ARPANET
Promoted to the head of the
information processing office at DARPA, 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 (UCLA) and the Stanford
Research Institute at 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969.
"We set up a telephone
connection between us and the guys at SRI ...", Kleinrock ... said in an
interview: "We typed the L and we asked on the phone,
"Do you see the L?"
"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."
"Yes, we see the O."
Then we typed the G, and the system crashed ...
By December 5, 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 grew rapidly. By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213, with a
new host being added approximately every twenty days.[11][12]
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.
ARPANET became the technical core of
what would become the Internet, and a primary tool in developing the
technologies used. The early ARPANET used the Network Control Program (NCP, sometimes Network Control Protocol) rather than TCP/IP.
On January 1, 1983, known as flag day, NCP on the ARPANET was replaced by the more flexible and
powerful family of TCP/IP protocols, marking the start of the modern Internet.[13]
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 Peter Kirstein's
research group in the UK, initially at the Institute of Computer Science,
London University and later at University
College London.[14]
NPL
In 1965, Donald Davies
of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) proposed a national data network based on packet-switching.
The proposal was not taken up nationally, but by 1970 he had designed and built
the Mark I packet-switched network to meet the needs of the multidisciplinary
laboratory and prove the technology under operational conditions.[15]
By 1976 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached and more were added
until the network was replaced in 1986.
Merit
Network
The Merit Network[16]
was formed in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad to
explore computer networking between three of Michigan's public universities as
a means to help the state's educational and economic development.[17]
With initial support from the State of Michigan and the National
Science Foundation (NSF), the packet-switched network
was first demonstrated in December 1971 when an interactive host to host
connection was made between the IBM mainframe computer systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne State University in Detroit.[18]
In October 1972 connections to the CDC mainframe at Michigan
State University in East Lansing
completed the triad. Over the next several years in addition to host to host
interactive connections the network was enhanced to support terminal to host
connections, host to host batch connections (remote job submission, remote
printing, batch file transfer), interactive file transfer, gateways to the Tymnet and Telenet
public data networks, X.25 host attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks, Ethernet
attached hosts, and eventually TCP/IP
and additional public universities in Michigan
join the network.[18][19]
All of this set the stage for Merit's role in the NSFNET project starting in the mid-1980s.
CYCLADES
The CYCLADES
packet switching network was a French research network designed and directed by
Louis Pouzin.
First demonstrated in 1973, it was developed to explore alternatives to the
initial ARPANET design and to support network research generally. It was the
first network to make the hosts responsible for the reliable delivery of data,
rather than the network itself, using unreliable datagrams and associated end-to-end protocol mechanisms.[20][21]
X.25
and public data networks
1974 ABC interview with Arthur C. Clarke, in which he describes a future of ubiquitous networked
personal computers.
Based on ARPA's research, packet
switching network standards were developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the form of X.25 and related standards. While
using packet switching, X.25 is built on the concept of virtual circuits emulating
traditional telephone connections. 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.[22]
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.[23]
Unlike ARPANET, X.25 was commonly
available for business use. Telenet
offered its Telemail electronic mail service, which was also targeted to
enterprise use rather than the general email system of the ARPANET.
The first public dial-in networks
used asynchronous TTY terminal protocols to reach a concentrator operated in the
public network. Some networks, such as CompuServe,
used X.25 to multiplex the terminal sessions into their packet-switched
backbones, while others, such as Tymnet, used proprietary protocols. 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. Other major dial-in networks were America Online
(AOL) and Prodigy that also provided communications, content, and
entertainment features. Many bulletin board system (BBS) networks also provided on-line access, such as FidoNet
which was popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers
and amateur radio operators.[citation needed]
UUCP
and Usenet
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 UUCP connection 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, ability to use existing leased lines, X.25 links or even ARPANET
connections, and the lack of strict use policies (commercial organizations who
might provide bug fixes) compared to later networks like CSnet and Bitnet. All connects were local. By 1981
the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984. – Sublink Network,
operating since 1987 and officially founded in Italy in 1989, based its
interconnectivity upon UUCP to redistribute mail and news groups messages
throughout its Italian nodes (about 100 at the time) owned both by private
individuals and small companies. Sublink Network
represented possibly one of the first examples of the internet technology
becoming progress through popular diffusion.[24]
