History Of The Internet

A very common question that often arises is 'When was the Internet developed or invented?" That is a good question, one that is hard to define as it has many multiple answers.

The Internet, including the World Wide Web (WWW), is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of our time. Without a doubt, it has had a profound effect on almost every aspect of our lives. The formation and implementation of the Internet has changed the way we do business, communicate, entertain, retrieve information, and even educate ourselves. Nevertheless, the Internet might have never materialized if it had not been for some innovated thinkers from the Advanced Research Project Agency, who created "ARPAnet."

The Internet began as a proposed plan to interlinked a network of computers at several universities and research laboratories through a project of the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), directed by American engineer Robert Kahn, and American computer scientist Vinton Cerf initially developed protocols for Internet transmission. This network of computers was originally designed in the event of a large-scale nuclear war to protect the information at these institutes. In the beginning there were only 4 computer nodes attached to this fledging network, two years later there were fifteen, and thirty-two in another year.

Throughout the '70s, ARPA's network grew. Its decentralized structure made expansion easy. Unlike standard corporate computer networks, the ARPA network could accommodate many different kinds of machine. As long as individual machines could speak the packet-switching language of the new, anarchic network, their brand names, and their content, and even their ownership, were irrelevant.

This development continued at a fast pace until an English computer scientist, Timothy Berners-Lee, for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) developed the protocols for the World Wide Web in 1989.

The Internet refers to the global information system that is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP); is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite; provides, uses, or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure.

Computers on the Internet may use one or all of the following Internet services:

* Electronic mail (e-mail). Permits you to send and receive mail. Provides access to discussion groups.