Most people do not realize that the Internet has had a history since the late 1960's. It first started out very different to what we are accustomed to today. ARPAnet was the very first name given to an early experiment by the US Department of Defense to connect computers via a wide-area-network. The use of email was first intended to only communicate via federal agencies and federally funded schools. Schools primarily got involved with the Internet and email and coined the BITNET organization. At this particular time in it's history, the Internet was not intended or used by the public.

As the technology advanced and the years moved forward, more and more facilities funded by the government began to join the Internet. In the late 1980's and early 1990's the public began to enter into the Internet. The early computer geeks were introduced to using a BBS, or a bulletin board system to communicate. Keep in mind, that the Internet during this time was mostly text based and had very little graphics. Most users had modems that had a very small bandwidth and a very poor baud rate. Special software, such as Archie and Gopher was used by the public to download files from FTP sites.

Moving to the present time, Internet users are now accustomed to using online search engines, rather than Archie. They utilize browsers that make finding information very easy. These browsers, also make use of Applets, which are provided by the company Java. Also, the Internet is in the process of acquiring a very strong backbone. This backbone will make it possible to tranfer massive amounts of data at lightning speeds.

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