History of the Internet
What we take for granted today was a vague idea 50 years ago.
Before 1957 computers only worked at one task at a time this is
called batch processing which was ineffective. With computers
getting bigger and bigger they had to be stored in special cooled
rooms but then developers couldn’t work directly on the computers
any more, specialists had to be called in to connect them.
Programming at that time meant lot of manual work and the indirect
connection to computers led to a lot of bugs and waste of time.
In 1957 a remote connection had to be installed to enable
developers to work directly on the computers at the same time the
idea of time sharing came up which was the first concept in computer
technology to share the processing power of one computer with
multiple users.
How the Internet was born
In October 1957 the first satellite Sputnik 1 was sent to orbit
by the Soviet Union. In order to secure America’s leading technology
the US established the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)
in February 1958. At that time knowledge was only transferred by
people, the DARPA planned a large scale computer network in order to
accelerate knowledge transfer and avoid the doubling up of already
existing research. This network would become the ARPANET Furthermore
3 more concepts were to be developed which were fundamental in the
history of the Internet. The concept of a military network by the
RAND corporation in America, a commercial network of the National
Physical Laboratory in England and the Scientific Network in France SYCLADES. These 4 networks were the foundation of the modern
Internet.
The development of the ARPANET started in 1966. Universities were
quite cautious in sharing their computers therefore small computers
were put in front of the mainframe. This computer the Interface
Message Processor IMP took over control of the network activities
while the mainframe was in charge of the initialization of
applications and data files. At the same time the IMP served as an
interface for the mainframe. For the first connections between the
computers the Network Connecting Group developed the Network Control
Protocol NCP which was later replaced by the more efficient
Transmission Control Protocol TCP. The specific feature of the TCP
is the verification of the file transfer. In England since the NPL
network was founded on a commercial bases a lot of traffic was
expected. In order to avoid congestion of the lines the sent files
were divided into smaller packets which were put together again at
the receiving end, Packet Switching was born.
In 1962 American aircrafts discovered long range missiles in Cuba
which were able to reach the United States, this spelled fear of an
atomic conflict. At that time information systems had a centralized
networking architecture, to avoid breakdown during attack a
decentralized network architecture had to be developed which in case
of a loss of a node it would still be operative. SYCLADES
development focused on communications with other networks, this way
the term inter-net was born. Inspired by SYCLADES and driven by the
incompatibility between the networks their connections gained
importance everywhere.
The phone companies developed the X.25 protocol which enabled
communications through their servers in exchange for a monthly basic
charge DARPA TCP protocol was to connect the computers through
gateways and the International Organization for Standardization ISO
designed the OSI reference model.
The innovation of the OSI model was the attempt to standardize the
network from its ends and the channel divisions into separate
layers. Finally the TCP assimilated the preferences of the OSI
reference model and gave way to the TCP/IP protocol, a standard that
guaranteed compatibility between networks and finally merge them
creating the Internet. By Feb 1990 the hardware of the ARPANET was
removed but the Internet was up and running.
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