History of the Internet

History of the Internet

The Internet had its beginnings in the late 1960s at the US Department of Defense. Concerned during those Cold War years about the United States' ability to maintain communications in the event of nuclear attack. The Department of Defense established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which created ARPAnet, the embryonic Internet. ARPAnet was used to connect vital US military and research sites. Because the computers at these sites were of different types, ARPA developed a common language, or protocol, that enabled secure communication among them. The set of protocols used in ARPAnet became known as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).

In the late 1980s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began expanding its own network, NSFnet, with the goal of allowing access to educational and national research institutions for exchange of e-mail, files and data. Based on ARPAnet technology and protocols, NSFnet evolved to connect with other TCP/IP networks around the world, to allow open, public participation, and to be called Internet.

Commercial use of the Internet began to grow slowly in the early 1990s and then virtually exploded as corporations came to realize the Internet's value for promotions, public relations, information dissemination, and the beginnings of electronic commerce. Network Wizards Internet Domain Survey of July, 1996 reports that the number of hosts doubles every year, with currently 13 million hosts connected. By early 1993, when CERN released the World Wide Web (WWW), commercial access has become available to every country in the world, although not all are connected yet.

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