The Internet, the latest wonder of science, has brought about a revolutionary change in communication technology. It has different dimensions for different users. While some use it as a medium of intercommunication, some use it as a mechanism to share information. Still others use it as a means of publishing information globally. It is a good example of the synergy of the convergence of technologies.
The individual technologies behind the Internet have been around for some time. However the convergence of the technologies underlying the mass-production of computers, developments in computer networking, the growing availability and declining cost of telecommunication services and advancements in data compression and transmission has brought about the explosive growth of the Net.
Today no society can do without the Internet. It is an essential infrastructure for any society. It has made inroads into even developing countries in Asia and Latin America. The Global Information Infrastructure has come about. More local infrastructure initiatives are being commissioned with rapidity.
The history of the Internet is complex. It involves technological, organizational and social aspects. The memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of the MIT in 1962 were the first recorded description of social interactions achieved through computer networking. In his memos Licklider envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which one could quickly access data and programs. Packet switching, proposed by Leonard Klienrock in 1961 was the first technological breakthrough which would support such a network. The normal telephone system uses the circuit switching technology. In this system, no third party can communicate with either of the user, as long as the conversation lasts. Packet switching enables any number of users to share a single line. It enables computers to talk to one another even if every computer is not connected to every other in the world.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In 1964, Moore’s law, pointing to the rapid advances being made in the semiconductor arena, was declared. During the same year, PDP-8, the first mass-produced mini-computer from Digital Equipment Corporation was introduced. Then came PDP-11. It was home to many generations of hackers. In 1966, DARPA finalized the first specification of their computer network, called the ARPANET. The final form of ARPANET was jointly evolved by Bolt Beranek and Newman who implemented the IMP; Network Analysis Corporation, which finalized the network topology; University of California at loss Angeles which finalized the network metrics and measurement; and Bob Kahn, who did the architectural design.
These were located at University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford Research Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara and University of Utah. The next few years saw further additions to the number. In September 1972 Bob
Kahn made the first public demonstration of the network at the International Computer Communication Conference. Kahn and others worked on the open Architecture networking. It involved a suite of software that would carry out device-and-vendor- independent communications, with error correction and intelligent packet routing. It came to fruition with the adoption of the two- layered protocol called TCP/IP.
IP, the lower layer, would transport data packets from point to point. TCP would guarantee error correction. Together, they would guarantee the user reliable, end-to-end connectivity. On January 1, 1983 the entire ARPANET shifted to TCP/IP. The Internet Activities Board was established. In November, Paul Mockapetris released the first specification for the Domain Naming Service. The military and civilian sections of the Internet were separated from each other. The public network was born.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The later history of the Internet is concerned with the applications of the network. The File Transfer Protocol, was made available in 1971, enabled users to exchange files between remote computers. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson wrote the first e-mail sending and reading programme. In the same year, Jon Postal created the first specification for the popular Telnet service. This service allows users to log on into remote computers. In 1979, the first Multi-user Dungeon Game was developed. It allowed users to log in from any part of the-network and play with one another. In 1984, the number of host computers crossed 1000. The number crossed one lakh in 1989. In 1988, Robert Morris Jr. released the Internet Worm, highlighting the need for security on the network.
Global penetration of the Net started early. In 1973, the University College of London and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway joined the ARPANET. Japan and Finland joined that network within a short while. By 1990 there were several hundreds of government-funded and corporate-funded networks on the Internet. The early nineties witnessed new forms of information presentation on the Internet. The University of Minnesota introduced Gopher in 1991. In 1990, Tim burners-Lee created the World Wide Web. The WWW was better than other systems because it used free-form text with embedded links to other documents. 1993 marked a significant development with the arrival of Mosaic a graphical web-browser. It was developed at the National Centre for Supercomputer Applications by a team led by Marc Andersen. By this time the number of Internet hosts had crossed 2 million.