Brief History of the Internet - Research Paper Example

 Brief History of the Internet For years, man has invented several innovative services as well as products but none can be compared to the internet. Jander says that the internet, named after internet protocol has changed the entire face of human history with the information that can be found in cyber space being almost overwhelming. This valueless resource can be used in many ways, top among them being communication at a very low cost. The electronic age has brought about progress in almost every sector of people’s lives especially economics and communication. The internet is a world wide system made up of interconnected computer networks, which transmit data through a standard internet protocol (IP) (Patrick 48). Internet has gone through several improvements technologically in order to be as advanced and efficient as it is today. The telegraph and the telex machines are the earliest devices used for internet communication and it was known as Victorian in the 1840s. Signals were sent over wires that were established over long distances. As a matter of fact these signals are used up to date in network interface card (Mary). The telegraph was extensively used by the government of the United States of America during the American war. The evolving of technology brought about several changes in how the internet works but the concept of technology over long distances has generally remained the same with a few alterations. In the early 1960s, J.C.R Licklider from MIT proposed a global network of computers and started to develop that project. Leonard Kleinrock developed the theory of packet switching, which has become the basis for internet connections. In 1965, Lawrence Roberts connected two computers; one in California with his in Massachusetts using Dial-up telephone lines. Internet Society states that this was the first time for two computers to be connected and although it proved the possibility of wide area networking it also showed that telephone lines’ circuit switching was not adequate. Roberts and Licklider both moved to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop their respective plans. These are the true pioneers of the internet because they are the ones who championed the connection of computers all over the world through the internet. The ARPANET, as the internet was referred to as back in the day, was officially brought online in 1969 under a contract by DARPA which was renamed Advanced Computers in the universities in South Western USA namely the University of California (CLA), University of Utah, Stanford Research Institute and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) (Howe). Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard and Stanford, were added to the list of connections by January 1970. By this time rapid progress was being made thus showing that the internet would soon become a world wide phenomenon thus achieving its biggest objective. The early internet was mostly used by computer engineers since it was a very complex system of operations. Unlike the internet as we know it today, APRANET was neither easy to use nor user friendly. However, its difficulties did not end with the complexity of the system since there was no home or office personal computers in those days since computers were shared by a big group of individuals. In 1972, Ray Tomilson adopted Electronic mail (E-mail) for the APRANET in the process picked the symbol @ to link the user name and address (Patrick, 40-76). In 1972, the Telnet protocol that enables one to log on to a remote computer was initially published as a Request for Comments. Conversely, the FTP protocol was published as an RFC in 1973, hence enabling the transfer of files between internet sites. Since then, RFC’s were made electronically available to anyone who used FTP protocol. According to Kristul, in the mid 1960’s all connections using the internet were dependent on the ARPA but in the late 1960s the trend began to change as libraries started networking and automating their catalogs. In the mid 1970s regions inclusive of New England joined to form a national network which later became international. Automated networks soon became available to the world through Telnet or TN3270 at first and many years later through the web. Maturing of the internet was initiated in 1970’s resulting from the TCP/IP architecture put forward by Bob Kahn. In 1980, the defense department assimilated the TCP/IP architecture and later in 1983, the entire world started to use it thus replacing the Network Control Protocol (NCP). Ethernet was introduced in 1974, as an extension to a dissertation by Bob Metcalfe and is today used as a protocol for many networks. Email, FTP and Telnet commands were initially only used by technical people but as the years passed internet became easier to use, especially since these particular commands were standardized (Sherman 56). At that time, the number of sites that were online was small, but later on the internet became harder to track. This brought about the need for resources that were online to be indexed as attempted by Peter Deutsch in 1989. He and his colleagues created software that would reach to all available FTP sites, list their files hence making them available to all internet users. The archive they created for all these sites was named Archie. These commands were UNIX commands hence one could not use it the software to its full capability without some knowledge concerning UNIX. Peter Scott further developed this method of indexing in 1990 and designed a collective place where one can find information about library catalogs and how to use them. In 1989, a new protocol for distribution of information which later became known as the World Wide Web was developed. The first friendly interface to the internet was developed in 1991 in the University of Minnesota (Gromov). Since then, continuous progress has been made on the internet following those first big steps. Today the internet is one of the most vital and most used means of communication in the world without which most businesses and to some extent social lives would be impaired. Works cited Gromov, Gregory. Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. 22 October 2010 . Howe, Walt. Brief History of the Internet. 24 March.2010. 22 October 2010 http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html Internet Society. The History of the Internet in a Nutshell Cameron Chapman. 22 October, 2010 . Jander, Mary. Internet Evolution. 21 October 2010. 22 October, 2010 . Kristul, Dave. The History of the Internet. 22 October 2010 . Patrick, D., Reagan. History and the Internet: A Guide. McGraw-Hill. 2002. Sherman, Josepha. The History of the Internet. Franklin Watts. 2003. Read More