The Internet had humble if not small beginnings. Back in 1969, the ARPAnet(Advanced Research Project Agency network), a Department of Defense agency, had only 4 or 5 hosts or network stations. The popular idea of the beginning was to design a computer system that could possibly survive a war and yet still function in such a case. This proved to be difficult at best, because in the early beginnings computer systems and their operation system designs were very new and just as diverse in style and protocols as the companies that manufactured them.

Several protocol approaches were attempted by ARPAnet to come up with a viable and yet system compatible way of not just linking the network together, but enabling all the different types of computers to interact and communicate together. The Network Control Program was one such protocol that was developed, but it proved to be insufficient and faulty. The program designed to take the place of the NCP was the Transmission Control Program. And the protocol for information routing over the network was the Internet Protocol. Today, these two terms are synonymous and are better known as TCP/IP. This is simply a way or standard of to which computers linked together in networks over wide areas can communicate and transfer information between them. This implementation of this all-encompassing standard is the reason the Internet exists today. The Internet is officially said to have started in 1980 when DARPA, the new name for the ARPAnet that was changed in 1971, began running all of its computers and associated networks with TCP/IP. At this time there were about 200 hosts on the Internet. This number more than doubled just three short years later when the DOD required all government computers use TCP/IP. During that same period the Internet was divided into the MILNET, the military network, and the DARPA Internet. The DARPA was eventually dropped and the exponentially growing network system became known simply as the Internet.

Today the internet, 1996 statistics, consists of 6.6 million hosts world wide. Compare this with 2.2 million in 1994 and 1995's estimate of only 5 million and the magnitude and impact of the Internet begins to become clear. In the beginning it was just a place for scientists, researchers and government agencies to pseudo meet and exchange information and ideas. Now it is a growing almost living network of equipment, organizations, and individuals from all walks of life. It has become a place not only for the serious academic, much to their chagrin, but also a place for the average citizen to come and travel all over the world and yet never leave the comfort of their own home or incur the expense of the plane ticket. There are so many places or sites as they are more popularly known to visit on the Internet that if an individual tried to visit all of them in one lifetime, they would die before seeing it all. In addition to the places, there is the all-encompassing reason for the continued popularity of the Internet; the people. People from all over the world with a diverse number of backgrounds use it for just a diverse number of reasons. The reasons range from academic, scientific, knowledge, communication, entertainment, and interaction to just plain curiosity. All these people access the Internet through a smaller network be it educational, professional, governmental, or commercial. This is where the individual networks come in to play.

The networks that make up the Internet can be any of the above described organizational networks, but they can be setup with many different operating systems. These are usually dependent on the required needs of the network, the company that sets it up, and the manufacturer of the equipment and computers used. There are several types of local area networks or LANS. The ARCnet, AppleTalk, MAP, TOP, IBM Token Ring, StarLAN, Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and wireless Ethernet. The Ethernet type is the most popular standard in use today. It is a IEEE(Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) 802.3 CSMA/CD protocol compliant network. CSMA/CD is an acronym for Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection. All the stations in the LAN listen for a no carrier signal, and when that happens in conjunction with a need to transmit information, the station will begin to transmit. If the station detects or hears anything but its own signal it will stop transmission and wait for a no carrier signal again. The original version of the Ethernet differed slightly from the 802.3 standard in technical aspects and the two different types are still in use.

The uses of these networks vary as vastly as the owners of them. Corporations, research and educational institutions, commercial entities, and countless others. They can be used in a corporate standpoint to connect the individuals and departments within the company to facilitate information exchange, productivity, and efficiency. When a research and development arm of a certain company can convey and/or transmit an idea with just a click of a mouse button to the same companies marketing department, then improved productivity and profit are sure to follow. The idea is the same for the academic side. An individual deciding to research a certain subject can access a librarie's network and a world of information opens up in seconds that use to take days to obtain. Once again, the idea is the same for the entertainment side. The ability to find news, information, entertainment, people, and places right at an individual's fingertips facilitates and nurtures a better understanding of the world and the people in it. The main idea of a network no matter the owner or the use is to bring together people and ideas and to make them connected. Put in one simple word, connectivity.

Making all these places and people come together is where the connection side of the Internet comes in. Since it is made up of numerous networks then there has to be a way to put these network on the Internet. As stated previously the reason for having a network is to bring people and ideas together. The more networks that are connected together the more people and ideas.

Connecting a network to the Internet can follow varying forms and criteria. This connection is accomplished by the use of several types of equipment. For an Ethernet repeater hub based system, several computers utilizing a bus installed Ethernet network interface card with a RJ45 type cable connect individually to the hub in a star-like topology. A hub is exactly what its name implies, a center or place for all the computers to come together. This individual connection facilitates the ease of managing the network if the cable connecting the computer is damaged, just that one computer is down and the rest are available for use. To facilitate the connection of the LAN further, a bridge is used. It connects the LAN to other LANS that are part of the larger backbone network. A bridge is defined to be a device that is used to connect analogous LANS together. The bridge passes the packets from one network to the next dependent on the destination address of the packet. A packet is a combination of data and several layers of addresses that identifies where the information came from and where it is headed to. This particular system uses a transparent bridging type of setup. The networks are not aware of the bridge and operate as if it was not there. The reason for the use of a bridge in a university network situation to separate lab networks and faculty networks is sometimes said to be for security reasons. The underlying reason though is to not load the other network down with the additional computers. Security is still a viable reason, by utilizing a bridge one LAN cannot automatically access another LAN thereby safeguarding the files at a certain LAN. The next major piece of equipment is the router. The router connects dissimilar networks together and routes the packets to the appropriate network. Confusion between the router and the bridge is common since both do similar actions with the data packets, but the router looks deeper into the destination address to find where the information needs to go. This makes the router slower and more expensive. It is believed that for a network that bridging should be done first and then if needed routing should be used. Routers and bridges start to blur around their functional edges as different types of them are available. After the router, comes the gateway. This device is capable of converting the entire protocol of one network to another. That is why it is also called a protocol converter. After this there is the Internet. That is what the Internet is basically composed of. A bunch of LANS, WANS(Wide Area Networks), bridges, routers, and gateways all interconnected together passing packets of information to each other like little electronic footballs, and where that football ends up is based on the destination address made and changed along the way by the aforementioned components each with its own layer of the address to be concerned with. When a packet goes out on the internet with a destination, it does not have a infinite life span until it finds the right home. The packet is given a certain "Time To Live." When the packet reaches a router, the router will decrement that time dependent on a pre- specified amount. The router that decrements that time to zero with dispose of the packet and inform the origin of its undeliverable state. Simply put, that it is dead. That is the Internet, a bunch of computers hooked together in some sort and/or fashion passing packets of varying types of information back and forth.

The internet, as known now, consists of computers and such related equipment and uses the telephone lines as a medium of transporting information. Without a computer access to the Internet is not possible, yet. This is soon to change with the advent of a new system due out very soon that will let the user access the net through their television without a bulky and very expensive computer system. This new system costs about a third of the price of a moderately equipped computer and will revolutionize the Internet like the invention of TCP/IP. TCP/IP accomplished growth by making a standard that all could use. With this new media for the Internet, the possibilities for tomorrow are endless and abound everywhere.

Possibilities are what the Internet offers every user of it. The Internet community is a fun, informative, and entertaining medium that will lead the human race into the next century with a collective fire trailing the path. That is why becoming a part of this community is so important. Those that participate are offered a world, literally, of knowledge. Those that ignore it and hope it goes away will be left behind wondering what everyone else is doing and regretting not joining this vast and exponentially growing community.