Internet History
Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental
Internet technologies, started in the early 1960s in the work of Paul Baran,and packet-switched networks such
as the NPL network by Donald Davies, ARPANET, the Merit Network, CYCLADES, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, by which multiple separate
networks could be joined into a network of networks. ARPANET development began
with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network
Measurement Center at the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed
by Leonard Kleinrock,
and the NLS system at SRI International (SRI) by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park,
California, on 29 October 1969 The third site was the Culler-Fried
Interactive Mathematics Center at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics
Department. In an early sign of future growth, fifteen sites were connected to
the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the
1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.
Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare. European
developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks.
Notable exceptions were the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) in June 1973, followed in 1973 by
Sweden with satellite links to the Tanum Earth
Station and Peter T. Kirstein's
research group in the United Kingdom, initially at the Institute of
Computer Science, University of London and
later at University
College London. In 1974, RFC 675 used
the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking,
and later RFCs repeated
this use. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National
Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer
Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol
Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide
proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again
in 1986 when the National
Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States
for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45
Mbit/s. Commercial Internet service
providers (ISPs) emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The
ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.
T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992.
The Internet rapidly expanded in Europe and Australia in the mid to late
1980s and to Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990sThe beginning of
dedicated transatlantic communication
between the NSFNET and networks in Europe was established with a low-speed
satellite relay between Princeton University and Stockholm, Sweden in December 1988. Although
other network protocols such as UUCP had
global reach well before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet
as an intercontinental network.
Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created
new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the
network in its core and for delivering services to the public. In mid-1989, MCI
Mail and Compuserve established
connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to the
half million users of the Internet. Just months later, on 1 January 1990,
PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the
networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In
March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and
Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN,
allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites. Six
months later Tim Berners-Lee would
begin writing WorldWideWeb, the
first web browser after
two years of lobbying CERN management. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built
all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup
Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also a HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files),
the first HTTP server software (later
known as CERN httpd), the
first web server, and the first Web pages that
described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial
Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate
with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet. Stanford
Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to
offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994. In
1996 OP Financial Group,
also a cooperative bank,
became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe. By 1995,
the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was
decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry
commercial traffic.
2005
|
2010
|
2017
|
|
World population
|
6.5 billion
|
6.9 billion
|
7.4 billion
|
Users worldwide
|
16%
|
30%
|
48%
|
Users in the developing world
|
8%
|
21%
|
41.3%
|
Users in the developed world
|
51%
|
67%
|
81%
|
As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal
growth, the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing
similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18 months. This
growth, formalized as Edholm's law, was catalyzed by advances
in MOS technology, laser lightwave
systems, and noise performance.
Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce,
including the rise of near instant communication by email, instant messaging, telephony (Voice over
Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites. 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 continues to grow,
driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce,
entertainment and social networking. During
the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by
100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet
users was thought to be between 20% and 50%. This growth is often
attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth
of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet
protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one
company from exerting too much control over the network. As of
31 March 2011, the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30.2%
of world population). It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried
only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication, by 2000 this figure had
grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated
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