The NetEssay title: The NetMany years ago a network was born it only had several computers were connected and now that same network has millions of computers connected at all times, its called the Internet. This paper will explain: the birth, evolution, growth, and how its changed the world as we know it. The audience for this material would be anyone interested in learning more about the Internet. I will offer a guided tour though the evolution of the Internet and explain what this effect has on its growth and popularity.
An idea was born years ago but not till recently has it come into vision to the rest of the world, its called the Internet. Its like a plague growing across the world, signs of its growth are seen everywhere. For example, most of all new television commercials have some form of Web address in them for Internet information about their products or service. Most all major companies have web pages and direct Internet connection for customer support The Internet is reaching out and touching everyones lives even without their knowledge.
“The Internet is first conceived in the early 60s during the Cold War. Under the leadership of the Department of Defenses Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), it grows from a paper architecture into a small network (ARPANET) intended to promote the sharing of super-computers amongst researchers in the United States.” (
The purpose of its existence was for fast communication in during a global war or nuclear attack. Analyst projected in a major attack on the United States would destroy most major communications. The government established a new form of network that was large scale and expandable enough for anyone to be connected. The first users of this new network were using it for sharing information and data in research. Now days the most the Internet has to fear is a back-ho from a tractor, or government involvement.
A man by the name of Leonard Kleinrock at MIT published a paper on packet switching theory in July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964. This was using tiny of bits of electricity moving though network wire to carry the signal, the very basics to networking. Kleinrock was convinced of the theoretical feasibility of communications using packets rather than circuits, which was a major step along the path towards computer networking. The other key step was to make the computers talk together. To explore this, in 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, Roberts connected the first two computers with a low speed dial-up telephone line, this created the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built. This was considered a wide-area due to the fact two computers were in different states. The result of this experiment was the realization that the time-shared computers could work well together. Running programs and retrieving data was necessary, on the remote machine, but that the circuit switched telephone system was totally inadequate for the job. Thomas Merrill and Roberts knew much more work was needed before true networking could be achieved. Kleinrocks conviction of the need for packet switching was confirmed. This was an idea to the world of networking, it was not till later when companies started realizing the usefulness of just what Kleinrock had done. (See Figure #1 at any time for timeline information)
In late 1966 DARPA went into development which later this new computer network concept quickly put together plans for the “ARPANET.” The RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure voice in the military in 1964. It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967), at RAND (1962-1965), and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without any of the researchers knowing about the other work. So two different groups of researchers where doing the exact same thing basically and did not know about it till later. The word “packet” was adopted from the work at NPL and the proposed line speed to be used in the ARPANET design was upgraded from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps. This was 25 times faster than the first speeds that they were working with at the time. This was also major jump in the speed of packet travel during the day. This new speed would soon become very slow, due to the new amount of network traffic, as many new connections would be introduced.
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What you are trying to do, though, is to design this new networking using technologies that will give the human side of a problem the chance to express some idea and to give it something to be desired, rather than a means of expressing it on the other side using technologies that are outside the human category.
And the result is that you are building an ARPANET network using these technologies that are to be used by the human side of a problem that will eventually be solved by the solution of the human side that should be developed through human efforts but the ARPANET Network will be the only one that will eventually generate the kind of ideas and concepts that will be available to human users that are relevant to human issues, that will be applicable to all people but the human side of a problem. […]
What is your view on a future where all computers can be designed based on the principles of a P2P network?
Well, if it does not, it seems very, very difficult. There will be two choices. It is always possible to design a new network based on the principles of P2P networks which are based on the P2P type of network, which is what my colleagues at MIT and NPL were advocating when they started developing P2P in 1963, so there is nothing such as a P2P network based on a P2P type of network for the foreseeable future.
But if I say something like, “Imagine that every time a new generation of computer’s are constructed based on P2P, that could be a significant part of what’s going to happen. The world will not be as chaotic as P2P had been, and there will not be as much chaos as is present now. But that kind of thing won’t happen.”
The fact is that in today’s world people who go out and do research on what is important will come to the same conclusion – “This is what we need”. We could simply do that, but it would involve so much cost, which was very heavy and has become a huge burden to developing countries where human costs would outweigh the benefits. The point is that in the world that we think is the right way will be one of only two that people can take on, or what is not. As I say it, we need to start thinking more clearly why it is important that we make it do well in the world. And the other question that people have the same and what people do in different parts of the world is, what does this mean? Who are the good people out there? Who is the bad people out there that are not doing their jobs well? And so as we expand our knowledge and reach out to other regions, we come to the same conclusions.
Do you believe in replacing every single aspect of people’s lives that you have seen today with a new way of understanding these issues or are you happy that these new technologies are being tested?
It is very difficult to see the problem that is happening today because we now understand that that the problem is always going to have its own problem, but there always have been systems capable of dealing with a certain particular problem, and that the problem is not just a problem in theory, but also in practice and has to be dealt with with the full range of possible solutions.
You already know where “normal” computing and the problem of “normal network” is going to come from. One of the big issues that I saw in the “normal” world was where “normal” computers are going to come from. In the end, there are probably quite a few people who will want to keep looking and doing things in computers designed using technologies of this kind, and you would think that such technological developments are already in place
Connections were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following year. Work proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other network software. At first all software had to be written from scratch but as time went on they adopted what they had learned to create faster networking software. It was not till December 1970 that the Network Working Group (NWG) finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). This was to set the standards for the networking