History of the Internet

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

The history of the Internet has its origin in information theory and the efforts of scientists
and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the
set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from
research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration,
particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.[1][2][3][4]

Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-
sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area
networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD)
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND
Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early
1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical
Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom.

ARPA awarded contracts in 1969 for the development of the ARPANET project, directed by
Robert Taylor and managed by Lawrence Roberts. ARPANET adopted the packet switching
technology proposed by Davies and Baran, underpinned by mathematical work in the early
1970s by Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA. The network was built by a team at Bolt, Beranek, and
Newman, which included Bob Kahn.

Several early packet-switched networks emerged in the 1970s which researched and provided
data networking. ARPA projects, international working groups and commercial initiatives led
to the development of various standards and protocols for internetworking, in which multiple
separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. Bob Kahn, now at DARPA,
and Vint Cerf, at Stanford University, published research in 1974 that evolved into the
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), two protocols of the
Internet protocol suite. The design included concepts from the French CYCLADES project
directed by Louis Pouzin.

In the early 1980s, national and international public data networks emerged based on the
X.25 protocol, the design of which included the work of Rémi Després. In the United States,
the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded national supercomputing centers at several
universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET
project, thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic
organizations in the United States. International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of
architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP internationally
on existing networks marked the beginnings of the Internet.[5][6][7] Commercial Internet

1/47
service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.[8] The
ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.[9] Limited private connections to parts of the
Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and
1990.[10] The optical backbone of the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the
last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic, as traffic transitioned
to optical networks managed by Sprint, MCI and AT&T.

Research at CERN in Switzerland by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in

1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information
system, accessible from any node on the network.[11] The dramatic expansion of capacity of
the Internet with the advent of wave division multiplexing (WDM) and the roll out of fiber
optic cables in the mid-1990s had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and
technology. This made possible the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail,
instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, video chat, and the
World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online
shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over
fiber-optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, and 800 Gbit/s by 2019.[12] The
Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was rapid in historical terms: it
only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications
networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated
information by 2007.[13] The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of
online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking services. However, the
future of the global network may be shaped by regional differences.[14]

Foundations

Precursors

Data communication

The concept of data communication – transmitting data between two different places
through an electromagnetic medium such as radio or an electric wire – pre-dates the
introduction of the first computers. Such communication systems were typically limited to
point to point communication between two end devices. Semaphore lines, telegraph systems
and telex machines can be considered early precursors of this kind of communication. The
telegraph in the late 19th century was the first fully digital communication system.

Information theory

Fundamental theoretical work on information theory was developed by Harry Nyquist and
Ralph Hartley in the 1920s. Information theory, as enunciated by Claude Shannon, in the
1948, provided a firm theoretical underpinning to understand the trade-offs between signal-
to-noise ratio, bandwidth, and error-free transmission in the presence of noise, in

2/47
telecommunications technology. This was one of the three key developments, along with
advances in transistor technology (specifically MOS transistors) and laser technology, that
made
[15] possible the rapid growth of telecommunication bandwidth over the next half-century.

Computers

Early computers in the 1940s had a central processing unit and user terminals. As the
technology evolved in the 1950s, new systems were devised to allow communication over
longer distances (for terminals) or with higher speed (for interconnection of local devices)
that were necessary for the mainframe computer model. These technologies made it possible
to exchange data (such as files) between remote computers. However, the point-to-point
communication model was limited, as it did not allow for direct communication between any
two arbitrary systems; a physical link was necessary. The technology was also considered
vulnerable for strategic and military use because there were no alternative paths for the
communication in case of a broken link.

Inspiration

The earliest computers were connected directly to terminals used by an individual user.
Christopher Strachey, who became Oxford University's first Professor of Computation, filed a
patent application for time-sharing in February 1959.[16][17] In June that year, he gave a
paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers" at the UNESCO Information Processing
Conference in Paris where he passed the concept on to J. C. R. Licklider.[18][19] Licklider, vice
president at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., went on to propose a computer network in his
January 1960 paper Man-Computer Symbiosis:[20]

A network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [...] the
functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and
retrieval and symbiotic functions suggested earlier in this paper

In August 1962, Licklider and Welden Clark published the paper "On-Line Man-Computer
Communication"[21] which was one of the first descriptions of a networked future.

In October 1962, Licklider was hired by Jack Ruina as director of the newly established
Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within DARPA, with a mandate to
interconnect the United States Department of Defense's main computers at Cheyenne
Mountain, the Pentagon, and SAC HQ. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to
further computer research. He began by writing memos in 1963 describing a distributed
network to the IPTO staff, whom he called "Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic
Computer Network".[22]

Although he left the IPTO in 1964, five years before the ARPANET went live, it was his vision
of universal networking that provided the impetus for one of his successors, Robert Taylor, to
initiate the ARPANET development. Licklider later returned to lead the IPTO in 1973 for two

3/47
years.[23]

Packet switching
Main article: Packet switching
The issue of connecting separate physical networks to form one logical network was the first
of many problems. Early networks used message switched systems that required rigid
routing structures prone to single point of failure. In the 1960s, Paul Baran of the RAND
Corporation produced a study of survivable networks for the U.S. military in the event of
nuclear war.[24] Information transmitted across Baran's network would be divided into what
he called "message blocks".[25] Independently, Donald Davies (National Physical Laboratory,
UK), proposed and put into practice a local area network based on what he called packet
switching, the term that would ultimately be adopted.

Packet switching is a rapid store and forward networking design that divides messages up
into arbitrary packets, with routing decisions made per-packet. It provides better bandwidth
utilization and response times than the traditional circuit-switching technology used for
telephony, particularly on resource-limited interconnection links.[26]

Networks that led to the Internet

NPL network

Main article: NPL network

Following discussions with J. C. R. Licklider in 1965, Donald Davies became interested in
data communications for computer networks.[27][28] Later that year, at the National Physical
Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Davies designed and proposed a national commercial
data network based on packet switching. The following year, he described the use of an
"Interface computer" to act as a router.[29] The proposal was not taken up nationally but he
produced a design for a local network to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of
packet switching using high-speed data transmission.[30][31] To deal with packet
permutations (due to dynamically updated route preferences) and to datagram losses
(unavoidable when fast sources send to a slow destinations), he assumed that "all users of the
network will provide themselves with some kind of error control",[32] thus inventing what
came to be known the end-to-end principle. He and his team were one of the first to use the
term 'protocol' in a data-commutation context in 1967.[33] The network's development was
described at a 1968 conference.[34][35]

By 1968,[36] Davies had begun building the Mark I packet-switched network to meet the
needs of the multidisciplinary laboratory and prove the technology under operational
conditions.[37][38] The NPL local network and the ARPANET were the first two networks in
the world to use packet switching,[39] and the NPL network was the first to use high-speed
links.[40] Many other packet switching networks built in the 1970s were similar "in nearly all

4/47
respects" to Davies' original 1965 design.[41] The NPL team carried out simulation work on
packet networks, including datagram networks, and research into internetworking and
computer network security.[42][43] The Mark II version which operated from 1973 used a
layered protocol architecture.[40] In 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were
attached,[44] and more were added until the network was replaced in 1986.

ARPANET
Main article: ARPANET
Robert Taylor was promoted to the head of the Information Processing Techniques Office
(IPTO) at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1966. He intended to
realize Licklider's ideas of an interconnected networking system.[45] As part of the IPTO's
role, three network terminals had been installed: one for System Development Corporation
in Santa Monica, one for Project Genie at University of California, Berkeley, and one for the
Compatible Time-Sharing System project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[46]
Taylor's identified need for networking became obvious from the waste of resources apparent
to him.

For each of these three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So if I was
talking online with someone at S.D.C. and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley or
M.I.T. about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other
terminal and get in touch with them.... I said, oh man, it's obvious what to do: If you have these
three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go where you
have interactive computing. That idea is the ARPAnet.[46]

Bringing in Larry Roberts from MIT in January 1967, he initiated a project to build such a
network. Roberts and Thomas Merrill had been researching computer time-sharing over
wide area networks (WANs).[47] Wide area networks emerged during the 1950s and became
established during the 1960s. At the first ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
in October 1967, Roberts presented a proposal for the "ARPA net", based on Wesley Clark's
proposal to use Interface Message Processors to create a message switching network.[48][49]
[50] At the conference, Roger Scantlebury presented Donald Davies' work on packet switching

for data communications and mentioned the work of Paul Baran at RAND. Roberts
incorporated the packet switching concepts into the ARPANET design and upgraded the
proposed communications speed from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps.[51][52][53][54] Leonard Kleinrock
subsequently developed the mathematical theory behind the performance of this technology
building on his earlier work on queueing theory.[55]

ARPA awarded the contract to build the network to Bolt Beranek & Newman, and the first
ARPANET link was established between the Network Measurement Center at the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
directed by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California at 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969.
[56]

5/47
 "We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI ...", Kleinrock ... said in an
interview: "We typed the L and we asked on the phone,

"Do you see the L?"

"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."
"Yes, we see the O."
Then we typed the G, and the system crashed ...

Yet a revolution had begun" ....[57]

By December 1969, a four-node network was connected by

adding the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at
the University of California, Santa Barbara followed by the
University of Utah Graphics Department.[58] In the same
year, Taylor helped fund ALOHAnet, a system designed by
professor Norman Abramson and others at the University
of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa that transmitted data by radio
between seven computers on four islands on Hawaii.[59]
35 Years of the Internet, 1969–
Steve Crocker formed a "Networking Working Group" in 2004. Stamp of Azerbaijan, 2004.
1969 at UCLA. ARPANET development was centered
around the Request for Comments (RFC) process, still used today for proposing and
distributing Internet Protocols and Systems. RFC 1, entitled "Host Software", was written by
Steve Crocker and published on April 7, 1969. The protocol for establishing links between
network sites in the ARPANET, the Network Control Protocol (NCP), was completed in 1970.
These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of
Resource Sharing.

Early international collaborations on the ARPANET were sparse. Connections were made in
1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR),[60] via a satellite link at the Tanum Earth
Station in Sweden, and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London,
which provided a gateway to British academic networks, forming the first international
resource sharing network.[61] By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213.[62] The
ARPANET became the technical core of what would become the Internet, and a primary tool
in developing the technologies used.

Merit Network

Main article: Merit Network

6/47
The Merit Network[63] was formed in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research
Information Triad to explore computer networking between three of Michigan's public
universities as a means to help the state's educational and economic development.[64] With
initial support from the State of Michigan and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the
packet-switched network was first demonstrated in December 1971 when an interactive host
to host connection was made between the IBM mainframe computer systems at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne State University in Detroit.[65] In October
1972 connections to the CDC mainframe at Michigan State University in East Lansing
completed the triad. Over the next several years in addition to host to host interactive
connections the network was enhanced to support terminal to host connections, host to host
batch connections (remote job submission, remote printing, batch file transfer), interactive
file transfer, gateways to the Tymnet and Telenet public data networks, X.25 host
attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks, Ethernet attached hosts, and eventually
TCP/IP and additional public universities in Michigan join the network.[65][66] All of this set
the stage for Merit's role in the NSFNET project starting in the mid-1980s.

CYCLADES

Main article: CYCLADES

The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French research network designed and
directed by Louis Pouzin.[67] He developed the network to explore alternatives to the early
ARPANET design and to support internetworking research. First demonstrated in 1973, it
was the first network to implement the end-to-end principle conceived by Donald Davies and
make the hosts responsible for reliable delivery of data, rather than the network itself, using
unreliable datagrams. Concepts implemented in this network influenced TCP/IP
architecture.[68][69][67]

X.25 and public data networks

Main articles: X.25 and public data network

1974 ABC interview with Arthur C. Clarke, in which he describes a future of ubiquitous
networked personal computers
Based on international research initiatives, particularly the contributions of Rémi Després,
packet switching network standards were developed by the International Telegraph and
Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T) in the form of X.25 and related standards.[70][71]
X.25 is built on the concept of virtual circuits emulating traditional telephone connections. In
1974, X.25 formed the basis for the SERCnet network between British academic and research
sites, which later became JANET, the United Kingdom's high-speed national research and
education network (NREN). The initial ITU Standard on X.25 was approved in March 1976.
[72] Existing networks, such as Telenet in the United States adopted X.25 as well as new

public data networks, such as DATAPAC in Canada and TRANSPAC in France.[70][71] X.25
was supplemented by the X.75 protocol which enabled internetworking.

7/47
The British Post Office, Western Union International and Tymnet collaborated to create the
first international packet switched network, referred to as the International Packet Switched
Service (IPSS), in 1978. This network grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong
Kong,
[73] and Australia by 1981. By the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking infrastructure.

Unlike ARPANET, X.25 was commonly available for business use. Telenet offered its
Telemail electronic mail service, which was also targeted to enterprise use rather than the
general email system of the ARPANET.

The first public dial-in networks used asynchronous TTY terminal protocols to reach a
concentrator operated in the public network. Some networks, such as Telenet and
CompuServe, used X.25 to multiplex the terminal sessions into their packet-switched
backbones, while others, such as Tymnet, used proprietary protocols. In 1979, CompuServe
became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal
computer users. The company broke new ground again in 1980 as the first to offer real-time
chat with its CB Simulator. Other major dial-in networks were America Online (AOL) and
Prodigy that also provided communications, content, and entertainment features.[74] Many
bulletin board system (BBS) networks also provided on-line access, such as FidoNet which
was popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers and amateur radio
operators.

