0 History of Internet

HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

The internet has its roots in a networking project started by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), an agency of the U.S Departement of Defense. ARPA’s goal was to build a network that (1) allowed scientists at different physical locations to share information and work together on military and scientific projects and (2) could function even if part of the network were disabled or destroyed by a disaster such as a nuclear attack. That network, called ARPANET, became functional in September 1969, lingking scientific and academic researchers across the United States.

The original ARPANET consisted of four main computers, one each located at the University of California at Los Angels, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah. Each computer served as a host on the network. A host, more commonly known today as a server, is any computer that provides services and connections to other computer on a network. Hosts often use high-speed communications to transfer data and messages over a network.

As researchers and others realized the great benefit of using ARPANET’s e-mail to share data and information, ARPANET underwent phenomenal growth. By 1984, ARPANET had more than 500 million hosts connect to the Internet.

Some organization connected entire network to ARPANET to take advantage of the high speed communications it offered. In 1986, the National Science Foundation (NSF) connected its huge network of five supercomputer centers, called NSFnet, to ARPANET. This configuration of complex networks and hosts became known as the internet.