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History of the Internet
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Before the Internet
In the fifties and early sixties, prior to the widespread inter-networking that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the network. Some networks had gateways or bridges between them, but these bridges were often limited or built specifically for a single use. One prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe method, simply allowing its terminals to be connected via long leased lines. This method was used in the 1950s by Project RAND to support researchers such as Herbert Simon, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when collaborating across the continent with researchers in Santa Monica, California, on automated theorem proving and artificial intelligence.
Three terminals and an ARPA
Advanced Research Projects Agency was renamed to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972. A fundamental pioneer in the call for a global network, J.C.R. Licklider, articulated the idea in his January 1960 paper, Man-Computer Symbiosis.
In October 1962, Licklider was appointed head of the United States Department of Defense's DARPA information processing office, and formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. As part of the information processing office's role, three network terminals had been installed: one for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, one for Project Genie at the University of California, Berkeley and one for the Multics project SHOPPING at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Licklider's need for inter-networking would be made evident by the problems this caused.
Switched packets
At the tip of the inter-networking problem lay the issue of connecting separate physical networks to form one logical network. During the 1960s, Donald Davies (NPL), Paul Baran (RAND Corporation), and Leonard Kleinrock (MIT) developed and implemented packet switching. The notion that the Internet was developed to survive a nuclear attack has its roots in the early theories developed by RAND. Baran's research had approached packet switching from studies of decentralisation to avoid combat damage compromising the entire network.
Networks that led to the Internet
ARPANET
Promoted to the head of the information processing office at ARPA, Robert Taylor intended to realize Licklider's ideas of an interconnected networking system. Bringing in Larry Roberts from MIT, he initiated a project to build such a network. The first ARPANET link was established between the University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute on 29 November 1969. By 5 December 1969, a 4-node network was connected by adding the University of Utah and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Building on ideas developed in ALOHAnet, the ARPANET started in 1972 and was growing rapidly, by 1981 the number of hosts had grown to 213, with a new host being added approximately every twenty days.
ARPANET became the technical core of what would become the Internet, and a primary tool in developing the technologies used. ARPANET development was centered around the Request for Comments (RFC) process, still used today for proposing and distributing Internet Protocols and Systems. RFC 1, entitled "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker from the University of California, Los Angeles, and published on April 7, 1969. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.
International collaborations on ARPANET were sparse. For various political reasons, European developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks. Notable exceptions were the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) in 1972, followed in 1973 by Sweden with satellite links to the Tanum Earth Station and University College London.
X.25 and public access
Following on from ARPA's research, packet switching network standards were developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the form of X.25 and related standards. In 1974, X.25 formed the basis for the SERCnet network between British academic and research sites, which later became JANET. The initial ITU Standard on X.25 was approved in March 1976. This standard was based on the concept of virtual circuits.
The British Post Office, Western Union International and Tymnet collaborated to create the first international packet switched network, referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. This network grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. By the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking infrastructure.
Unlike ARPAnet, X.25 was also commonly available for business use. X.25 would be used for the first dial-in public access networks, such as Compuserve and Tymnet. In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. The company broke new ground again in 1980 as the first to offer real-time chat with its CB Simulator. There were also the America Online (AOL) and Prodigy dial in networks and many bulletin board system (BBS) networks such as FidoNet. FidoNet in particular was popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers and amateur radio operators.
UUCP
In 1979, two students at Duke University, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, came up with the idea of using simple Bourne shell scripts to transfer news and messages on a serial line with nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following public release of the software, the mesh of UUCP hosts forwarding on the Usenet news rapidly expanded. UUCPnet, as it would later be named, also created gateways and links between FidoNet and dial-up BBS hosts. UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, and ability to use existing leased lines, X.25 links or even ARPANET connections. By 1983 the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984.
Merging the networks and creating the Internet
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