UUCP and Usenet

Main articles: UUCP and Usenet

In 1979, two students at Duke University, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, originated the idea of
using Bourne shell scripts to transfer news and messages on a serial line UUCP connection
with nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following public release of the
software in 1980, the mesh of UUCP hosts forwarding on the Usenet news rapidly expanded.
UUCPnet, as it would later be named, also created gateways and links between FidoNet and
dial-up BBS hosts. UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, ability to
use existing leased lines, X.25 links or even ARPANET connections, and the lack of strict use
policies compared to later networks like CSNET and Bitnet. All connects were local. By 1981
the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984.[75]

Sublink Network, operating since 1987 and officially founded in Italy in 1989, based its
interconnectivity upon UUCP to redistribute mail and news groups messages throughout its
Italian nodes (about 100 at the time) owned both by private individuals and small
companies. Sublink Network represented possibly one of the first examples of the Internet
technology becoming progress through popular diffusion.

1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet

8/47
 Map of the TCP/IP test network
in February 1982

TCP/IP
Main article: Internet Protocol Suite
See also: Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol
With so many different network methods, something was
needed to unify them. Louis Pouzin initiated the
CYCLADES project in 1971, building on the work of
Donald Davies. In his work, Pouzin coined the term
catenet for concatenated network. An International
Networking Working Group formed in 1972; active
members included Vint Cerf from Stanford University,
Alex McKenzie from BBN, Donald Davies and Roger
Scantlebury from NPL, and Louis Pouzin and Hubert First Internet demonstration,
linking the ARPANET, PRNET,
Zimmermann from IRIA.[76][77][78] Later that year, Bob
and SATNET on November 22,
Kahn of DARPA recruited Vint Cerf to work with him on
1977
the problem. Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC outlined the
idea of Ethernet. By 1973, these groups had worked out a
fundamental reformulation, where the differences between network protocols were hidden
by using a common internetwork protocol, and instead of the network being responsible for
reliability, as in the ARPANET, the hosts became responsible.[1][3]

Kahn and Cerf published their ideas in May 1974,[79] which incorporated concepts
implemented by Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann in the CYCLADES network.[80] The
specification of the resulting protocol, the Transmission Control Program, was published as
RFC 675 by the Network Working Group in December 1974.[81] It contains the first attested
use of the term internet, as a shorthand for internetwork. This software was monolithic in
design using two simplex communication channels for each user session.

9/47
With the role of the network reduced to a core of functionality, it became possible to
exchange traffic with other networks independently from their detailed characteristics,
thereby solving the fundamental problems of internetworking. DARPA agreed to fund
development of prototype software. Testing began in 1975 through concurrent
implementations at Stanford, BBN and University College London (UCL).[2] After several
years of work, the first demonstration of a gateway between the Packet Radio network
(PRNET) in the SF Bay area and the ARPANET was conducted by the Stanford Research
Institute. On November 22, 1977, a three network demonstration was conducted including
the ARPANET, the SRI's Packet Radio Van on the Packet Radio Network and the Atlantic
Packet Satellite Network (SATNET) including a node at UCL.[82][83]

The software was redesigned as a modular protocol stack, using full-duplex channels;
between 1976 and 1977, Yogen Dalal and Robert Metcalfe among others, proposed separating
TCP's routing and transmission control functions into two discrete layers,[84][85] which led to
the splitting of the Transmission Control Program into the Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) and the IP protocol (IP) in version 3 in 1978.[85][86] Originally referred to as IP/TCP,
version 4 was described in IETF publication RFC 791 (September 1981), 792 and 793. It was
installed on SATNET in 1982 and the ARPANET in January 1983 after the DoD made it
standard for all military computer networking.[87][88] This resulted in a networking model
that became known informally as TCP/IP. It was also referred to as the Department of
Defense (DoD) model, DARPA model, or ARPANET model.[89] Cerf credits his graduate
students Yogen Dalal, Carl Sunshine, Judy Estrin, Richard Karp, and Gérard Le Lann with
important work on the design and testing.[90] DARPA sponsored or encouraged the
development of TCP/IP implementations for many operating systems.

Decomposition of the quad-dotted IPv4 address

representation to its binary value

From ARPANET to NSFNET

Main article: NSFNET

After the ARPANET had been up and running for several years, ARPA looked for another
agency to hand off the network to; ARPA's primary mission was funding cutting-edge
research and development, not running a communications utility. Eventually, in July 1975,
the network had been turned over to the Defense Communications Agency, also part of the
Department of Defense. In 1983, the U.S. military portion of the ARPANET was broken off as
a separate network, the MILNET. MILNET subsequently became the unclassified but
military-only NIPRNET, in parallel with the SECRET-level SIPRNET and JWICS for TOP

10/47
SECRET and above. NIPRNET does have
controlled security gateways to the public
Internet.

The networks based on the ARPANET were

government funded and therefore restricted
to noncommercial uses such as research;
unrelated commercial use was strictly
forbidden. This initially restricted
connections to military sites and
universities. During the 1980s, the
connections expanded to more educational
institutions, which began to form networks
of fiber optic lines. A growing number of
companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Hewlett-Packard, which were
participating in research projects or providing services to those who were. Data transmission
speeds depended upon the type of connection, the slowest being analog telephone lines and
the fastest using optical networking technology.

Several other branches of the U.S. government, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of
Energy (DOE) became heavily involved in Internet research and started development of a
successor to ARPANET. In the mid-1980s, all three of these branches developed the first
Wide Area Networks based on TCP/IP. NASA developed the NASA Science Network, NSF
developed CSNET and DOE evolved the Energy Sciences Network or ESNet.

NASA developed the TCP/IP based NASA

Science Network (NSN) in the mid-1980s,
connecting space scientists to data and
information stored anywhere in the world.
In 1989, the DECnet-based Space Physics
Analysis Network (SPAN) and the TCP/IP-
based NASA Science Network (NSN) were
brought together at NASA Ames Research
Center creating the first multiprotocol wide
area network called the NASA Science
T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992
Internet, or NSI. NSI was established to
provide a totally integrated communications
infrastructure to the NASA scientific community for the advancement of earth, space and life
sciences. As a high-speed, multiprotocol, international network, NSI provided connectivity to
over 20,000 scientists across all seven continents.

11/47
In 1981, NSF supported the development of the Computer Science Network (CSNET). CSNET
connected with ARPANET using TCP/IP, and ran TCP/IP over X.25, but it also supported
departments without sophisticated network connections, using automated dial-up mail
exchange. CSNET played a central role in popularizing the Internet outside the ARPANET.[91]

In 1986, the NSF created NSFNET, a 56 kbit/s backbone to support the NSF-sponsored
supercomputing centers. The NSFNET also provided support for the creation of regional
research and education networks in the United States, and for the connection of university
and college campus networks to the regional networks.[92] The use of NSFNET and the
regional networks was not limited to supercomputer users and the 56 kbit/s network quickly
became overloaded. NSFNET was upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s in 1988 under a cooperative
agreement with the Merit Network in partnership with IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan.
The existence of NSFNET and the creation of Federal Internet Exchanges (FIXes) allowed the
ARPANET to be decommissioned in 1990.

NSFNET was expanded and upgraded to dedicated fiber, optical lasers and optical amplifier
systems capable of delivering T3 start up speeds or 45 Mbit/s in 1991. However, the T3
transition by MCI took longer than expected, allowing Sprint to establish a coast-to-coast
long-distance commercial Internet service. When NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, its
optical networking backbones were handed off to several commercial Internet service
providers, including MCI, PSI Net and Sprint.[93] As a result, when the handoff was complete,
Sprint and its Washington DC Network Access Points began to carry Internet traffic, and by
1996, Sprint was the world's largest carrier of Internet traffic.[94]

The research and academic community continues to develop and use advanced networks
such as Internet2 in the United States and JANET in the United Kingdom.

Transition towards the Internet

The term "internet" was reflected in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol (RFC 675:
[95] Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974) as a short form of

internetworking, when the two terms were used interchangeably. In general, an internet was
a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the
ARPANET was connected to the newly formed NSFNET project in the late 1980s, the term
was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network.
[96]

Opening the Internet and the fiber optic backbone to corporate and consumers increased
demand for network capacity. The expense and delay of laying new fiber led providers to test
a fiber bandwidth expansion alternative that had been pioneered in the late 1970s by
Optelecom using “interactions between light and matter, such as lasers and optical devices
used for optical amplification and wave mixing”.[97] This technology became known as wave
division multiplexing (WDM). Bell Labs deployed a 4-channel WDM system in 1995.[98] To
develop a mass capacity (dense) WDM system, Optelecom and its former head of Light

12/47
Systems Research, David R. Huber formed a new venture, Ciena Corp., that deployed the
world's first dense WDM system on the Sprint fiber network in June 1996.[99] This was
referred to as the real start of optical networking.[100]

As interest in networking grew by needs of collaboration, exchange of data, and access of

remote computing resources, the Internet technologies spread throughout the rest of the
world. The hardware-agnostic approach in TCP/IP supported the use of existing network
infrastructure, such as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS) X.25 network, to
carry Internet traffic.

Many sites unable to link directly to the Internet created simple gateways for the transfer of
electronic mail, the most important application of the time. Sites with only intermittent
connections used UUCP or FidoNet and relied on the gateways between these networks and
the Internet. Some gateway services went beyond simple mail peering, such as allowing
access to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites via UUCP or mail.[101]

Finally, routing technologies were developed for the Internet to remove the remaining
centralized routing aspects. The Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) was replaced by a new
protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This provided a meshed topology for the
Internet and reduced the centric architecture which ARPANET had emphasized. In 1994,
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) was introduced to support better conservation of
address space which allowed use of route aggregation to decrease the size of routing tables.
[102]

Optical networking

To address the need for transmission capacity beyond that provided by radio, satellite and
analog copper telephone lines, engineers developed optical communications systems based
on fiber optic cables powered by lasers and optical amplifier techniques.

The concept of lasing arose from a 1917 paper by Albert Einstein, “On the Quantum Theory of
Radiation.” Einstein expanded upon a dialog with Max Planck on how atoms absorb and emit
light, part of a thought process that, with input from Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg
and others, gave rise to Quantum Mechanics. Specifically, in his quantum theory, Einstein
mathematically determined that light could be generated not only by spontaneous emission,
such as the light emitted by an incandescent light or the Sun, but also by stimulated
emission.

Forty years later, on November 13, 1957, Columbia University physics student Gordon Gould
first realized how to make light by stimulated emission through a process of optical
amplification. He coined the term LASER for this technology—Light Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation.[103] Using Gould's light amplification method (patented as
“Optically Pumped Laser Amplifier”) [1], Theodore Maiman made the first working laser on
May 16, 1960.[104]

13/47
Gould co-founded Optelecom, Inc. in 1973 to commercialize his inventions in optical fiber
telecommunications.[105] just as Corning Glass was producing the first commercial fiber optic
cable in small quantities. Optelecom configured its own fiber lasers and optical amplifiers
into the first commercial optical communication systems which it delivered to Chevron and
the US Army Missile Defense.[106] Three years later, GTE deployed the first optical telephone
system in 1977 in Long Beach, California.[107] By the early 1980s, optical networks powered
by lasers, LED and optical amplifier equipment supplied by Bell Labs, NTT and Perelli were
used by select universities and long-distance telephone providers.

TCP/IP goes global (1980s)

CERN and the European Internet

See also: Protocol Wars

In early 1982, NORSAR and Peter Kirstein's group at University College London (UCL) left
the ARPANET and began to use TCP/IP over SATNET.[108] UCL continued to provide access
between the ARPANET and academic networks in the UK, a role it had performed since 1973.
[61][109]

Between 1984 and 1988, CERN began installation and operation of TCP/IP to interconnect
its major internal computer systems, workstations, PCs, and an accelerator control system.
CERN continued to operate a limited self-developed system (CERNET) internally and several
incompatible (typically proprietary) network protocols externally. There was considerable
resistance in Europe towards more widespread use of TCP/IP, and the CERN TCP/IP
intranets remained isolated from the Internet until 1989, when a transatlantic connection to
Cornell University was established.[110][111][112]

The Computer Science Network (CSNET) began operation in 1981 to provide networking
connections to institutions that could not connect directly to ARPANET. Its first
international connection was to Israel in 1984. Soon after, connections were established to
computer science departments in Canada, France, and Germany.[91]

In 1988, the first international connections to NSFNET was established by France's INRIA,
[113][114]
and Piet Beertema at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the
Netherlands.[115] Daniel Karrenberg, from CWI, visited Ben Segal, CERN's TCP/IP
coordinator, looking for advice about the transition of EUnet, the European side of the UUCP
Usenet network (much of which ran over X.25 links), over to TCP/IP. The previous year,
Segal had met with Len Bosack from the then still small company Cisco about purchasing
some TCP/IP routers for CERN, and Segal was able to give Karrenberg advice and forward
him on to Cisco for the appropriate hardware. This expanded the European portion of the
Internet across the existing UUCP networks. The NORDUnet connection to NSFNET was in
place soon after, providing open access for university students in Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, and Sweden.[116] In January 1989, CERN opened its first external TCP/IP

14/47
connections.[117] This coincided with the creation of Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), initially a
group of IP network administrators who met regularly to carry out coordination work
together. Later, in 1992, RIPE was formally registered as a cooperative in Amsterdam.

