How did the Internet come to be?

It started as a research project  to experiment with connecting computers together with packet switched networks. It was developed with funding and leadership of the Defence Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

Leonard Kleinrock who did early work in packet switching?

Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn who defined the "Internet Protocol" (IP) and participated in the development of TCP?

Tim Berners-Lee who developed HTTP to support a global hyper-text system he called the World Wide Web? (Internet vs the World Wide Web?)

1958-1961: Connect Computers?

1958 – After USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the following year, within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military

1961 – First published work on packet switching (“Information Flow in Large Communication Nets”, Leonard Kleinrock, MIT graduate student)

1964 – other independent work in packet switching at RAND Institute and National Physics Laboratory in England

1966 –1968: Connect Computers? Funded

1966 – Lawrence Roberts (colleague of Kleinrock from MIT) publishes overall plan for an ARPAnet, a proposed packet switch network

1968 – ARPA awards contracts for four nodes in  ARPANET to UCLA (Network Measurement), Stanford Research Institute (Network Information Center), UCSB (Interactive Mathematics) and U Utah (Graphics);  BBN gets contract to build the IMP switches

1969: First Connections

4/7/1969 – First RFC (“Host Software” by Steve Crocker) basis for the Network Control Protocol(NCP)

9/2/1969 – Leonard Kleinrock’s computer at UCLA becomes first node on the ARPANET

10/29/1969 – First packets sent; Charlie Kline attempts use of remote login from UCLA to SRI; system crashes as “G” in entered

1967-1971: So what do we do with it?

1967-1972 – Vint Cerf, graduate student in Kleinrock’s lab, works on application level protocols for the ARPANET (file transfer and Telnet protocols)

1971 - Ray Tomlinson of BBN writes email application; derived from two existing: an intra-machine email program (SENDMSG) and an experimental file transfer program (CPYNET)

 1971-1973 

Networks Growing

1970 - First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps

Other networks: ALOHAnet (microwave network in Hawaii), Telenet (commercial, BBN), Transpac (France) 

1973 – Ethernet  was designed in 1973 by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

How do we connect these networks together?

1972-1974: Protocol Development

1972-1974 – Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf develop protocols to connect networks without any knowledge of the topology or specific characteristics of the underlying nets

1972 – Robert Kahn gives first public demonstration of ARPAnet (now 15 nodes) at International Conference on Computer Communication

1974-1978: Development of TCP/IP

1974 – First full draft of TCP produced

November 1977 - First three-network TCP/IP based interconnection demonstrated linking SATNET, PRNET and ARPANET in a path leading from Menlo Park, CA to Univ. College London and back to USC/ISI (Marina del Ray, CA)

1978 – TCP split into TCP and IP

1981 –1984: 

Base Protocols In Place

1981 – Term “Internet” coined to mean collection of interconnected networks

1982 – ISO releases OSI seven layer model; actual protocols die but model is influential

1/1/1983 – Original ARPANET NCP was banned from the ARPANET and TCP/IP was required

1984 – Cisco Systems founded

1983-1986: Not Just a Research Project Anymore

1984 – Domain Name System introduced; 1000+ hosts (200 hosts by end of 1970s; over 100000 by end of 1980s)

1986 – NSFNET created to provide access to 5 super computer centers including Theory Center at Cornell (NSFNET backbone speeds 56 Kbps)

1983 – ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET; MILNET to carry defense related traffic

1988-1989: Growing Pains?

1988 - Nodes on Internet began to double every year

November 1988 – Internet worm affecting about 10% of the 60000 computers on the Internet (Robert Morris, Cornell)

1988 - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established in December with Jon Postel as its Director. Postel was also the RFC Editor and US Domain registrar for many years

1990-1993: 

 WWW Explosion

1990 – ARPANET ceases to exist

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee develops hypertext system with initial versions of  HTML and HTTP and first GUI web browser called “WorldWideWeb”

1993 – Mosaic, a GUI web browser, written by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at NCSA takes world by storm (showed in-line images and was easy to install);

WWW proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic

1990-1993: Ready for Public Consumption

1990 – First ISP world.std.com

1991 – NSFNET lifted restrictions on use of NSFNET for commercial purposes

1992 – Internet Society founded

1993 – InterNIC created by NSF to provide Internet services; Private companies transition into roles (AT&T – directory and database services; Network Solutions – registration services; CERFnet – information services)

1995: As we know it

1995- NSFNET reverts back to a research network. Main US backbone traffic now routed through commercial internet service providers

1995 – Sun launches Java

1995 - Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access

1995 - Registration of domain names no longer free

How to make the Internet better?

Vint Cerf: Open Challenges

Vint Cerf: “My primary disappointment has been the slow pace of high speed access for residential customers and the demise of so many competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) in the US. The second area of disappointment is the slow uptake of version 6 of the Internet protocol (IPv6). Perhaps the third area is the continuing difficulty caused by viruses, worms and distributed denial of service attacks.”

Tim Berners-Lee: Making the Internet Better

Tim Berners-Lee: “Nothing can be perfect, but the Web could be a lot better.  It would help is we had easy hypertext editors which let us make links between documents with the mouse.  It would help if everyone with Web access also had some space they can write to -- and that is changing nowadays as a lot of ISPs give web space to users. It would help if we had an easy way of controlling access to files on the web so that we could safely use it for private, group, or family information without fear of the wrong people being able to access it.”