The Internet

History of Internet

INTERNET,TOWARDS CONNECTIVITY AND CONVERGENCE

1. Introduction, the early days
by Andrea Botero

The Internet has become a familiar "place" for millions of people that every day login to exchange messages, have a chat, search for information or sell a book to mention only but a few of the activities that take place under this platform. To trace its origins involves realizing the myriad of circumstances, people, institutions, technologies and relationships that have make it possible. Doing this could also help to clarify some of the basic concepts and design ideas behind its current shape, and the implications of its development for society in general.

The internet in it's very basic conception, can be considered as a group of innovations that make it possible the communication and transmission of "data" between computers at different locations. It has born out of the idea of distribution of resources and sharing of information over computers (therefore we need computers before having internet, details in media-computer  ) Should it be understood as a collection of tools, people and resources and not only as fuzzy whole that creates a virtual space?

Most of the people involved in its development seems to agree that the launchuing of the sputnik satellite by the soviets in 1957 was an important factors determenig the US government to initiate a long standing R&D effort to apply state of the art technology into US defense system. This effort chanelled many resources to a program called ARPA (Advance Research Projects Agency) that will stand as the main motor and agglutinant factor that allow a group of people to develop some of the ideas about computing and sharing of information, a working reality. ARPA’s main focus from war game scenarios to research into timesharing, computer graphics and computer language produce the first initiative for a network facility that will communicate the large amount of university based- researchers, this project was called ARPANET its specifications were ready in 1968, and it was first tested in 1969.

 

 

 

 

 

 <pics/arpanet2.gif>A few basic concepts that determine ARPANET´s original design can be summarised as: decentralization, a common language of data chopped in to pieces for transportation, the presence of a translation node (IMP) between the network and local computers, and the freely available information on its design.. all this under the current image of computers "as mainframes". At the begining the network comprises 4 nodes (University of California at Los Angeles UCLA - the first one- The Stanford Research Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah) . Arpanet continued to grow basically in isolation until 1972 went it finally went public ( during the First International Conference on Computers and Communication, Washington DC) and sprung the development of other networks ( this series of maps  illustrate stages on its development).

The internet is said to be "officially" born around 1982 when the different networks agree on using the TCP/IP protocol ( Who had been developed by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf already in 1974) as a standard for their interconnections making it truly a network of networks and overcoming the previous cacophony of standards, protocols and increasing its coverage.



2. Time for basics: "Warriors of the Net"
How TCP/IP Works (Video by Ericsson Medialab)

A short movie that illustrates how the Internet works from the viewpoint of individual data packets. It was created by Gunilla Elam, Tomas Stephansson, Niklas Hanberger and Monte Reid , at the Ericsson Medialab (Sweden). More info about Warriors of the net

3. Internet: More than the World Wide Web
By Andrea Botero

Most of the time spent in the Internet nowadays is mediated through the World Wide Web (WWW) experience produced by current browsers. However this has not always been the case, if we consider the internet as a group of different innovations developed for different purposes, we can identify the different array of services that it offers. Ranging from electronic email, user group discussions (news groups), searching services, information retrieval, file transfer and some other "playful" activities like games or muds that have been present since the early days of computer process sharing experiments.

Crude starts of email: in 1971 Ray Tomlinson (ARPANET) sends himself the World's first e-mail . He is responsible for adapting an existing, popular, time-share internal mail program linking it to the new network file transfer technology, the text: 'Testing 1-2-3'. The second message sent was addressed to all ARPANET users explaining the possibilities of 'electronic mail' . Basic conventions given by him include - users' log-in name @ host computer name - Email´s popularity, usefulness and advantages as a communication tool are held responsible as one reason for the big success and rapid spread of internet.

Messy information environment and the need for finding it: in 1990, the first Internet search-engine that was able to find and retrieve computer files, was developed at McGill University , Montreal and baptized as ARCHIE. soon follow GOPHER from the University of Minnessota and its search engine VERONICA. All of this including Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) were developed as an effort to locate and identify relevant information amongst the myriad of new sources available. They have not survived until this days, but laid down the foundations for most of the current technology in searching and filtering information that is present in the current WWW search engines.

