The Evolution of the Internet :: essays research papers

The Evolution of the Internet So you suppose Al Gore created the Internet? Well thats not possible, because I did. Yes, its true, a few years ago I was sitting in my basement with nothing to do and suddenly the idea came to me wherefore not create an inter-connected network of networks that will allow users to send place instantly, download copyrighted songs, and order pizza, all from the comfort of their own vivification room? OK, so maybe I didnt exactly make up the Internet, but neither did Al Gore.So who was the genius behind the selective information superhighway, you ask? Well lets take a metre back to the sixties, a decade when Cold War tension caused comprehensive fear of nuclear warfare. Early in the decade, two groups of researchers, privately own RAND Corporation (Americas leading nuclear war think-tank) and federal billet ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), grappled with a bizarre strategic mystery in the font of nuclear war, how could political and mil itary officials communicate successfully? It was obvious that a network, linking cities and military bases, would be necessary. But the advent of the atomic bomb make switches, wiring, and command posts for this network highly vulnerable. A nuclear-safe network would need to choke with missing links and without central authority. In 1964, RAND Corporations capital of Minnesota Barran made public his solution to the problem. Essentially, the concept was simple. Barrans network would be assumed to be unreliable at all times. Information would be broken into many small pieces called packets and then sent to various points, or nodes, in the network until they reached their destination. ARPA embraced Barrans idea for three reasons. First, if nuclear bombs blew by large components of the network, data would still reach its destination. Second, it would be relatively check from espionage, since spies tapping into parts of the network would be able to intercept only portions of transmiss ions. Lastly, it would be much more efficient because files and transmissions couldnt clog portions of the network. Only quintette years after Barran proposed his version of a computer network, ARPANET went online. Named after its federal sponsor, ARPANET initially linked four high-speed supercomputers and was intended to allow scientists and researchers to theatrical role computing facilities by long-distance. By 1971, ARPANET had grown to fifteen nodes, and by 1972, thirty-seven. ARPAs original standard for communication was known as Network say-so Protocol or NCP. As time passed, however, NCP grew obsolete and was replaced by a new, higher-level standard known as TCP-IP, which is still in use today.