Commercialization of Internet Born
Number of hosts 28,000.
UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access.
1988
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed
1989 – Large growth in Internet
Number of hosts breaks 100,000
First relays between a commercial electronic mail carrier and the Internet

1990 – Expansion of Internet continues
300,000 Hosts. 1,000 News groups
ARPANET ceases to exist
Archie released files can be searched and retrieved (FTP) by name.
The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access.

1992 – Multimedia changes the face of the Internet
Number of hosts breaks 1 Million. News groups 4,000
The term “Surfing the Internet” is coined by Jean Armour Polly.

1993 – The WWW Revolution truly begins
Number of Hosts 2 Million. 600 WWW sites.
The Mosaic Web browser is released (by a group of 10 students from U of I at Champaign-Urbana) on the Net, gaining 2 million and fueling a 341,634% annual growth rate for Web traffic.

1993 – The WWW Revolution truly begins
The White House opens its Web page and the President gets an e-mail address.

Business and Media really take notice of the Internet.

Mosaic takes the Internet by storm.
User Friendly Graphical Front End to the World Wide Web.
Develops into Netscape — most popular WWW browser to date.

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