The United Kingdom's national research and education network (NREN), JANET, began
operation in 1984 using the UK's Coloured Book protocols and connected to NSFNET in
1989. In 1991, JANET adopted Internet Protocol on the existing network.[118][119] The same
year, Dai Davies introduced Internet technology into the pan-European NREN, EuropaNet,
which was built on the X.25 protocol.[120][121] The European Academic and Research Network
(EARN) and RARE adopted IP around the same time, and the European Internet backbone
EBONE became operational in 1992.[110]

Nonetheless, for a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engineers, organizations and
nations were polarized over the issue of which standard, the OSI model or the Internet
protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.[77][122][123]

The link to the Pacific

South Korea set up a two-node domestic TCP/IP network in 1982, the System Development
Network (SDN), adding a third node the following year. SDN was connected to the rest of the
world in August 1983 using UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-Copy); connected to CSNET in December
1984;[91] and formally connected to the NSFNET in 1990.[124][125][126]

Japan, which had built the UUCP-based network JUNET in 1984, connected to CSNET,[91]
and later to NSFNET in 1989, marking the spread of the Internet to Asia.

In Australia, ad hoc networking to ARPA and in-between Australian universities formed in

the late 1980s, based on various technologies such as X.25, UUCPNet, and via a CSNET.[91]
These were limited in their connection to the global networks, due to the cost of making
individual international UUCP dial-up or X.25 connections. In 1989, Australian universities
joined the push towards using IP protocols to unify their networking infrastructures. AARNet
was formed in 1989 by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee and provided a dedicated
IP based network for Australia.

New Zealand adopted the UK's Coloured Book protocols as an interim standard and
established its first international IP connection to the U.S. in 1989.[127]

A "digital divide" emerges

Main articles: Global digital divide and Digital divide

While developed countries with technological infrastructures were joining the Internet,
developing countries began to experience a digital divide separating them from the Internet.
On an essentially continental basis, they built organizations for Internet resource
administration and to share operational experience, which enabled more transmission
facilities to be put into place.

15/47
Africa
At the beginning of the 1990s, African
countries relied upon X.25 IPSS and
2400 baud modem UUCP links for
international and internetwork
computer communications.

In August 1995, InfoMail Uganda,

Ltd., a privately held firm in Kampala
now known as InfoCom, and NSN
Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a
Network Services of Avon, Colorado, country's population
sold in 1997 and now known as Clear Source: International Telecommunication Union.[128]
Channel Satellite, established Africa's
first native TCP/IP high-speed satellite
Internet services. The data connection
was originally carried by a C-Band
RSCC Russian satellite which
connected InfoMail's Kampala offices
directly to NSN's MAE-West point of
presence using a private network from
NSN's leased ground station in New
Jersey. InfoCom's first satellite
connection was just 64 kbit/s, serving Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population

a Sun host computer and twelve US

Source: International Telecommunication Union.[129]
Robotics dial-up modems.

In 1996, a USAID funded project, the

Leland Initiative, started work on
developing full Internet connectivity
for the continent. Guinea,
Mozambique, Madagascar and
Rwanda gained satellite earth stations
in 1997, followed by Ivory Coast and
Benin in 1998.

Africa is building an Internet Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012

infrastructure. AFRINIC, as a percentage of a country's population

headquartered in Mauritius, manages Source: International Telecommunication Union.[130]

IP address allocation for the continent.
As do the other Internet regions, there is an operational forum, the Internet Community of
Operational Networking Specialists.[131]

16/47
There are many programs to provide high-performance transmission plant, and the western
and southern coasts have undersea optical cable. High-speed cables join North Africa and the
Horn of Africa to intercontinental cable systems. Undersea cable development is slower for
East Africa; the original joint effort between New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD) and the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) has broken off and may become two
efforts.[132]

Asia and Oceania

The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), headquartered in Australia, manages
IP address allocation for the continent. APNIC sponsors an operational forum, the Asia-
Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT).[133]

In South Korea, VDSL, a last mile technology developed in the 1990s by NextLevel
Communications, connected corporate and consumer copper-based telephone lines to the
Internet.[134]

The People's Republic of China established its first TCP/IP college network, Tsinghua
University's TUNET in 1991. The PRC went on to make its first global Internet connection in
1994, between the Beijing Electro-Spectrometer Collaboration and Stanford University's
Linear Accelerator Center. However, China went on to implement its own digital divide by
implementing a country-wide content filter.[135]

Japan hosted the annual meeting of the Internet Society, INET'92, in Kobe. Singapore
developed TECHNET in 1990, and Thailand gained a global Internet connection between
Chulalongkorn University and UUNET in 1992.[136]

Latin America
As with the other regions, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry
(LACNIC) manages the IP address space and other resources for its area. LACNIC,
headquartered in Uruguay, operates DNS root, reverse DNS, and other key services.

1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0

Main articles: History of the World Wide Web and Digital revolution
Initially, as with its predecessor networks, the system that would evolve into the Internet was
primarily for government and government body use. Although commercial use was
forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use was unclear and subjective. UUCPNet and
the X.25 IPSS had no such restrictions, which would eventually see the official barring of
UUCPNet use of ARPANET and NSFNET connections. (Some UUCP links still remained
connecting to these networks however, as administrators cast a blind eye to their operation.)

17/47
As a result, during the late 1980s, the
first Internet service provider (ISP)
companies were formed. Companies
like PSINet, UUNET, Netcom, and
Portal Software were formed to
provide service to the regional
research networks and provide
alternate network access, UUCP-based
email and Usenet News to the public.
The first commercial dialup ISP in the
United States was The World, which
opened in 1989.[138]

In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the

Scientific and Advanced-Technology Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019
Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1862(g), which Source: Internet Systems Consortium.[137]
allowed NSF to support access by the
research and education communities to computer networks which were not used exclusively
for research and education purposes, thus permitting NSFNET to interconnect with
commercial networks.[139][140] This caused controversy within the research and education
community, who were concerned commercial use of the network might lead to an Internet
that was less responsive to their needs, and within the community of commercial network
providers, who felt that government subsidies were giving an unfair advantage to some
organizations.[141]

By 1990, ARPANET's goals had been fulfilled and new networking technologies exceeded the
original scope and the project came to a close. New network service providers including
PSINet, Alternet, CERFNet, ANS CO+RE, and many others were offering network access to
commercial customers. NSFNET was no longer the de facto backbone and exchange point of
the Internet. The Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX), Metropolitan Area Exchanges
(MAEs), and later Network Access Points (NAPs) were becoming the primary
interconnections between many networks. The final restrictions on carrying commercial
traffic ended on April 30, 1995, when the National Science Foundation ended its sponsorship
of the NSFNET Backbone Service.[142][143] NSF provided initial support for the NAPs and
interim support to help the regional research and education networks transition to
commercial ISPs. NSF also sponsored the very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS)
which continued to provide support for the supercomputing centers and research and
education in the United States.[144]

An event held on 11 January 1994, The Superhighway Summit at UCLA's Royce Hall, was the
"first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and
academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information
Superhighway and its implications".[145]

18/47
Internet use in wider society
The invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, as an application on the
Internet,[146] brought many social and commercial uses to what was, at the time, a network of
networks for academic and research institutions.[147][148] The Web opened to the public in
1991and began to enter general use in 1993-4, when websites for everyday use started to
become available.[149]

During the first decade or so of the public Internet, the

immense changes it would eventually enable in the 2000s
were still nascent. In terms of providing context for this
period, mobile cellular devices ("smartphones" and other
cellular devices) which today provide near-universal
access, were used for business and not a routine
household item owned by parents and children worldwide.
Social media in the modern sense had yet to come into
existence, laptops were bulky and most households did not Stamped envelope of Russian Post
have computers. Data rates were slow and most people issued in 1993 with stamp and
lacked means to video or digitize video; media storage was graphics dedicated to first Russian
transitioning slowly from analog tape to digital optical underwater digital optic cable laid
discs (DVD and to an extent still, floppy disc to CD). in 1993 by Rostelecom from
Enabling technologies used from the early 2000s such as Kingisepp to Copenhagen
PHP, modern JavaScript and Java, technologies such as
AJAX, HTML 4 (and its emphasis on CSS), and various software frameworks, which enabled
and simplified speed of web development, largely awaited invention and their eventual
widespread adoption.

The Internet was widely used for mailing lists, emails, e-commerce and early popular online
shopping (Amazon and eBay for example), online forums and bulletin boards, and personal
websites and blogs, and use was growing rapidly, but by more modern standards the systems
used were static and lacked widespread social engagement. It awaited a number of events in
the early 2000s to change from a communications technology to gradually develop into a key
part of global society's infrastructure.

Typical design elements of these "Web 1.0" era websites included:[150] Static pages instead of
dynamic HTML;[151] content served from filesystems instead of relational databases; pages
built using Server Side Includes or CGI instead of a web application written in a dynamic
programming language; HTML 3.2-era structures such as frames and tables to create page
layouts; online guestbooks; overuse of GIF buttons and similar small graphics promoting
particular items;[152] and HTML forms sent via email. (Support for server side scripting was
rare on shared servers so the usual feedback mechanism was via email, using mailto forms
and their email program.[153]

19/47
During the period 1997 to 2001, the first speculative investment bubble related to the
Internet took place, in which "dot-com" companies (referring to the ".com" top level domain
used by businesses) were propelled to exceedingly high valuations as investors rapidly stoked
stock values, followed by a market crash; the first dot-com bubble. However this only
temporarily slowed enthusiasm and growth, which quickly recovered and continued to grow.

The history of the World Wide Web up to around 2004 was retrospectively named and
described by some as "Web 1.0".[154]

IPv6
The last available IPv4 address was assigned in January 2011.[155] IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses
which limits the address space to 232 addresses, i.e. 4294967296 addresses.[86] IPv4 is being
replaced by its successor, called "IPv6", which uses 128 bit addresses, providing 2128
addresses, i.e. 340282366920938463463374607431768211456,[156] a vastly increased
address space. The shift to IPv6 is expected to take many years, decades, or perhaps longer,
to complete, since there were four billion machines with IPv4 when the shift began.[155]

2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media

Main articles: Web 2.0 and History of the World Wide Web § Web 2.0
The rapid technical advances that would propel the Internet into its place as a social system
which have completely transformed the way humans interact with each other, took place
during a relatively short period of no more than five years, from around 2005 to 2010,
coinciding with the point in time in which IoT devices surpassed the number of humans alive
at some point in the late 2000s. They included:

The call to "Web 2.0" in 2004 (first suggested in 1999),

Accelerating adoption and commoditization among households of, and familiarity with,
the necessary hardware (such as computers).
Accelerating storage technology and data access speeds – hard drives emerged, took
over from far smaller, slower floppy discs, and grew from megabytes to gigabytes (and
by around 2010, terabytes), RAM from hundreds of kilobytes to gigabytes as typical
amounts on a system, and Ethernet, the enabling technology for TCP/IP, moved from
common speeds of kilobits to tens of megabits per second, to gigabits per second.
High speed Internet and wider coverage of data connections, at lower prices, allowing
larger traffic rates, more reliable simpler traffic, and traffic from more locations,
The public's accelerating perception of the potential of computers to create new means
and approaches to communication, the emergence of social media and websites such as
Twitter and Facebook to their later prominence, and global collaborations such as
Wikipedia (which existed before but gained prominence as a result),

20/47
 The mobile device revolution, particularly with smartphones and tablet computers
becoming widespread, which began to provide easy access to the Internet to much of
human society of all ages, in their daily lives, and allowed them to share, discuss, and
continually update, inquire, and respond.
Non-volatile RAM rapidly grew in size and reliability, and decreased in price, becoming
a commodity capable of enabling high levels of computing activity on these small
handheld devices as well as solid-state drives (SSD).
An emphasis on power efficient processor and device design, rather than purely high
processing power; one of the beneficiaries of this was ARM, a British company which
had focused since the 1980s on powerful but low cost simple microprocessors. ARM
architecture family rapidly gained dominance in the market for mobile and embedded
devices.

The term "Web 2.0" describes websites that emphasize user-generated content (including
user-to-user interaction), usability, and interoperability. It first appeared in a January 1999
article called "Fragmented Future" written by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic
information design, where she wrote:[157][158][159][160]

"The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls,
is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to
appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be
understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether
through which interactivity happens. It will [...] appear on your computer screen, [...] on
your TV set [...] your car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held game machines [...]
maybe even your microwave oven."

The term resurfaced during 2002–2004,[161][162][163][164] and gained prominence in late 2004
following presentations by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first Web 2.0 Conference.
In their opening remarks, John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the
"Web as Platform", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon
the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that "customers are building
your business for you".[165] They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the
form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be "harnessed" to create value.

Web 2.0 does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative
changes in the way Web pages are made and used. Web 2.0 describes an approach, in which
sites focus substantially upon allowing users to interact and collaborate with each other in a
social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in
contrast to Web sites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of
Web 2.0 include social networking services, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites,
hosted services, Web applications, and mashups.[166] Terry Flew, in his 3rd Edition of New
Media described what he believed to characterize the differences between Web 1.0 and Web
2.0:

21/47
"[The] move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to
participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing
and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging
(folksonomy)".[167]

The mobile revolution

Main articles: History of mobile phones, Mobile Web, and Responsive web design
The process of change that generally coincided with "Web 2.0" was itself greatly accelerated
and transformed only a short time later by the increasing growth in mobile devices. This
mobile revolution meant that computers in the form of smartphones became something
many people used, took with them everywhere, communicated with, used for photographs
and videos they instantly shared or to shop or seek information "on the move" – and used
socially, as opposed to items on a desk at home or just used for work.

