History of the Internet

Hi all, or non-existent readers, this is my first entry about the exciting topic of the Internet! This blog was created as part of an online assignment...assigned by my lecturer, and I am to update it every week with a new! Exciting! Post of the week.

For my first entry, I am going to talk and reflect on the History of the Internet. Please bear with me as I attempt to summarise what I've learnt in class.

In the early 1950s to 1960s, most communication networks were very limited, as they only allowed communication between the stations on the network. When J.C.R. Licklider was appointed head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in October 1962, he identified a need for inter-networking, as the lack of it is attributing to the loss of many resources and time. Hence, he came up with the idea, which is the ARPANET.

The internet started out as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, otherwise known as the ARPANET. It's the world's first operational packet-switching network, and the predecessor of the global internet. The first ARPANET link was established on October 29th, 1969.

The Internet Protocol Suite, otherwise known as the TCP/IP, is a set of communication protocols used for the internet and other similar networks. It was invented in mid-late 1978, and was produced to unite the different network methods. It became the only approved protocol on the ARPANET, replacing the earlier NCP protocol, on the 1st January, 1983.

Afterwards, the ARPANET became widely used. While it used to only be restricted to noncommercial use, it expanded to be used by more educational institutions. The Military Network (MILNET), which used to be part of the ARPANET for unclassified United States Department of Defense Traffic. soon separated from ARPANET for security reasons.

In 1992, the Internet Society was founded. A few years later, the Mosaic Web Browser became the preferred interface for accessing the Internet, due to its property as a graphical browser, instead of the primarily text-based Gopher. However, it was later superseded by Netscape Navigator, which is also later superseded by other browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The World Wide Web, as we know today, was formed.