The Internet Through Time

History of the Internet

The internet has its origins in information theory and the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks.
The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration.
Computer science began to consider time-sharing between computer users in the late 1950s and the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks.
J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office of the United States Department of Defense.
ARPANET adopted the packet switching technology proposed by Davies and Baran, underpinned by mathematical work in the early 1970s by Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA.
The design included concepts from the French CYCLADES project directed by Louis Pouzin.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded national supercomputing centers at several universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic organizations in the United States.
International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP internationally on existing networks marked the beginnings of the Internet.
Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.
Research at CERN in Switzerland by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web.
The dramatic expansion of capacity of the Internet with the advent of wave division multiplexing and the roll out of fiber optic cables in the mid-1990s had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology.
The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking services.The development of the internet is a complex and multifaceted story, involving multiple networks, technologies, and initiatives over several decades. Some key points include:
The development of the CYCLADES packet switching network in France, which implemented the end-to-end principle and influenced TCP/IP architecture.
The development of X.25 and related standards by the ITU-T, which formed the basis for public data networks and allowed for business use of packet switching.
The growth of dial-in networks, such as Telenet and CompuServe, which offered electronic mail and chat capabilities to personal computer users.
The development of UUCP networks, which allowed for the transfer of news and messages on a serial line UUCP connection and rapidly expanded through the mesh of UUCP hosts forwarding on the Usenet news.
The development of TCP/IP, which unified different network methods and allowed for the exchange of traffic with other networks independently from their detailed characteristics.
The creation of NSFNET, a 56 kbit/s backbone to support the NSF-sponsored supercomputing centers, which provided support for the creation of regional research and education networks in the United States and allowed the ARPANET to be decommissioned in 1990.
The use of existing network infrastructure, such as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS) X.25 network, to carry Internet traffic.
The development of wave division multiplexing (WDM) technology, which allowed for a mass capacity (dense) WDM system and the real start of optical networking.
The spread of Internet technologies throughout the rest of the world, with many sites creating simple gateways for the transfer of electronic mail.The history of the internet can be traced back to the development of ARPANET in the 1960s, which was the first operational packet switching network. The 1970s saw the development of email, Usenet, and other protocols. In the 1980s, routing technologies were developed to remove centralized routing aspects and to introduce a meshed topology. Optical networking was also developed to address the need for transmission capacity beyond that provided by radio, satellite, and analog copper telephone lines. The 1980s also saw the global spread of TCP/IP, including the establishment of JANET in the UK and the connection of South Korea, Japan, and Australia to the internet. The 1990s saw the rise of ISPs and the public internet, as well as the development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. The global spread of the internet was not without challenges, including the emergence of a digital divide separating developed and developing countries.A Brief History of the Internet
The Internet began as a research project in the late 1960s, and by the 1980s, it was used for emailing, e-commerce, online forums, and personal websites.
The early web was referred to as "Web 1.0," and it lacked dynamic HTML, relational databases, web applications, and widespread social engagement.
In the late 1990s, there was a dot-com bubble, which led to high valuations of dot-com companies, followed by a market crash.
Web 2.0 emerged in the mid-2000s, and it emphasized user-generated content, usability, and interoperability. This era saw the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia.
The mobile revolution began in the late 2000s, with the rise of smartphones, mobile-targeted websites, and location-based services.
Networking in outer space began in 2010, with the first Internet link into low Earth orbit established by astronaut T. J. Creamer.
Internet governance is decentralized, with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) overseeing technical standards, technical identifiers, and the Domain Name System.
The IANA function was originally performed by USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), and it delegated portions of this responsibility with respect to numeric network and autonomous system identifiers to the Network Information Center (NIC) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) in Menlo Park, California.
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) was established as the first Regional Internet Registry (RIR) in May 1992, and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) became the third RIR in December 1997.
ICANN was established in 1998 to manage Internet-related tasks, including the technical coordination of the DNS system.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the largest and most visible of several loosely related ad-hoc groups that provide technical direction for the Internet, including the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).