Location-based services, services using location and other sensor information, and
crowdsourcing (frequently but not always location based), became common, with posts
tagged by location, or websites and services becoming location aware. Mobile-targeted
websites (such as "m.website.com") became common, designed especially for the new devices
used. Netbooks, ultrabooks, widespread 4G and Wi-Fi, and mobile chips capable or running
at nearly the power of desktops from not many years before on far lower power usage,
became enablers of this stage of Internet development, and the term "App" emerged (short
for "Application program" or "Program") as did the "App store".

This "mobile revolution" has allowed for people to have a nearly unlimited amount of
information at their fingertips. With the ability to access the internet from cell phones came a
change in the way we consume media. In fact, looking at media consumption statistics, over
half of media consumption between those aged 18 and 34 were using a smartphone.[168]

Networking in outer space

Main article: Interplanetary Internet
The first Internet link into low Earth orbit was established on January 22, 2010, when
astronaut T. J. Creamer posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account from the
International Space Station, marking the extension of the Internet into space.[169]
(Astronauts at the ISS had used email and Twitter before, but these messages had been
relayed to the ground through a NASA data link before being posted by a human proxy.) This
personal Web access, which NASA calls the Crew Support LAN, uses the space station's high-
speed Ku band microwave link. To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop
computer to control a desktop computer on Earth, and they can talk to their families and
friends on Earth using Voice over IP equipment.[170]

22/47
Communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-
point links through the Deep Space Network. Each such data link must be manually
scheduled and configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new
network protocol, Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) which automates this process, allows
networking of spaceborne transmission nodes, and takes the fact into account that spacecraft
can temporarily lose contact because they move behind the Moon or planets, or because
space weather disrupts the connection. Under such conditions, DTN retransmits data
packages instead of dropping them, as the standard TCP/IP Internet Protocol does. NASA
conducted the first field test of what it calls the "deep space internet" in November 2008.[171]
Testing of DTN-based communications between the International Space Station and Earth
(now termed Disruption-Tolerant Networking) has been ongoing since March 2009, and is
scheduled to continue until March 2014.[172]

This network technology is supposed to ultimately enable missions that involve multiple
spacecraft where reliable inter-vessel communication might take precedence over vessel-to-
Earth downlinks. According to a February 2011 statement by Google's Vint Cerf, the so-called
"Bundle protocols" have been uploaded to NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft (which is in
orbit around the Sun) and communication with Earth has been tested at a distance of
approximately 80 light seconds.[173]

Internet governance
Main article: Internet governance
As a globally distributed network of voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks, the
Internet operates without a central governing body. Each constituent network chooses the
technologies and protocols it deploys from the technical standards that are developed by the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).[174] However, successful interoperation of many
networks requires certain parameters that must be common throughout the network. For
managing such parameters, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) oversees the
allocation and assignment of various technical identifiers.[175] In addition, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) provides oversight and coordination
for the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the
Domain Name System.

NIC, InterNIC, IANA, and ICANN

The IANA function was originally performed by USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI),
and it delegated portions of this responsibility with respect to numeric network and
autonomous system identifiers to the Network Information Center (NIC) at Stanford
Research Institute (SRI International) in Menlo Park, California. ISI's Jonathan Postel
managed the IANA, served as RFC Editor and performed other key roles until his premature
death in 1998.[176]

23/47
As the early ARPANET grew, hosts were referred to by names, and a HOSTS.TXT file would
be distributed from SRI International to each host on the network. As the network grew, this
became cumbersome. A technical solution came in the form of the Domain Name System,
created by ISI's Paul Mockapetris in 1983.[177] The Defense Data Network—Network
Information Center (DDN-NIC) at SRI handled all registration services, including the top-
level domains (TLDs) of .mil, .gov, .edu, .org, .net, .com and .us, root nameserver
administration and Internet number assignments under a United States Department of
Defense contract.[175] In 1991, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded the
administration and maintenance of DDN-NIC (managed by SRI up until this point) to
Government Systems, Inc., who subcontracted it to the small private-sector Network
Solutions, Inc.[178][179]

The increasing cultural diversity of the Internet also posed administrative challenges for
centralized management of the IP addresses. In October 1992, the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) published RFC 1366,[180] which described the "growth of the Internet and its
increasing globalization" and set out the basis for an evolution of the IP registry process,
based on a regionally distributed registry model. This document stressed the need for a single
Internet number registry to exist in each geographical region of the world (which would be of
"continental dimensions"). Registries would be "unbiased and widely recognized by network
providers and subscribers" within their region.
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre
(RIPE NCC) was established as the first RIR in May 1992. The second RIR, the Asia Pacific
Network Information Centre (APNIC), was established in Tokyo in 1993, as a pilot project of
the Asia Pacific Networking Group.[181]

Since at this point in history most of the growth on the Internet was coming from non-
military sources, it was decided that the Department of Defense would no longer fund
registration services outside of the .mil TLD. In 1993 the U.S. National Science Foundation,
after a competitive bidding process in 1992, created the InterNIC to manage the allocations
of addresses and management of the address databases, and awarded the contract to three
organizations. Registration Services would be provided by Network Solutions; Directory and
Database Services would be provided by AT&T; and Information Services would be provided
by General Atomics.[182]

Over time, after consultation with the IANA, the IETF, RIPE NCC, APNIC, and the Federal
Networking Council (FNC), the decision was made to separate the management of domain
names from the management of IP numbers.[181] Following the examples of RIPE NCC and
APNIC, it was recommended that management of IP address space then administered by the
InterNIC should be under the control of those that use it, specifically the ISPs, end-user
organizations, corporate entities, universities, and individuals. As a result, the American
Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) was established as in December 1997, as an
independent, not-for-profit corporation by direction of the National Science Foundation and
became the third Regional Internet Registry.[183]

24/47
In 1998, both the IANA and remaining DNS-related InterNIC functions were reorganized
under the control of ICANN, a California non-profit corporation contracted by the United
States Department of Commerce to manage a number of Internet-related tasks. As these
tasks involved technical coordination for two principal Internet name spaces (DNS names
and IP addresses) created by the IETF, ICANN also signed a memorandum of understanding
with the IAB to define the technical work to be carried out by the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority.[184] The management of Internet address space remained with the regional
Internet registries, which collectively were defined as a supporting organization within the
ICANN structure.[185] ICANN provides central coordination for the DNS system, including
policy coordination for the split registry / registrar system, with competition among registry
service providers to serve each top-level-domain and multiple competing registrars offering
DNS services to end-users.

Internet Engineering Task Force

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the largest and most visible of several loosely
related ad-hoc groups that provide technical direction for the Internet, including the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet
Research Task Force (IRTF).

The IETF is a loosely self-organized group of international volunteers who contribute to the
engineering and evolution of Internet technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the
development of new Internet standard specifications. Much of the work of the IETF is
organized into Working Groups. Standardization efforts of the Working Groups are often
adopted by the Internet community, but the IETF does not control or patrol the Internet.[186]
[187]

The IETF grew out of quarterly meetings with U.S. government-funded researchers, starting
in January 1986. Non-government representatives were invited by the fourth IETF meeting
in October 1986. The concept of Working Groups was introduced at the fifth meeting in
February 1987. The seventh meeting in July 1987 was the first meeting with more than one
hundred attendees. In 1992, the Internet Society, a professional membership society, was
formed and IETF began to operate under it as an independent international standards body.
The first IETF meeting outside of the United States was held in Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, in July 1993. Today, the IETF meets three times per year and attendance has
been as high as ca. 2,000 participants. Typically one in three IETF meetings are held in
Europe or Asia. The number of non-US attendees is typically ca. 50%, even at meetings held
in the United States.[186]

The IETF is not a legal entity, has no governing board, no members, and no dues. The closest
status resembling membership is being on an IETF or Working Group mailing list. IETF
volunteers come from all over the world and from many different parts of the Internet
community. The IETF works closely with and under the supervision of the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG)[188] and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).[189] The

25/47
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG), peer
activities to the IETF and IESG under the general supervision of the IAB, focus on longer-
term research issues.[186][190]

Request for Comments

Request for Comments (RFCs) are the main documentation for the work of the IAB, IESG,
IETF, and IRTF. RFC 1, "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker at UCLA in April
1969, well before the IETF was created. Originally they were technical memos documenting
aspects of ARPANET development and were edited by Jon Postel, the first RFC Editor.[186]
[191]

RFCs cover a wide range of information from proposed standards, draft standards, full
standards, best practices, experimental protocols, history, and other informational topics.
[192]
RFCs can be written by individuals or informal groups of individuals, but many are the
product of a more formal Working Group. Drafts are submitted to the IESG either by
individuals or by the Working Group Chair. An RFC Editor, appointed by the IAB, separate
from IANA, and working in conjunction with the IESG, receives drafts from the IESG and
edits, formats, and publishes them. Once an RFC is published, it is never revised. If the
standard it describes changes or its information becomes obsolete, the revised standard or
updated information will be re-published as a new RFC that "obsoletes" the original.[186][191]

The Internet Society

The Internet Society (ISOC) is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992
"to assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all
people throughout the world". With offices near Washington, DC, USA, and in Geneva,
Switzerland, ISOC has a membership base comprising more than 80 organizational and more
than 50,000 individual members. Members also form "chapters" based on either common
geographical location or special interests. There are currently more than 90 chapters around
the world.[193]

ISOC provides financial and organizational support to and promotes the work of the
standards settings bodies for which it is the organizational home: the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering
Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). ISOC also promotes
understanding and appreciation of the Internet model of open, transparent processes and
consensus-based decision-making.[194]

Globalization and Internet governance in the 21st century

Since the 1990s, the Internet's governance and organization has been of global importance to
governments, commerce, civil society, and individuals. The organizations which held control
of certain technical aspects of the Internet were the successors of the old ARPANET oversight
and the current decision-makers in the day-to-day technical aspects of the network. While

26/47
recognized as the administrators of certain aspects of the Internet, their roles and their
decision-making authority are limited and subject to increasing international scrutiny and
increasing objections. These objections have led to the ICANN removing themselves from
relationships with first the University of Southern California in 2000,[195] and in September
2009, gaining autonomy from the US government by the ending of its longstanding
agreements, although some contractual obligations with the U.S. Department of Commerce
continued.[196][197][198] Finally, on October 1, 2016, ICANN ended its contract with the United
States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), allowing oversight to pass to the global Internet community.[199]

The IETF, with financial and organizational support from the Internet Society, continues to
serve as the Internet's ad-hoc standards body and issues Request for Comments.

In November 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, called for
an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be convened by United Nations Secretary General.
The IGF opened an ongoing, non-binding conversation among stakeholders representing
governments, the private sector, civil society, and the technical and academic communities
about the future of Internet governance. The first IGF meeting was held in
October/November 2006 with follow up meetings annually thereafter.[200] Since WSIS, the
term "Internet governance" has been broadened beyond narrow technical concerns to include
a wider range of Internet-related policy issues.[201][202]

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was becoming concerned about threats to the web's
future and in November 2009 at the IGF in Washington DC launched the World Wide Web
Foundation (WWWF) to campaign to make the web a safe and empowering tool for the good
of humanity with access to all.[203][204] In November 2019 at the IGF in Berlin, Berners-Lee
and the WWWF went on to launch the Contract for the Web, a campaign initiative to
persuade governments, companies and citizens to commit to nine principles to stop "misuse"
with the warning "If we don't act now - and act together - to prevent the web being misused
by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering" (its
potential for good).[205]

Politicization of the Internet

Due to its prominence and immediacy as an effective means of mass communication, the
Internet has also become more politicized as it has grown. This has led in turn, to discourses
and activities that would once have taken place in other ways, migrating to being mediated by
internet.

Examples include political activities such as public protest and canvassing of support and
votes, but also:

The spreading of ideas and opinions;

27/47
 Recruitment of followers, and "coming together" of members of the public, for ideas,
products, and causes;
Providing and widely distributing and sharing information that might be deemed
sensitive or relates to whistleblowing (and efforts by specific countries to prevent this
by censorship);
Criminal activity and terrorism (and resulting law enforcement use, together with its
facilitation by mass surveillance);
Politically motivated fake news.

Net neutrality
Main article: Net neutrality

The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of
the subject. You may improve this section , discuss the issue on the talk page, or
create a new section, as appropriate. (April 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template
message)

On April 23, 2014, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was reported to be
considering a new rule that would permit Internet service providers to offer content
providers a faster track to send content, thus reversing their earlier net neutrality position.
[206][207][208] A possible solution to net neutrality concerns may be municipal broadband,

according to Professor Susan Crawford, a legal and technology expert at Harvard Law School.
[209] On May 15, 2014, the FCC decided to consider two options regarding Internet services:

first, permit fast and slow broadband lanes, thereby compromising net neutrality; and
second, reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service, thereby preserving net
neutrality.[210][211] On November 10, 2014, President Obama recommended the FCC
reclassify broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service in order to preserve
net neutrality.[212][213][214] On January 16, 2015, Republicans presented legislation, in the
form of a U.S. Congress HR discussion draft bill, that makes concessions to net neutrality but
prohibits the FCC from accomplishing the goal or enacting any further regulation affecting
Internet service providers (ISPs).[215][216] On January 31, 2015, AP News reported that the
FCC will present the notion of applying ("with some caveats") Title II (common carrier) of
the Communications Act of 1934 to the internet in a vote expected on February 26, 2015.[217]
[218][219][220][221] Adoption of this notion would reclassify internet service from one of

information to one of telecommunications[222] and, according to Tom Wheeler, chairman of

the FCC, ensure net neutrality.[223][224] The FCC is expected to enforce net neutrality in its
vote, according to The New York Times.[225][226]

On February 26, 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of net neutrality by applying Title II (common
carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 of the Telecommunications act
of 1996 to the Internet.[227][228][229] The FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, commented, "This is

28/47
no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free
speech. They both stand for the same concept."[230]

On March 12, 2015, the FCC released the specific details of the net neutrality rules.[231][232]
[233] On April 13, 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new "
Net Neutrality"
regulations.[234][235]

On December 14, 2017, the FCC repealed their March 12, 2015 decision by a 3–2 vote
regarding net neutrality rules.[236]

Use and culture

Email and Usenet

E-mail has often been called the killer application of the Internet. It predates the Internet,
and was a crucial tool in creating it. Email started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a
time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the history is undocumented,
among the first systems to have such a facility were the System Development Corporation
(SDC) Q32 and the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) at MIT.[237]

The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of electronic
mail. An experimental inter-system transferred mail on the ARPANET shortly after its
creation.[238] In 1971 Ray Tomlinson created what was to become the standard Internet
electronic mail addressing format, using the @ sign to separate mailbox names from host
names.[239]

A number of protocols were developed to deliver messages among groups of time-sharing

computers over alternative transmission systems, such as UUCP and IBM's VNET email
system. Email could be passed this way between a number of networks, including ARPANET,
BITNET and NSFNET, as well as to hosts connected directly to other sites via UUCP. See the
history of SMTP protocol.