• Usenet/ lists/ newsgroups and other Unserious(?) stuff around.

4. The User experience, The web and the raise of the browser
by Andrea Botero

Until now the Internet experience remains very much limited to a certain group of initiated people, or brave explorers with time to devote for the learning of its code. In 1989 Tim Berners Lee working in Geneva for the CERN Institute presented his first concept for a "Mesh " latter to be called World wide Web, and try to convince the institute of the advantages of this global hypertext system (Vannebar Bush`s and Dough Engelbarts ideas (see Media Computer section) were basic for Berners-Lee's conception of what should the web be).

Berners Lee developed the idea of the HTML ( Hypertext Markup Language ) and develop the first browser (1991), a piece of software that will "read" the hidden marks of the HTML and will render a document with hyperlinks to other documents, that then could be called by a click of the mouse. This strategy made it easier and more intuitive to navigate through a big resource of information and latter will make it possible for more people to make available their own info through this channel. His software was released for free in an FTP server, it generated new ways of envisioning the internet and give access to new users. The first easy to use- easy to install browser, the MOSAIC, was developed in 1993 by Mark Andreesen from NCSA (National Center for SuperComputing Applications , Illinois). And the story goes on...

 

Origins

The idea of the Internet was first discussed by J.C.R. Licklider of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  in August 1962 when discussing his ‘Galactic Network’ concept. Licklider envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) then promptly opened a computer research program and appointed Licklider as its head.

The first paper on packet switching was written in July 1961 by Leonard Kleinrock of MIT and the first book on the subject ‘Communication Nets: Stochastic Message Flow and Delay’ in 1964. The next key step was to make computers talk together, and in 1965 Lawrence G. Roberts and Thomas Merrill connected two computers with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built.

1957

ARPA formed within the Ministry of Defence. Its mission was to apply state-of-the-art technology to US defence and to avoid being surprised by technological advances of the enemy following the launch of Sputnik 1 by Russia into the earth’s orbit.

1969

By the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET and the growth of the Internet had commenced. Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and work proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other network software. In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972, network users finally could begin to develop applications.

1972

The first large, and also very successful, demonstration of the ARPANET occurred at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). This was the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public. Also in 1972 electronic mail, or email as it is now commonly known, was introduced when the basic email message send and read software was written, motivated by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination mechanism.

Due to limitations in some of the programs already developed, Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf commenced development on a new version of the protocol to allow packet switching that could meet the needs of an open-architecture network environment where packets are sent on from one computer to another until they reach their destination. This protocol would eventually be called the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). While NCP tended to act like a device driver, the new protocol would be more like a communications protocol. It is due to their work in defining the ‘Internet Protocol’, Vint Cerf and Bob Khan are regarded as the ‘fathers of the Internet.

US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective was to develop communication protocols that would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks. This was called the ‘Internetting Project’ and the system of networks that emerged from the research was known as the ‘Internet’. The system of protocols which was developed over the course of this research effort became known as the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, after the two initial protocols developed: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).

1975

The ARPANET was transferred by DARPA to the Defense Communications Agency (now the Defense Information Systems Agency ) as an operational network.

1979

USENET established.

Early 1980’s

Researchers at Bell Labs developed a set of programs for Unix in the early 1980s that told a computer what to do when a batch of messages landed in its electronic hands. The programs could copy files between systems and send commands to the next computer in the chain. It was called the Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol, or UUCP.

1980

Decided that TCP/IP would be the preferred military protocols in the US.

1982

EUnet (European UNIX Network) is created by EUUG to provide email and USENET services. Original connections between the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and UK.

50 Newsgroups in existence.

1983

Transition of the ARPANET host protocol from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983. ARPANET was being used by a significant number of defence Research and Development departments and operational organizations.

1984

Domain Name System (DNS) introduced due to the growth of the host database. The host database had achieved a size where the storage of these hosts was no longer possible on one computer. The Domain Name System was developed allowing the database to be distributed on many individual servers.

Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET (mod.*).

British government announced the construction of JANET (Joint Academic Network) to serve British universities.

1985

Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities for daily computer communications. Email was being used broadly across several communities, often with different systems.

