From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The history of the Internet
began with the development of electronic computers in the 1950s. The public was
first introduced to the concepts that would lead to the Internet when a
message was sent over the ARPANet from computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock's
laboratory at University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), after the second piece of network equipment was installed
at Stanford
Research Institute (SRI). Packet switched
networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL
in the UK, CYCLADES, Merit Network,
Tymnet, and Telenet, were
developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of
protocols for internetworking, where multiple separate networks could be joined together
into a network of networks.
In 1982, the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, and consequently, the concept of
a world-wide network of interconnected TCP/IP networks, called the Internet,
was introduced. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National
Science Foundation (NSF) developed the Computer
Science Network (CSNET) and again in 1986 when NSFNET provided access to supercomputer
sites in the United States from research and education organizations.
Commercial Internet
service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late
1980s and early 1990s. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. The Internet was
commercialized in 1995 when NSFNET was decommissioned, removing the last
restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.
Since the mid-1990s, the Internet
has had a revolutionary impact on culture and commerce, including the rise of
near-instant communication by electronic
mail, instant messaging,
Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) "phone calls", two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web
with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking,
and online shopping sites. The research and education community continues to
develop and use advanced networks such as NSF's very
high speed Backbone Network Service
(vBNS), Internet2, and National LambdaRail. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and
higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or
more. The Internet's takeover over the global communication landscape was
almost instant in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information
flowing through two-way telecommunications
networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007.[1]
Today the Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online
information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking.