In addition, UUCP allowed the publication of text files that could be read by many others.
The News software developed by Steve Daniel and Tom Truscott in 1979 was used to
distribute news and bulletin board-like messages. This quickly grew into discussion groups,
known as newsgroups, on a wide range of topics. On ARPANET and NSFNET similar
discussion groups would form via mailing lists, discussing both technical issues and more
culturally focused topics (such as science fiction, discussed on the sflovers mailing list).

During the early years of the Internet, email and similar mechanisms were also fundamental
to allow people to access resources that were not available due to the absence of online
connectivity. UUCP was often used to distribute files using the 'alt.binary' groups. Also, FTP
e-mail gateways allowed people that lived outside the US and Europe to download files using

29/47
ftp commands written inside email messages. The file was encoded, broken in pieces and
sent by email; the receiver had to reassemble and decode it later, and it was the only way for
people living overseas to download items such as the earlier Linux versions using the slow
dial-up connections available at the time. After the popularization of the Web and the HTTP
protocol such tools were slowly abandoned.

File sharing

Main articles: File sharing, Peer-to-peer file sharing, and Timeline of file sharing
Resource or file sharing has been an important activity on computer networks from well
before the Internet was established and was supported in a variety of ways including bulletin
board systems (1978), Usenet (1980), Kermit (1981), and many others. The File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) for use on the Internet was standardized in 1985 and is still in use today.[240]
A variety of tools were developed to aid the use of FTP by helping users discover files they
might want to transfer, including the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) in 1991, Gopher
in 1991, Archie in 1991, Veronica in 1992, Jughead in 1993, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in
1988, and eventually the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1991 with Web directories and Web
search engines.

In 1999, Napster became the first peer-to-peer file sharing system.[241] Napster used a central
server for indexing and peer discovery, but the storage and transfer of files was decentralized.
A variety of peer-to-peer file sharing programs and services with different levels of
decentralization and anonymity followed, including: Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Freenet in
2000, FastTrack, Kazaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent in 2001, and Poisoned in 2003.[242]

All of these tools are general purpose and can be used to share a wide variety of content, but
sharing of music files, software, and later movies and videos are major uses.[243] And while
some of this sharing is legal, large portions are not. Lawsuits and other legal actions caused
Napster in 2001, eDonkey2000 in 2005, Kazaa in 2006, and Limewire in 2010 to shut down
or refocus their efforts.[244][245] The Pirate Bay, founded in Sweden in 2003, continues
despite a trial and appeal in 2009 and 2010 that resulted in jail terms and large fines for
several of its founders.[246] File sharing remains contentious and controversial with charges
of theft of intellectual property on the one hand and charges of censorship on the other.[247]
[248]

File Hosting Services

Main article: File hosting service

File hosting allowed for people to expand their computer's hard drives and "host" their files
on a server. Most file hosting services offer free storage, as well as larger storage amount for a
fee. These services have greatly expanded the internet for business and personal use.

30/47
Google Drive, launched on April 24, 2012, has become the most popular file hosting service.
Google Drive allows users to store, edit, and share files with themselves and other users. Not
only does this application allow for file editing, hosting, and sharing. It also acts as Google's
own free-to-access office programs, such as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets.
This application served as a useful tool for University professors and students, as well as
those who are in need of Cloud storage.[249][250]

Dropbox, released in June 2007 is a similar file hosting service that allows users to keep all of
their files in a folder on their computer, which is synced with Dropbox's servers. This differs
from Google Drive as it is not web-browser based. Now, Dropbox works to keep workers and
files in sync and efficient.[251]

Mega, having over 200 million users, is an encrypted storage and communication system
that offers users free and paid storage, with an emphasis on privacy.[252] Being three of the
largest file hosting services, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Mega all represent the core ideas
and values of these services.

Online piracy
Main article: Online piracy
The earliest form of online piracy began with a P2P (peer to peer) music sharing service
named Napster, launched in 1999. Sites like LimeWire, The Pirate Bay, and BitTorrent
allowed for anyone to engage in online piracy, sending ripples through the media industry.
With online piracy came a change in the media industry as a whole.[253]

Mobile phones and the Internet

See also: Mobile Web

Total global mobile data traffic reached 588 exabytes during 2020,[254] a 150-fold increase
from 3.86 exabytes/year in 2010.[255] Most recently, smartphones accounted for 95% of this
mobile data traffic with video accounting for 66% by type of data.[254] Mobile traffic travels
by radio frequency to the closest cell phone tower and its base station where the radio signal
is converted into an optical signal that is transmitted over high-capacity optical networking
systems that convey the information to data centers. The optical backbones enable much of
this traffic as well as a host of emerging mobile services including the Internet of things, 3-D
virtual reality, gaming and autonomous vehicles. The most popular mobile phone application
is texting, of which 2.1 trillion messages were logged in 2020.[256] The texting phenomenon
began on December 3, 1992, when Neil Papworth sent the first text message of “Merry
Christmas” over a commercial cell phone network to the CEO of Vodafone.[257]

The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator,
launched in Finland in 1996. The viability of Internet services access on mobile phones was
limited until prices came down from that model, and network providers started to develop

31/47
systems and services conveniently accessible on phones. NTT DoCoMo in Japan launched the
first mobile Internet service, i-mode, in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile
phone Internet services. In 2001, the mobile phone email system by Research in Motion
(now BlackBerry Limited) for their BlackBerry product was launched in America. To make
efficient use of the small screen and tiny keypad and one-handed operation typical of mobile
phones, a specific document and networking model was created for mobile devices, the
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Most mobile device Internet services operate using
WAP. The growth of mobile phone services was initially a primarily Asian phenomenon with
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all soon finding the majority of their Internet users accessing
resources by phone rather than by PC.[258] Developing countries followed, with India, South
Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, and Pakistan all reporting that the majority of their domestic
users accessed the Internet from a mobile phone rather than a PC. The European and North
American use of the Internet was influenced by a large installed base of personal computers,
and the growth of mobile phone Internet access was more gradual, but had reached national
penetration levels of 20–30% in most Western countries.[259] The cross-over occurred in
2008, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In
many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC
user.[260]

Growth in demand
Global Internet traffic continues to grow at a rapid rate, rising 23% from 2020 to 2021[261]
when the number of active Internet users reached 4.66 billion people, representing half of
the global population. Further demand for data, and the capacity to satisfy this demand, are
forecast to increase to 717 terabits per second in 2021.[262] This capacity stems from the
optical amplification and WDM systems that are the common basis of virtually every metro,
regional, national, international and submarine telecommunications networks.[263] These
optical networking systems have been installed throughout the 5 billion kilometers of fiber
optic lines deployed around the world.[264] Continued growth in traffic is expected for the
foreseeable future from a combination of new users, increased mobile phone adoption,
machine-to-machine connections, connected homes, 5G devices and the burgeoning
requirement for cloud and Internet services such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple Music and
YouTube.

Historiography
Further information: Protocol Wars § Historiography
There are nearly insurmountable problems in supplying a historiography of the Internet's
development. The process of digitization represents a twofold challenge both for
historiography in general and, in particular, for historical communication research.[265] A
sense of the difficulty in documenting early developments that led to the internet can be
gathered from the quote:

32/47
 "The Arpanet period is somewhat well documented because the corporation in charge – BBN –
left a physical record. Moving into the NSFNET era, it became an extraordinarily decentralized
process. The record exists in people's basements, in closets. ... So much of what happened was
done verbally and on the basis of individual trust."

— Doug Gale (2007)[266]

Notable works on the subject were published by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where
Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet (1996), Roy Rosenzweig, Wizards,
Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet (1998), and Janet
Abbate, Inventing the Internet (2000).

These histories of the Internet have since been characterized as “teleologies” or “Whig
history”; that is, they take the present to be the end point toward which history has been
unfolding based on a single cause:

In the case of Internet history, the epoch-making event is usually said to be the demonstration of
the 4-node ARPANET network in 1969. From that single happening the global Internet
developed.

In addition to these characteristics, historians have cited methodological problems arising in

their work:

“Internet history” ... tends to be too close to its sources. Many Internet pioneers are alive, active,
and eager to shape the histories that describe their accomplishments. Many museums and
historians are equally eager to interview the pioneers and to publicize their stories.

— Andrew L. Russell (2012)[269]

See also

References
1. ^ Jump up to: a b "The Computer History Museum, SRI International, and BBN
Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of First ARPANET Transmission, Precursor to
Today's Internet". SRI International. October 27, 2009. Archived from the original on
March 29, 2019. Retrieved September 25, 2017. “But the ARPANET itself had now
become an island, with no links to the other networks that had sprung up. By the early
1970s, researchers in France, the UK, and the U.S. began developing ways of
connecting networks to each other, a process known as internetworking.”

33/47
 2. ^ Jump up to: a b by Vinton Cerf, as told to Bernard Aboba (1993). "How the Internet
Came to Be". Archived from the original on September 26, 2017. Retrieved September
25, 2017. “We began doing concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN, and
University College London. So effort at developing the Internet protocols was
international from the beginning.”
3. ^ Jump up to: a b Hauben, Ronda (May 1, 2004). "The Internet: On its International
Origins and Collaborative Vision A Work In-Progress". Retrieved September 25, 2017.
4. ^ Kim, Byung-Keun (2005). Internationalising the Internet the Co-evolution of
Influence and Technology. Edward Elgar. pp. 51–55. ISBN 978-1845426750.
5. ^ "The Untold Internet". Internet Hall of Fame. October 19, 2015. Retrieved April 3,
2020. “many of the milestones that led to the development of the modern Internet are
already familiar to many of us: the genesis of the ARPANET, the implementation of
the standard network protocol TCP/IP, the growth of LANs (Large Area Networks),
the invention of DNS (the Domain Name System), and the adoption of American
legislation that funded U.S. Internet expansion—which helped fuel global network
access—to name just a few.”
6. ^ "Study into UK IPv4 and IPv6 allocations" (PDF). Reid Technical Facilities
Management LLP. 2014. “As the network continued to grow, the model of central co-
ordination by a contractor funded by the US government became unsustainable.
Organisations were using IP-based networking even if they were not directly
connected to the ARPAnet. They needed to get globally unique IP addresses. The
nature of the ARPAnet was also changing as it was no longer limited to organisations
working on ARPA-funded contracts. The US National Science Foundation set up a
national IP-based backbone network, NSFnet, so that its grant-holders could be
interconnected to supercomputer centres, universities and various national/regional
academic/research networks, including ARPAnet. That resulting network of networks
was the beginning of today's Internet.”
7. ^ "So, who really did invent the Internet?" Archived 3 September 2011 at the Wayback
Machine, Ian Peter, The Internet History Project, 2004. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
8. ^ Clarke, Roger. "Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia". Archived from the
original on February 9, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2014.
9. ^ Zakon, Robert (November 1997). RFC 2235. IETF. p. 8. doi:10.17487/RFC2235.
Retrieved December 2, 2020.
10. ^ "The First ISP". Indra.com. August 13, 1992. Archived from the original on March 5,
2016. Retrieved 2015-10-17.
11. ^ Couldry, Nick (2012). Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media
Practice. London: Polity Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780745639208.
12. ^ Nelson, Patrick (March 20, 2019). "Data center fiber to jump to 800 gigabits in
2019". Network World.