Symbolics.com is assigned on 15 March to become the first registered domain. Other firsts: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, ucla.edu (April); css.gov (June); mitre.org, .uk (July).

1986

US National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the development of the NSFNET which today provides a major backbone communication service for the Internet.

Exponential growth of the Internet commenced.

1987

Email link established between Germany and China using CSNET protocols, with the first message from China sent on 20 September.

1988

A National Research Council committee, chaired by Kleinrock and with Kahn as one of its members, produced a report commissioned by NSF titled ‘Towards a National Research Network’. This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and ushered in high-speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future information superhighway.

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed.

1989

RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeans) formed (by European service providers) to ensure the necessary administrative and technical coordination to allow the operation of the pan-European IP Network.

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Australia (AU), Germany (DE), Israel (IL), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Mexico (MX), Netherlands (NL), New Zealand (NZ), Puerto Rico (PR), United Kingdom (UK)

1990

ARPANET ceases to exist and is replaced by NSFNET.

The World comes online (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access.

Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in consultation with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research based in Switzerland, wrote the first GUI browser , and called it ‘WorldWideWeb’ > with Robert Cailliau. It ran on the NeXT computer. Tim is widely regarded as being the inventor of the World Wide Web, ‘WWW’ or ‘web’ for short.

The development of the browser meant that not only those within university or research departments could access documents on the Internet, but also documents could be accessed throughout the country, and also throughout the world, by anybody with access to a computer and a modem. The simple operation of a web browser also enabled users without any technical knowledge to access documents on the web.

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Argentina (AR), Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Brazil (BR), Chile (CL), Greece (GR), India (IN), Ireland (IE), Korea (KR), Spain (ES), Switzerland (CH)

1991

Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Association, Inc. formed by General Atomics (CERFnet), Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSInet), and UUNET Technologies, Inc. (AlterNet), after NSF lifts restrictions on the commercial use of the Net (March).

World Wide Web was released to the public.

1992

Internet Society (ISOC) formed.

Jean Armour Polly coins the term ‘surfing the Internet’.

1993

Businesses and media begin taking notice of the Internet, and the US White House and the United Nations come online.

Mark Andreesen of National Center for SuperComputing Applications, Illinois (NCSA) launched Mosaic X. It was the first easy to install, easy to use browser and, significantly, was backed by 24-hour customer support. It also enormously improved the graphic capabilities (by using 'in-line imaging' instead of separate boxes) and installed many of the features that are familiar through browsers such as Netscape’s Navigator (which is the successor company established by Andreesen to exploit Mosaic) and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer .

In December 1993 there were 623 web sites worldwide.

1994

National Research Council report commissioned by NSF, again chaired by Kleinrock (and again with Kahn as one of the members), entitled ‘Realizing The Information Future: The Internet and Beyond’ is released. This report was the document in which a blueprint for the evolution of the information superhighway was articulated and which has had a lasting affect on the way to think about its evolution. It anticipated the critical issues of intellectual property rights, ethics, pricing, education, architecture and regulation for the Internet.

Netscape developed and refined a new way to distribute software when it made the first copies of Netscape Navigator client software available for download over the Internet.

ARPANET/Internet celebrates 25th anniversary.

First international WWW conference held at CERN, Geneva , subsequently held every year in a different country.

1995

The US Federal Networking Council (FNC) passed a resolution defining the term Internet in 1995. This definition was developed in consultation with members of the Internet and intellectual property rights communities.

RESOLUTION: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term ‘Internet’. ‘Internet’ refers to the global information system that -- (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.

Internet access providers as CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy all commenced business.

1996

In January 1996 there were 100 000 web sites worldwide.

1997

By April 1997 there were more than one million web sites worldwide and by year-end it was estimated there were almost 100 million Internet users.

1998

By year-end 1998 there were almost 3.7 million web sites and over 150 million Internet users worldwide.

1999

By year-end 1999 there were over 9.5 million web sites worldwide.

2000 – today and the future

The growth in usage and size of the Internet has been growing exponentially since its inception, and in recent years, usage and size are skyrocketing. There are a myriad of statistics out there on how big the Internet really is. Below are some statistics that give an idea of how the Internet is growing and how big it is.

