INTERNET HISTORY
Introduction
" How could the US authorities successfully communicate after a nuclear
war?" This was the question which led to the origin of the
internet. It was envisaged that Postnuclear America would need
a command-and-control network, linked from city to city, state to state,base to base. The RAND corporation made a proposal in 1964, The network would have no
central authority.All the nodes in the network would be equal in status
to all other nodes,each node with its own authority to originate, pass,and receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets,each packet
separately addressed. Each packet would begin some specified source
node, and end at some other specified destination node.
Each packet would wind its way through the network on an individual
basis. The particular route that the packet took would be unimportant.
Shortly afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) decided to fund a larger, more ambitious project
in the USA. The nodes of the network were to be high-speed computers.In
fall 1969, the first such node was installed in UCLA.By December
1969, there were four nodes on the infant network, which was named ARPANET.
The four computers could transfer data on dedicated
high-speed transmission lines. Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate
on projects. People had their own personal user accounts on the ARPANET
computers, and their own personal addresses for electronic mail.The ARPA's original standard for communication
was known as NCP, "Network Control Protocol," but as time passed and
the technique advanced, NCP was superceded by
a higher-level, more sophisticated standard known as TCP/IP. TCP,
or "Transmission Control Protocol," converts messages into streams
of packets at the source, then reassembles them back into messages at the
destination.IP, or "Internet Protocol," handles the addressing, seeing to
it that packets are routed across multiple nodes and
even across multiple networks standards, not only ARPA'spioneering NCP
standard, but others like Ethernet,
FDDI, and X.25. As the use of TCP/IP became more common, the nodes
in the network started growing.Subsequently the nodes in this growing
network-of-networks were divvied up into basic varieties.
They were grouped by the six basic Internet "domains":gov, mil, edu,
com, org and net. Gov, Mil, and Edu denoted governmental,
military and educational institutions. Com stood for "commercial" institutions.
TimeLine
This timeline lists a summary of the inportant events in the development
of internet.All the years have not been listed. For complete list see reference below.
- 1965
ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing computers".
- 1968
Request for proposals for ARPANET sent out in August; responses received
in September University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded Network Measurement Center contract in October Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors (IMPs)
- 1969
ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking . Four node network
setup
Node 1: UCLA (30 August, hooked up 2 September)
Function: Network Measurement Center
System,OS: SDS SIGMA 7
Node 2: Stanford Research Institute (SRI) (1 October)
Network Information Center (NIC)
SDS940/Genie
Node 3: University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) (1 November)
IBM 360/75, OS/MVT
Node 4: University of Utah (December)
DEC PDP-10, Tenex
- 1970
ALOHAnet, the first packet radio network, developed by Norman Abramson
ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), first host-to-host
protocol. First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN
at 56kbps.
- 1971
15 nodes (23 hosts) NETWOK: UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND,
SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames
Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a
distributed network.
- 1972
Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes
a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March) International Conference
on Computer Communications (ICCC) at the Washington D.C. Hilton with
demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines.First computer-to-computer
chat takes place at UCLA, and is repeated during ICCC
- 1973
First international connections to the ARPANET: University College of London
(England) via NORSAR (Norway) Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for Ethernet. The concept was tested on Xerox PARC's Alto computers, and
the first Ethernet network called the Alto Aloha System.
Bob Kahn poses Internet problem, starts Internetting research program at
ARPA.
- 1974
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection"
which specified in detail the design of a Transmission Control Program (TCP). [IEEE Trans Comm]
BBN opens Telenet, the first public packet data service (a commercial version
of ARPANET) (:sk2:)
- 1975
John Vittal develops MSG, the first all-inclusive email program providing
replying, forwarding, and filing capabilities.
Satellite links cross two oceans (to Hawaii and UK) as the first TCP tests
are run over them by Stanford, BBN, and UCL
- 1978
TCP split into TCP and IP (March)
- 1979
USENET established using UUCP.
ARPA establishes the Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB).
Packet Radio Network (PRNET) experiment starts with DARPA funding.
- 1982
DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet
Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET.
DoD declares TCP/IP suite to be standard for DoD .
- 1984
Domain Name System (DNS) introduced
- 1986
NSFNET created (backbone speed of 56Kbps)
NSF establishes 5 super-computing centers to provide high-computing power
for all
(JVNC@Princeton, PSC@Pittsburgh, SDSC@UCSD, NCSA@UIUC, Theory Center@Cornell).
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF) comes into existence under the IAB.
First IETF meeting held in January at Linkabit in San Diego
- 1988
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established in December with
Jon Postel as its Director.
- 1989
Number of hosts breaks 100,000
Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN) is formed.
- 1990
ARPANET ceases to exist
Archie released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill
Hytelnet released by Peter Scott (Univ of Saskatchewan)
- 1991
First connection takes place between Brazil, by Fapesp, and the Internet
at 9600 baud.Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle, released by Thinking Machines Corporation Gopher released by Paul Lindner and
Mark P. McCahill from the Univ of Minnesota World-Wide Web (WWW) released by
CERN; Tim Berners-Lee developer (:pb1:)
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman (:ad1:)
- 1992
Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered (January)
Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000
Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by Univ of Nevada
The term "surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly (:jap:)
- 1993
Mosaic takes the Internet by storm.
- 1995
Technologies of the Year: ,WWW; Search engines
- 1996
Technologies of the Year: Push, Multicasting
- 1999
Technologies of the Year: E-Trade, Online Banking
- 2000
Web size estimates by NEC-RI and Inktomi surpass 1 billion indexable pages
ICANN selects new TLDs: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro
(16 Nov). Technologies of the Year: ASP, Napster
- 2001
First uncompressed real-time gigabit HDTV transmission across a wide-area
IP network takes place on Internet2 (12 Nov).
Refrences:
http://www.forthnet.gr/forthnet/isoc/short.history.of.internet
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/