34/47
13. ^ Jindal, R. P. (2009). "From millibits to terabits per second and beyond - Over 60
years of innovation". 2009 2nd International Workshop on Electron Devices and
Semiconductor Technology: 1–6. doi:10.1109/EDST.2009.5166093. ISBN 978-1-4244-
3831-0. S2CID 25112828.
14. ^ "Computer Pioneers - Christopher Strachey". history.computer.org. Retrieved
January 23, 2020.
15. ^ F. J. Corbató, et al., The Compatible Time-Sharing System A Programmer's Guide
(MIT Press, 1963) ISBN 978-0-262-03008-3. "the first paper on time-shared
computers by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing
conference".
16. ^ Gillies & Cailliau 2000, p. 13
17. ^ J. C. R. Licklider (March 1960). "Man-Computer Symbiosis". IRE Transactions on
Human Factors in Electronics. HFE-1: 4–11. doi:10.1109/thfe2.1960.4503259.
Archived from the original on November 3, 2005. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
18. ^ J. C. R. Licklider and Welden Clark (August 1962). "On-Line Man-Computer
Communication" (PDF). AIEE-IRE '62 (Spring): 113–128. Archived from the original
(PDF) on October 31, 2014. Retrieved October 31, 2014.
19. ^ Licklider, J. C. R. (April 23, 1963). "Topics for Discussion at the Forthcoming
Meeting, Memorandum For: Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer
Network". Washington, D.C.: Advanced Research Projects Agency. Retrieved January
26, 2013.
20. ^ "J.C.R. Licklider and the Universal Network". The Internet. 2000. Archived from
the original on October 17, 2019. Retrieved February 16, 2010.
21. ^ Baran, Paul (May 27, 1960). Reliable Digital Communications Using Unreliable
Network Repeater Nodes (PDF) (Report). The RAND Corporation. p. 1. Retrieved July
25, 2012.
22. ^ "About Rand". Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
23. ^ Ruthfield, Scott (September 1995). "The Internet's History and Development From
Wartime Tool to the Fish-Cam". Crossroads. Vol. 2, no. 1. pp. 2–4.
doi:10.1145/332198.332202. Archived from the original on October 18, 2007.
Retrieved April 1, 2016.
24. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching".
Archived from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved September 5, 2017. “Almost
immediately after the 1965 meeting, Donald Davies conceived of the details of a store-
and-forward packet switching system”
25. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (May 1995). "The ARPANET & Computer Networks".
Archived from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved April 13, 2016.

35/47
26. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (May 1995). "The ARPANET & Computer Networks".
Archived from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved April 13, 2016. “Then in June
1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, "Proposal for a Digital Communication
Network" In which he coined the word packet,- a small sub part of the message the
user wants to send, and also introduced the concept of an "Interface computer" to sit
between the user equipment and the packet network.”
27. ^ K.G. Coffman & A.M. Odlyzco (May 22, 2002). Optical Fiber Telecommunications
IV-B: Systems and Impairments. Optics and Photonics (edited by I. Kaminow & T. Li).
Academic Press. pp. 1022 pages. ISBN 978-0123951731. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
28. ^ B. Steil, Council on Foreign Relations (2002). Technological Innovation and
Economic Performance. published by Princeton University Press 1 Jan 2002, 476
pages. ISBN 978-0691090917. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
29. ^ Naughton, John (September 24, 2015). A Brief History of the Future. Orion.
ISBN 978-1-4746-0277-8.
30. ^ Smith, Ed; Miller, Chris; Norton, Jim. "Packet Switching: The first steps on the road
to the information society". “Its development was described at a 1968 conference, two
years before similar progress on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, was
demonstrated”
31. ^ Scantlebury, R. A.; Wilkinson, P.T. (1974). "The National Physical Laboratory Data
Communications Network". Proceedings of the 2nd ICCC 74. pp. 223–228.
32. ^ C. Hempstead, W. Worthington, ed. (2005). Encyclopedia of 20th-Century
Technology. Routledge. ISBN 9781135455514.
33. ^ Ward, Mark (October 29, 2009). "Celebrating 40 years of the net". BBC News.
34. ^ "Donald Davies". internethalloffame.org; "Donald Davies". thocp.net. Archived
from the original on November 5, 2020. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
35. ^ Jump up to: a b Cambell-Kelly, Martin (1987). "Data Communications at the
National Physical Laboratory (1965-1975)". Annals of the History of Computing. 9
(3/4): 221–247. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1987.10023. S2CID 8172150.
36. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching"
(PDF). IEEE Invited Paper. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 31, 2018.
Retrieved September 10, 2017. “In nearly all respects, Davies' original proposal,
developed in late 1965, was similar to the actual networks being built today.”
37. ^ C. Hempstead; W. Worthington (2005). Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology.
Routledge. ISBN 9781135455514.
38. ^ Pelkey, James. "6.3 CYCLADES Network and Louis Pouzin 1971-1972".
Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications
1968-1988.
39. ^ Hafner & Lyon 1998, pp. 39–41
40. ^ Jump up to: a b Markoff, John (December 20, 1999). "An Internet Pioneer Ponders
the Next Revolution". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 4,
2005. Retrieved March 7, 2020.

36/47
41. ^ Roberts, Larry; Marrill, Tom (October 1966). Toward a Cooperative Network of
Time-Shared Computers. Fall AFIPS Conference. Archived from the original on April
1, 2002. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
42. ^ Press, Gil (January 2, 2015). "A Very Short History Of The Internet And The Web".
Forbes. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
“Roberts' proposal that all host computers would connect to one another directly ...
was not endorsed ... Wesley Clark ... suggested to Roberts that the network be
managed by identical small computers, each attached to a host computer. Accepting
the idea, Roberts named the small computers dedicated to network administration
'Interface Message Processors' (IMPs), which later evolved into today's routers.”
43. ^ "SRI Project 5890-1; Networking (Reports on Meetings).[1967]". Stanford
University. Archived from the original on February 2, 2020. Retrieved February 15,
2020. “W. Clark's message switching proposal (appended to Taylor's letter of April
24, 1967 to Engelbart)were reviewed.”
44. ^ Roberts, Lawrence (1967). "Multiple computer networks and intercomputer
communication" (PDF). Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer
Communications. pp. 3.1–3.6. doi:10.1145/800001.811680. S2CID 17409102. “Thus
the set of IMP's, plus the telephone lines and data sets would constitute a message
switching network”
45. ^ Press, Gil. "A Very Short History Of The Internet And The Web". Forbes. Retrieved
January 30, 2020.
46. ^ "Inductee Details – Donald Watts Davies". National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Archived from the original on September 6, 2017. Retrieved September 6, 2017.
47. ^ Cambell-Kelly, Martin (Autumn 2008). "Pioneer Profiles: Donald Davies".
Computer Resurrection (44). ISSN 0958-7403.
48. ^ Cade Metz, "Paul Baran, the link between nuclear war and the internet", Wired, 3
September 2012: "Baran was very conscious of people mistaken belief that the work he
did at RAND somehow led to the creation of the ARPAnet. It didn't, and he was very
honest about that." -- Vint Cerf
49. ^ Gillies & Cailliau 2000, p. 26
50. ^ Strickland, Jonathan (December 28, 2007). "How ARPANET Works".
HowStuffWorks. Archived from the original on January 12, 2008. Retrieved March 7,
2020.
51. ^ Gromov, Gregory (1995). "Roads and Crossroads of Internet History".
52. ^ Hafner & Lyon 1998, pp. 154–156
53. ^ Hafner & Lyon 1998, p. 220
54. ^ "NORSAR and the Internet". NORSAR. Archived from the original on June 7, 2009.
Retrieved June 5, 2009.
55. ^ Jump up to: a b Kirstein, P.T. (1999). "Early experiences with the Arpanet and
Internet in the United Kingdom" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 21
(1): 38–44. doi:10.1109/85.759368. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 1558618. Archived from
the original (PDF) on February 7, 2020.

37/47
56. ^ Grant, August E.; Meadows, Jennifer E. (2008). Communication Technology
Update and Fundamentals (11th ed.). Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. p. 289.
ISBN 978-0-240-81062-1.
57. ^ The Merit Network, Inc. is an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation governed
by Michigan's public universities. Merit receives administrative services under an
agreement with the University of Michigan.
58. ^ A Chronicle of Merit's Early History Archived February 7, 2009, at the Wayback
Machine, John Mulcahy, 1989, Merit Network, Ann Arbor, Michigan
59. ^ Jump up to: a b Merit Network Timeline: 1970–1979 Archived January 1, 2016, at the
Wayback Machine, Merit Network, Ann Arbor, Michigan
60. ^ Merit Network Timeline: 1980–1989 Archived January 1, 2016, at the Wayback
Machine, Merit Network, Ann Arbor, Michigan
61. ^ Jump up to: a b "The internet's fifth man". The Economist. November 30, 2013.
ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved April 22, 2020. “In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an
innovative data network that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Its
simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could connect not just
dozens of machines, but millions of them. It captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and
Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now power the
internet.”
62. ^ "A Technical History of CYCLADES". Technical Histories of the Internet & other
Network Protocols. Computer Science Department, University of Texas Austin.
Archived from the original on September 1, 2013.
63. ^ tsbedh. "History of X.25, CCITT Plenary Assemblies and Book Colors". Itu.int.
Retrieved June 5, 2009.
64. ^ "Events in British Telecomms History". Events in British TelecommsHistory.
Archived from the original on April 5, 2003. Retrieved November 25, 2005.
65. ^ Council, National Research; Sciences, Division on Engineering and Physical; Board,
Computer Science and Telecommunications; Applications, Commission on Physical
Sciences, Mathematics, and; Committee, NII 2000 Steering (February 5, 1998). The
Unpredictable Certainty: White Papers. National Academies Press. ISBN 978-0-309-
17414-5.
66. ^ Jump up to: a b Andrew L. Russell (July 30, 2013). "OSI: The Internet That Wasn't".
IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 50, no. 8.
67. ^ Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"
(PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648.
doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. “The authors wish to thank a
number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international
network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H.
Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the
fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation
and destruction of associations.”

38/47
68. ^ "The internet's fifth man". Economist. December 13, 2013. Retrieved September 11,
2017. “In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked
locations in France, Italy and Britain. Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to
a network that could connect not just dozens of machines, but millions of them. It
captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design
in the protocols that now power the internet.”
69. ^ Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal, Carl Sunshine, (December 1974), RFC 675, Specification of
Internet Transmission Control Protocol
70. ^ Ogg, Erica (November 8, 2007). "'Internet van' helped drive evolution of the Web".
CNET. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
71. ^ Panzaris, Georgios (2008). Machines and romances: the technical and narrative
construction of networked computing as a general-purpose platform, 1960-1995.
Stanford University. p. 128. “Despite the misgivings of Xerox Corporation (which
intended to make PUP the basis of a proprietary commercial networking product),
researchers at Xerox PARC, including ARPANET pioneers Robert Metcalfe and Yogen
Dalal, shared the basic contours of their research with colleagues at TCP and Internet
working group meetings in 1976 and 1977, suggesting the possible benefits of
separating TCPs routing and transmission control functions into two discrete layers.”
72. ^ Jump up to: a b Pelkey, James L. (2007). "Yogen Dalal". Entrepreneurial Capitalism
and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications, 1968-1988. Archived from
the original on September 5, 2019. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
73. ^ "TCP/IP Internet Protocol". www.livinginternet.com. Archived from the original on
July 26, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2020.
74. ^ David Roessner; Barry Bozeman; Irwin Feller; Christopher Hill; Nils Newman
(1997). "The Role of NSF's Support of Engineering in Enabling Technological
Innovation". Archived from the original on December 19, 2008. Retrieved May 28,
2009.
75. ^ “Internet Traffic Exchange: Developments and Policy”, OECD Digital Economy
Papers, No. 34, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/236767263531
76. ^ "Sprint Boosts Fiber-Optic Network Capacity 1600 Percent" (Press release). Kansas
City, MO: Ciena Corporation. June 11, 1996. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
77. ^ Cerf, V.; Dalal, Y.; Sunshine, C. (1974). "RFC 675 – Specification of internet
transmission control program". Tools.ietf.org. doi:10.17487/RFC0675. Retrieved May
28, 2009.
78. ^ Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer Networks. Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-
394248-4.
79. ^ Saleh, Bahaa EA; Teich, Malvin Carl (2019). Fundamentals of Photonics. John
Wiley and Son. pp. Preface xxii.
80. ^ Winzer, Peter J.; Neilson, David T.; Andrew R., Chraplyvy (September 3, 2018).
"Fiber-optic transmission and networking: the previous 20 and the next 20 years".
Optics Express. 26 (18): 24190–24239. doi:10.1364/OE.26.024190. PMID 30184909.
S2CID 52168806.

