Internet’s history is exciting. It came in the form of computer networking at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. Then it went behind curtain. After seven years incubation period it again appeared in 1969 as Advanced Research Project Agency Network ( ARPANET ) of Defense Department of USA. Actually they were working on a complex project where the input of very high academic and technological content was required to be integrated. The work was being carried out at Stanford Research Institute , University of California at Santa Barbara and at Los Angeles and University of Utah. All the computer systems at these four places were connected through network and communication between them were established. Thus ARPANET created for first time.
The four major brake throughs of ARPANET were
- Interface message processor
- Network Topology
- Network Metrics and
- Architectural Design.
The main agencies worked together for the evolvement of ARPANET were DARPA , University of California at Los Angeles ( UCLA ) , M/s Bolt Beranek and Newmon , M/s Network Analysis Corporation. The first public demonstration of the network was organized during the International Computer Communication Conference. It was on September 1972. It was presented by the designer of ARPANET Mr. Bob Kahn. Initially the number of networked computers were only 15. Within thirty years it rose to 407.1 million !!!
Soon Defense Data Networking ( MILNET ) created the famous TCP/IP protocol that suites for ARPANET and other military networks. These Transmission Control Protocol ( TCP ) and Internet Protocol ( IP ) are now accepted universally. Later to transfer large data files there came the File Transfer Protocol ( FTP ) in 1971.Following this in 1972 electronic mail ( E-mail ) came into reality.
In 1990 the ARPANET converted into public network and opened to all citizens rather than defense needs. An Internet Society was chartered in 1992 which was the formal birth of Internet. Internet grew rapidly due to its wide applications by all people. So thoughts began to transfer files containing large amount of data to transfer from one system to another. Then realized that a world wide network of computers had to be established by which any computer anywhere in the world could be connected to any of the computer in the world. It has a similarity with spider web. Any point on spider web is connected to all other points through paths either by concentric rings or by spokes. So this was called as World Wide Web ( WWW ).