The latest figures available from Computer Industry Almanac (CIA) for year-end 1999 show that there are 259 million Internet users worldwide while NUA Internet Surveys estimated there were over 304 million Internet users as of March 2000 .

There will be over 765 million users worldwide, or 118 per 1000 people, by year-end 2005 <http://www.c-i-a.com/199911iu.htm> according to CIA. The US share of Internet users is expected to decline from around 43% of worldwide Internet users as of the end of 1999 to 27% of the Internet users at year-end 2005. Western Europe is growing faster than North America and will be a close second by 2005 with over 213 million Internet users while the Asia-Pacific region is growing even faster and will have nearly 190 million Internet users in 2005. The share of users in Central and South America, and Africa, are growing less quickly, particularly Africa.

In general, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to use the Internet. Studies have shown there is a close link between educational attainment and occupation and usage of the Internet. This also holds true for country comparison, the wealthier a country and the more educated its people, the higher the use of the Internet among its peoples.

Almost seven per cent of Internet users are German speakers,approximately 51 per cent are English speakers, and just over seven per cent are Japanese according to Global Reach  in their most recent figures as of March 2000 where they measure the number of users online for each language. Spanish, Chinese then French users follow.

Inktomi  <http://www.inktomi.com/>recently estimated that there are over one billion unique documents on the Web , over 6.4 million servers with almost 5 million web sites, and almost 87% of these web sites are in English

The number of domains registered worldwide was approaching 18 million in July 2000, and there were close to 9.5 million .com domain names, according to DomainStats.com . Austria comes tenth with approximately 107 000 domain names registered and Germany, with the third highest number of domains registered, has passed one million domain names registered. The USA has the most domain names registered followed by the United Kingdom.

Another method of measuring the growth of the Internet by counting the every host computer connected to the Internet. Twice a year the Internet Software Consortium counts host computers and in January 2000 they estimated there were 72.4 million hosts advertised in the DNS , 29.7 million in January 1998 and less than 2 million in 1993. Telecordia Technologies show a similar growth. At the end of June 2000 they estimated there were almost 80 million computer hosts, 70 million in January 2000 and 30.3 million in January 1998.

In Europe, by RIPE estimated the number of host computers to be 11.4 million in May 2000 , compared to 5.9 million in January 1998 and 44 000 in January 1991.

There has been a huge growth in the number of email mailboxes worldwide with Messaging Online estimating that there were 569 million email accounts at year-end 1999 , up 83% on the previous year, however only 5% of workers and 6% of households use email.

And as for Usenet Newsgroups, the estimates as to the number of these vary widely, but there are probably in excess of 200 000 Newsgroups today.

References

A number of sources are used for this article, all in English, but the most important ones are:

 

 

Advantages and Disadvntahes of Mp3

 

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF MP3:

PRO---MP3 is digital quality audio, delivered FREE over the Internet. Your station can save a chunk of change on shipping charges by using this system.

PRO---MP3 is easy to use and you won't have all those old Voicegal DAT's laying around your office.

CON---MP3 is not a good way to receive large amounts of audio. If you're changing out your liners or freshening everything before the book, we still recommend that you receive the audio on DAT or CD.

CON---while MP3 audio is, indeed, digital quality sound, it's not as good as a DAT or CD. There's not a big difference, but it's discernable if your ears are good. .

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--------MORE SOME ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES---------------

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Currently the costs associated with producing and distributing an album make it extremely difficult for a musical performer or band to break into the music industry. Rarely is a musician discovered without the struggle of sending tapes to producers.

The costs associated with making tapes and CD's and struggling to find places to send them to make it very difficult for aspiring bands. Using the MP3 technology, a music group can make a single tape and upload that into any computer. From there the file can be emailed to anyone or placed on a web site for anyone to access.

Rather than producing a CD and spending the costs relating to it, the band can email their songs directly to the record company. The band can easily create a web site, with his or her downloadable MP3's for anyone to download. In this way, it is much easier and cheaper to let people hear their music, without the costs associated with physical production and distribution of CD's or cassette tapes.

Musicians will have a much greater chance of being recognized by record companies and fans if they use the inexpensive method of MP3 files to distribute their music.

 

Created by Guilherme da Silveira