39/47
81. ^ Winzer, Peter J.; Neilson, David T.; Chraplyvy, Andrew R. (September 3, 2018).
"Fiber-optic transmission and networking: the previous 20 and the next 20 years".
Optics Express. 26 (18): 24190–24239. doi:10.1364/OE.26.024190. PMID 30184909.
S2CID 52168806.
82. ^ Cvijetic, Milorad and Djordjevic, Ivan B. “Advanced Optical Communication Systems
and Networks”. Artech House. January 1, 2013
83. ^ "Internet Access Provider Lists". Archived from the original on January 12, 2002.
Retrieved May 10, 2012.
84. ^ Postel, Jon (November 1995). "RFC 1871 – CIDR and Classful Routing".
Tools.ietf.org. doi:10.17487/RFC1871. Retrieved May 28, 2009.
85. ^ Taylor, Nick (2000). Laser. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 212.
86. ^ Garwin, Laura and Tim Lincoln. “The first laser: Charles H. Townes” from A Century
of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World. University of
Chicago Press. 2003
87. ^ Bertolotti, Mario (2015). Masers and Lasers: An Historical Approach (2nd ed.).
Chicago: CRC Press. p. 151.
88. ^ Taylor, Nick (2000). Laser. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 225–226.
89. ^ Kangovi, Sachidananda. Peering Carrier Ethernet Networks. 2017. p46
90. ^ Hauben, Ronda (2004). "The Internet: On its International Origins and
Collaborative Vision". Amateur Computerist. 12 (2). Retrieved May 29, 2009.
91. ^ "Oral-History:Silvia Wilbur". ETHW. January 26, 2021. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
92. ^ Jump up to: a b Fluckiger, Francois (February 2000). "The European Researchers'
Network" (PDF). La Recherche (328). Archived from the original (PDF) on September
29, 2018. Retrieved February 20, 2020.
93. ^ "The Internet—From Modest Beginnings". NSF website. Archived from the original
on October 7, 2016. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
94. ^ "The path to digital literacy and network culture in France (1980s to 1990s)". The
Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories. Taylor & Francis. 2017. pp. 84–
89. ISBN 978-1317607656.
95. ^ Andrianarisoa, Menjanirina (March 2, 2012). "A brief history of the internet".
96. ^ Lehtisalo, Kaarina (2005). The history of NORDUnet: twenty-five years of
networking cooperation in the noridic countries (PDF). NORDUnet. ISBN 978-87-
990712-0-3. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 2,
2020.
97. ^ "FLAGSHIP". Central Computing Department Newsletter (12). January 1991.
Archived from the original on February 13, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2020.
98. ^ "FLAGSHIP". Central Computing Department Newsletter (16). September 1991.
Archived from the original on February 13, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2020.
99. ^ Russell, Andrew L. "Rough Consensus and Running Code' and the Internet-OSI
Standards War" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

40/47
100. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice (April 26, 2010). A History of International
Research Networking: The People who Made it Happen. John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
101. ^ Shrum, Wesley; Benson, Keith; Bijker, Wiebe; Brunnstein, Klaus (December 14,
2007). Past, Present and Future of Research in the Information Society. Springer
Science & Business Media. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-387-47650-6.
102. ^ "History of University of Waikato: University of Waikato". www.waikato.ac.nz.
Archived from the original on August 1, 2020. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
103. ^ "Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012", Dynamic Report,
ITU ITC EYE, International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved on 29 June 2013.
104. ^ "Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012", Dynamic Report,
ITU ITC EYE, International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved on 29 June 2013.
105. ^ "ICONS webpage". Icons.afrinic.net. Archived from the original on May 9, 2007.
Retrieved May 28, 2009.
106. ^ "Nepad, Eassy partnership ends in divorce". South African Financial Times.
Archived from the original on April 23, 2012.
107. ^ "APRICOT webpage". Apricot.net. May 4, 2009. Retrieved May 28, 2009.
108. ^ "A brief history of the Internet in China". China celebrates 10 years of being
connected to the Internet. Retrieved December 25, 2005.
109. ^ "Internet History in Asia". 16th APAN Meetings/Advanced Network Conference in
Busan. Archived from the original on February 1, 2006. Retrieved December 25,
2005.
110. ^ "Internet host count history". Internet Systems Consortium. Archived from the
original on May 18, 2012. Retrieved May 16, 2012.
111. ^ OGC-00-33R Department of Commerce: Relationship with the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (PDF). Government Accountability Office. July 7,
2000. p. 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 15, 2009. Retrieved June 5,
2009.
112. ^ Even after the appropriations act was amended in 1992 to give NSF more flexibility
with regard to commercial traffic, NSF never felt that it could entirely do away with its
Acceptable Use Policy and its restrictions on commercial traffic, see the response to
Recommendation 5 in NSF's response to the Inspector General's review (an April 19,
1993 memo from Frederick Bernthal, Acting Director, to Linda Sundro, Inspector
General, that is included at the end of Review of NSFNET, Office of the Inspector
General, National Science Foundation, March 23, 1993)
113. ^ Management of NSFNET, a transcript of the March 12, 1992 hearing before the
Subcommittee on Science of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session, Hon. Rick
Boucher, subcommittee chairman, presiding
114. ^ "Retiring the NSFNET Backbone Service: Chronicling the End of an Era" Archived
January 1, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Susan R. Harris, PhD, and Elise Gerich,
ConneXions, Vol. 10, No. 4, April 1996

41/47
115. ^ NSF Solicitation 93-52 Archived March 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine – Network
Access Point Manager, Routing Arbiter, Regional Network Providers, and Very High
Speed Backbone Network Services Provider for NSFNET and the NREN(SM) Program,
May 6, 1993
116. ^ "UCLA Center for Communication Policy". Digitalcenter.org. Archived from the
original on May 26, 2009. Retrieved May 28, 2009.
117. ^ Tobin, James (June 12, 2012). Great Projects: The Epic Story of the Building of
America, from the Taming of the Mississippi to the Invention of the Internet. Simon
and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-1476-6.
118. ^ In, Lee (June 30, 2012). Electronic Commerce Management for Business Activities
and Global Enterprises: Competitive Advantages: Competitive Advantages. IGI
Global. ISBN 978-1-4666-1801-5.
119. ^ Misiroglu, Gina (March 26, 2015). American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of
Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US History: An
Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US
History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-47729-7.
120. ^ Couldry, Nick (2012). Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media
Practice. London: Polity Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780745639208.
121. ^ Viswanathan, Ganesh; Dutt Mathur, Punit; Yammiyavar, Pradeep (March 2010).
From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and beyond: Reviewing usability heuristic criteria taking
music sites as case studies. IndiaHCI Conference. Mumbai. Retrieved February 20,
2015.
122. ^ "Web 1.0 Revisited – Too many stupid buttons". Complexify.com. Archived February
16, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
123. ^ Jurgenson, Nathan; Ritzer, George (February 2, 2012), Ritzer, George (ed.), "The
Internet, Web 2.0, and Beyond", The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology, John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 626–648, doi:10.1002/9781444347388.ch33,
ISBN 9781444347388
124. ^ Jump up to: a b "State of IPv6 Deployment 2017". Archived from the original on
April 6, 2018.
125. ^ Graham, Paul (November 2005). "Web 2.0". Retrieved August 2, 2006. “I first
heard the phrase 'Web 2.0' in the name of the Web 2.0 conference in 2004.”
126. ^ O'Reilly, Tim (September 30, 2005). "What Is Web 2.0". O'Reilly Network.
Retrieved August 6, 2006.
127. ^ Strickland, Jonathan (December 28, 2007). "How Web 2.0 Works".
computer.howstuffworks.com. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
128. ^ DiNucci, Darcy (1999). "Fragmented Future" (PDF). Print. 53 (4): 32.
129. ^ Idehen, Kingsley. 2003. RSS: INJAN (It's not just about news). Blog. Blog Data
Space. August 21 OpenLinkSW.com
130. ^ Idehen, Kingsley. 2003. Jeff Bezos Comments about Web Services. Blog. Blog Data
Space. September 25. OpenLinkSW.com
131. ^ Knorr, Eric. 2003. The year of Web services. CIO, December 15.

42/47
132. ^ "John Robb's Weblog". Jrobb.mindplex.org. Archived from the original on
December 5, 2003. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
133. ^ O'Reilly, Tim, and John Battelle. 2004. Opening Welcome: State of the Internet
Industry. In San Francisco, California, October 5.
134. ^ "Web 2.0: Compact Definition". Scholar.googleusercontent.com. October 1, 2005.
Archived from the original on March 12, 2021. Retrieved June 15, 2013.
135. ^ Flew, Terry (2008). New Media: An Introduction (3rd ed.). Melbourne: Oxford
University Press. p. 19.
136. ^ "Twitter post". January 22, 2010. Archived from the original on November 8, 2013.
Retrieved 2013-03-10.
137. ^ NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out Into Space. NASA media advisory M10-012,
January 22, 2010. Archived
138. ^ NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet. NASA media release 08-298,
November 18, 2008 Archived
139. ^ "Disruption Tolerant Networking for Space Operations (DTN). July 31, 2012".
Archived from the original on July 29, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
140. ^ "Cerf: 2011 will be proving point for 'InterPlanetary Internet'". Network World
interview with Vint Cerf. February 18, 2011. Archived from the original on May 24,
2012. Retrieved April 23, 2012.
141. ^ "Internet Architecture". IAB Architectural Principles of the Internet. Retrieved April
10, 2012.
142. ^ Jump up to: a b "DDN NIC". IAB Recommended Policy on Distributing Internet
Identifier Assignment. Retrieved December 26, 2005.
143. ^ Internet Hall of Fame
144. ^ Elizabeth Feinler, IEEE Annals [3B2-9] man2011030074.3d 29/7/011 11:54 Page 74
145. ^ "GSI-Network Solutions". TRANSITION OF NIC SERVICES. Retrieved December
26, 2005.
146. ^ "Thomas v. NSI, Civ. No. 97-2412 (TFH), Sec. I.A. (DCDC April 6, 1998)".
Lw.bna.com. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008. Retrieved May 28,
2009.
147. ^ "RFC 1366". Guidelines for Management of IP Address Space. Retrieved April 10,
2012.
148. ^ Jump up to: a b "Development of the Regional Internet Registry System". Cisco.
Archived from the original on January 1, 2016. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
149. ^ "NIS Manager Award Announced". NSF Network information services awards.
Archived from the original on May 24, 2005. Retrieved December 25, 2005.
150. ^ "RFC 2860". Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Technical Work of the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Retrieved December 26, 2005.
151. ^ "ICANN Bylaws". Retrieved April 10, 2012.
152. ^ "A Mission Statement for the IETF", H. Alvestrand, Internet Society, BCP 95 and
RFC 3935, October 2004
153. ^ "An IESG charter", H. Alvestrand, RFC 3710, Internet Society, February 2004

43/47
154. ^ "Charter of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)", B. Carpenter, BCP 39 and RFC
2850, Internet Society, May 2000
155. ^ "IAB Thoughts on the Role of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)", S. Floyd, V.
Paxson, A. Falk (eds), RFC 4440, Internet Society, March 2006
156. ^ Jump up to: a b "The RFC Series and RFC Editor", L. Daigle, RFC 4844, Internet
Society, July 2007
157. ^ "Not All RFCs are Standards", C. Huitema, J. Postel, S. Crocker, RFC 1796, Internet
Society, April 1995
158. ^ Internet Society (ISOC) – ISOC's Standards Activities Archived December 13, 2011, at
the Wayback Machine
159. ^ USC/ICANN Transition Agreement
160. ^ Rhoads, Christopher (October 2, 2009). "U.S. Eases Grip Over Web Body: Move
Addresses Criticisms as Internet Usage Becomes More Global". The Wall Street
Journal.
161. ^ Rabkin, Jeremy; Eisenach, Jeffrey (October 2, 2009). "The U.S. Abandons the
Internet: Multilateral governance of the domain name system risks censorship and
repression". The Wall Street Journal.
162. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet
Governance. MIT Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
163. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet
Governance. MIT Press. pp. 79–80. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
164. ^ DeNardis, Laura, The Emerging Field of Internet Governance (September 17, 2010).
Yale Information Society Project Working Paper Series.
165. ^ "Warning sounded on web's future". September 15, 2008. Archived from the
original on September 16, 2008. Retrieved November 26, 2008 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
166. ^ Staff, Ars (November 17, 2009). "Tim Berners-Lee launches "WWW Foundation" at
IGF 2009". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on April 16, 2011. Retrieved
November 25, 2019.
167. ^ CNA Staff (November 25, 2019). "Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee launches plan to
stop Internet abuse". Archived from the original on November 25, 2019. Retrieved
November 25, 2019.
168. ^ Crawford, Susan (April 28, 2014). "The Wire Next Time". The New York Times.
Retrieved April 28, 2014.
169. ^ Sepulveda, Ambassador Daniel A. (January 21, 2015). "The World Is Watching Our
Net Neutrality Debate, So Let's Get It Right". Wired. Retrieved January 20, 2015.
170. ^ Staff (January 16, 2015). "H. R. _ 114th Congress, 1st Session [Discussion Draft] –
To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to ensure Internet openness..." (PDF). U. S.
Congress. Retrieved January 20, 2015.
171. ^ Lohr, Steve (February 2, 2015). "F.C.C. Chief Wants to Override State Laws Curbing
Community Net Services". The New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
172. ^ Flaherty, Anne (January 31, 2015). "Just whose Internet is it? New federal rules
may answer that". Associated Press. Retrieved January 31, 2015.

44/47
173. ^ Fung, Brian (January 2, 2015). "Get ready: The FCC says it will vote on net
neutrality in February". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 2, 2015.
174. ^ Staff (January 2, 2015). "FCC to vote next month on net neutrality rules".
Associated Press. Retrieved January 2, 2015.
175. ^ Wheeler, Tom (February 4, 2015). "FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We
Will Ensure Net Neutrality". Wired. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
176. ^ Staff (February 26, 2015). "FCC Adopts Strong, Sustainable Rules To Protect The
Open Internet" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved February 26,
2015.
177. ^ Flaherty, Anne (February 25, 2015). "FACT CHECK: Talking heads skew 'net
neutrality' debate". Associated Press. Retrieved February 26, 2015.
178. ^ Liebelson, Dana (February 26, 2015). "Net Neutrality Prevails in Historic FCC
Vote". The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
179. ^ Sommer, Jeff (March 12, 2015). "What the Net Neutrality Rules Say". The New York
Times. Retrieved March 13, 2015.
180. ^ FCC Staff (March 12, 2015). "Federal Communications Commission – FCC 15–24 –
In the Matter of Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet – GN Docket No. 14-28 –
Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order" (PDF). Federal
Communications Commission. Retrieved March 13, 2015.
181. ^ Reisinger, Don (April 13, 2015). "Net neutrality rules get published – let the lawsuits
begin". CNET. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
182. ^ Federal Communications Commission (April 13, 2015). "Protecting and Promoting
the Open Internet – A Rule by the Federal Communications Commission on
04/13/2015". Federal Register. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
183. ^ Neumann, Peter G. (March 20, 1999). "The Risks Digest". Great Moments in E-mail
History. 20 (25). Retrieved April 27, 2006.
184. ^ "The First Network Email". Archived from the original on May 6, 2006. Retrieved
December 23, 2005.
185. ^ Kenneth P. Birman (March 25, 2005). Reliable Distributed Systems: Technologies,
Web Services, and Applications. Springer-Verlag New York Incorporated. p. 532.
ISBN 9780387215099. Retrieved January 20, 2012.
186. ^ Menta, Richard (July 20, 2001). "Napster Clones Crush Napster. Take 6 out of the
Top 10 Downloads on CNet". MP3 Newswire. Archived from the original on March 4,
2016. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
187. ^ Movie File-Sharing Booming: Study Archived February 17, 2012, at the Wayback
Machine, Solutions Research Group, Toronto, 24 January 2006
188. ^ Menta, Richard (December 9, 1999). "RIAA Sues Music Startup Napster for $20
Billion". MP3 Newswire. Archived from the original on June 27, 2017. Retrieved
March 30, 2012.
189. ^ "EFF: What Peer-to-Peer Developers Need to Know about Copyright Law".
W2.eff.org. Archived from the original on January 15, 2012. Retrieved January 20,
2012.

45/47
190. ^ Kobie, Nicole (November 26, 2010). "Pirate Bay trio lose appeal against jail
sentences". pcpro.co.uk. PCPRO. Archived from the original on April 21, 2014.
Retrieved November 26, 2010.
191. ^
192. ^ Nolledo, Michael. "What is Google Drive? A guide to navigating Google's file
storage service and collaboration tools". Business Insider. Retrieved November 16,
2020.
193. ^ "About". www.dropbox.com. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
194. ^ "About - MEGA". mega.nz. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
195. ^ Jump up to: a b Mobile Data Traffic Outlook. Ericsson
196. ^ Statista “Global Mobile Traffic per year from 2010-2020
197. ^ CTIA 2020 Annual Survey
198. ^ Eveleth, Rose (December 5, 2012). "The first text message sent twenty years ago
was 'Merry Christmas". Smithsonian Magazine.
199. ^ GSMA. "ANALYSIS: Mobile internet usage challenges in Asia — awareness, literacy
and local content.” June 2015 p 8–9
https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/150709-asia-local-content-final.pdf
200. ^ Susmita Dasgupta; Somik V. Lall; David Wheeler (2001). Policy Reform, Economic
Growth, and the Digital Divide: An Econometric Analysis. World Bank Publications.
pp. 1–3. GGKEY:YLS5GEUEBAR. Retrieved February 11, 2013.
201. ^ Hillebrand, Friedhelm (2002). Hillebrand, Friedhelm (ed.). GSM and UMTS, The
Creation of Global Mobile Communications. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-
84322-2.
202. ^ Mauldin, Alan (September 7, 2021). "Global Internet Traffic and Capacity Return to
Regularly Scheduled Programming". TeleGeography.
203. ^ Cisco 2021 VNI Forecast p2
204. ^ Grobe, Klaus; Eiselt, Michael (2013). Wavelength Division Multiplexing: A Practical
Engineering Guide. John T Wiley & Sons. p. 2.
205. ^ Corning Glass Products/Optical Fiber
206. ^ Christoph Classen, Susanne Kinnebrock & Maria Löblich (Eds.): Towards Web
History: Sources, Methods, and Challenges in the Digital Age Archived May 9, 2013, at
the Wayback Machine. In Historical Social Research 37 (4): 97–188. 2012.
207. ^ Barras, Colin (August 23, 2007). "An Internet Pioneer Ponders the Next
Revolution". Illuminating the net's Dark Ages. Retrieved February 26, 2008.
208. ^ Campbell-Kelly, Martin; Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D. (2005). "The History of the
Internet: The Missing Narratives". SSRN. doi:10.2139/ssrn.867087. SSRN 867087.
209. ^ Campbell-Kelly, Martin; Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D (2013). "The History of the
Internet: The Missing Narratives". Journal of Information Technology. 28 (1): 18–33.
doi:10.1057/jit.2013.4. ISSN 0268-3962. S2CID 41013.
210. ^ Russell, Andrew (2012). Histories of Networking vs. the History of the Internet
(PDF). 2012 SIGCIS Workshop. p. 6.

46/47
Sources

Abbate, Janet (1999). Inventing the Internet. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
ISBN 978-0262011723.
Cerf, Vinton (1993). How the Internet Came to Be.
Gillies, James; Cailliau, Robert (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the
World Wide Web. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-286207-3.
Hafner, Katie; Lyon, Matthew (1998) [1996]. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The
Origins Of The Internet. New York: Touchstone. ISBN 978-0-684-83267-8.
Rosenzweig, Roy (1998). "Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the
History of the Internet" (PDF). The American Historical Review. 103 (5): 1530–1552.
doi:10.2307/2649970. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 2649970.
Russell, Andrew L. (2014). Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology,
and Networks. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-91661-5.
Ryan, Johnny (2010). A history of the Internet and the digital future. London,
England: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1861897770.
Thomas Greene; Larry James Landweber; George Strawn (2003). "A Brief History of
NSF and the Internet". National Science Foundation.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Internet history.

Hobbes' Internet Timeline 12
History of the Internet, a short animated film (2009)
History of the Internet at Curlie

Telecommunications

47/47
Internet - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

Contributors to Wikimedia projects

This article is about the worldwide computer network. For the global system of pages
accessed via URLs, see World Wide Web. For other uses, see Internet (disambiguation).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this
article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged
and removed.

Find sources: "Internet" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2021) (Learn

how and when to remove this template message)

The Internet (or internet)[a] is a global system of interconnected computer networks that
uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)[b] to communicate between networks and devices. It
is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and
government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless,
and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information
resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the
World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research
commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-
sharing of computers.[2] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a
backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to
enable resource sharing. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new
backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to
worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger
of many networks.[3] The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s
marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet,[4] and generated a sustained
exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were
connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s,
commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of
modern life.

Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail, and
newspapers, are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new
services such as email, Internet telephone, Internet television, online music, digital
newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are
adapting to website technology or being reshaped into blogging, web feeds, and online news
aggregators. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction
through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping

1/51
has grown exponentially for major retailers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, as it
enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even
sell goods and services entirely online. Business-to-business and financial services on the
Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.

The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or

policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies.[5] The
overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces on the Internet, the Internet
Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a
maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity
of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated
international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.
[6]
[7] In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven Wonders.

Terminology
Further information: Capitalization of Internet and internetworking
The word internetted was used as early as 1849, meaning
interconnected or interwoven.[8] The word Internet was
used in 1974 as the shorthand form of Internetwork.[9]
Today, the term Internet most commonly refers to the
global system of interconnected computer networks,
though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks.
[10]

When it came into common use, most publications treated

the word Internet as a capitalized proper noun; this has
The Internet Messenger by Buky
become less common.[10] This reflects the tendency in Schwartz, located in Holon, Israel
English to capitalize new terms and move to lowercase as
they become familiar.[10][11] The word is sometimes still
capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks, though many
publications, including the AP Stylebook since 2016, recommend the lowercase form in
every case.[10][11] In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary found that, based on a study of
around 2.5 billion printed and online sources, "Internet" was capitalized in 54% of cases.[12]

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably; it is common to
speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to view web pages. However, the
World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services,[13] a
collection of documents (web pages) and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks and
URLs.[14]

History

2/51
Main articles: History of the Internet and History of the World Wide Web
In the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States
Department of Defense (DoD) funded research into time-sharing of computers.[15][16][17] J. C.
R. Licklider proposed the idea of a universal network while leading the Information
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA. Research into packet switching, one of the
fundamental Internet technologies, started in the work of Paul Baran in the early 1960s and,
independently, Donald Davies in 1965.[2][18] After the Symposium on Operating Systems
Principles in 1967, packet switching from the proposed NPL network was incorporated into
the design for the ARPANET and other resource sharing networks such as the Merit Network
and CYCLADES, which were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[19]

ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between
the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and SRI International (SRI) on 29 October
1969.[20] The third site was at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the
University of Utah. In a sign of future growth, 15 sites were connected to the young
ARPANET by the end of 1971.[21][22] These early years were documented in the 1972 film
Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.[23] Thereafter, the ARPANET
gradually developed into a decentralized communications network, connecting remote
centers and military bases in the United States.[24]

Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare. Connections were made in
1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR),[25] and to University College London which
provided a gateway to British academic networks forming the first international resource
sharing network.[26] ARPA projects, international working groups and commercial initiatives
led to the development of various protocols and standards by which multiple separate
networks could become a single network or "a network of networks".[27] In 1974, Bob Kahn at
DARPA and Vint Cerf at Stanford University published their ideas for "A Protocol for Packet
Network Intercommunication".[28] They used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork
in RFC 675,[9] and later RFCs repeated this use.[29] Kahn and Cerf credit Louis Pouzin with
important influences on the resulting TCP/IP design.[30] National PTTs and commercial
providers developed the X.25 standard and deployed it on public data networks.[31]

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation
(NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite
(TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected
networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science
Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States
for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[32] The
NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New
Zealand and Japan in 1988–89.[33][34][35][36] Although other network protocols such as UUCP
and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time, this marked the

3/51
beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network. Commercial Internet service
providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.[37] The ARPANET was
decommissioned in 1990.[38]

Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical

networking created new economic opportunities for
commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in
its core and for delivering services to the public. In mid-
1989, MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections
to the Internet, delivering email and public access
products to the half million users of the Internet.[39] Just
months later, on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992
alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the
networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In March 1990, the
first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between
Cornell University and CERN, allowing much more robust communications than were
capable with satellites.[40] Six months later Tim Berners-Lee would begin writing
WorldWideWeb, the first web browser, after two years of lobbying CERN management. By
Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9,[41] the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the
first Web browser (which was also an HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups
and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web
server,[42] and the first Web pages that described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial
Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial
networks CERFnet and Alternet. Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial
institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994.[43]
In 1996, OP Financial Group, also a cooperative bank, became the second online bank in
the world and the first in Europe.[44] By 1995, the Internet was fully commercialized in the
U.S. when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the
Internet to carry commercial traffic.[45]

Users 2005 2010 2017 2019 2021

World population[47] 6.5 billion 6.9 billion 7.4 billion 7.75 billion 7.9 billion

Worldwide 16% 30% 48% 53.6% 63%

In developing world 8% 21% 41.3% 47% 57%

In developed world 51% 67% 81% 86.6% 90%

Worldwide Internet users[46]

4/51
As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth, the volume
of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS
transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18 months. This growth, formalized
as Edholm's law, was catalyzed by advances in MOS technology, laser light wave systems,
and noise performance.[48]

Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including the
rise of near instant communication by email, instant messaging, telephony (Voice over
Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web[49] with
its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online shopping sites.
Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic
networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by
ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and
social networking services.[50] During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the
public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of
Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%.[51] This growth is often attributed to
the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the
non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability
and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.[52] As of
31 March 2011, the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30.2% of
world population).[53] It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the
information flowing through two-way telecommunication. By 2000 this figure had grown to
51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the
Internet.[54]

Governance
Main article: Internet governance
The Internet is a global network that comprises many
voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It
operates without a central governing body. The technical
underpinning and standardization of the core protocols
(IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely
affiliated international participants that anyone may
associate with by contributing technical expertise. To
maintain interoperability, the principal name spaces of the
Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for ICANN headquarters in the Playa
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is Vista neighborhood of Los
governed by an international board of directors drawn Angeles, California, United States

from across the Internet technical, business, academic,

and other non-commercial communities. ICANN coordinates the assignment of unique

5/51
identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, IP addresses, application port
numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters. Globally unified name
spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet. This role of ICANN
distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet.[55]

Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world. The African
Network Information Center (AfriNIC) for Africa, the American Registry for Internet Numbers
(ARIN) for North America, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) for Asia and
the Pacific region, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC)
for Latin America and the Caribbean region, and the Réseaux IP Européens – Network
Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) for Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia were
delegated to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries, such
as Internet service providers, from a designated pool of addresses set aside for each region.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the United

States Department of Commerce, had final approval over changes to the DNS root zone until
the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016.[56][57][58][59] The Internet Society (ISOC)
was founded in 1992 with a mission to "assure the open development, evolution and use of
the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world".[60] Its members include
individuals (anyone may join) as well as corporations, organizations, governments, and
universities. Among other activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of
less formally organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet,
including: the IETF, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group
(IESG), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG).
On 16 November 2005, the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information
Society in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related
issues.

Infrastructure
See also: List of countries by number of Internet users and List of countries by Internet
connection speeds
The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists
of its hardware components and a system of software
layers that control various aspects of the architecture. As
with any computer network, the Internet physically
consists of routers, media (such as cabling and radio
links), repeaters, modems etc. However, as an example of
internetworking, many of the network nodes are not
necessarily internet equipment per se, the internet packets 2007 map showing submarine
are carried by other full-fledged networking protocols with fiberoptic telecommunication
cables around the world

6/51
the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard, running across heterogeneous
hardware, with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers.

Service tiers

Internet service providers (ISPs) establish the worldwide

connectivity between individual networks at various levels
of scope. End-users who only access the Internet when
needed to perform a function or obtain information,
represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy. At the top of
the routing hierarchy are the tier 1 networks, large
telecommunication companies that exchange traffic
Packet routing across the Internet
directly with each other via very high speed fibre optic
involves several tiers of Internet
cables and governed by peering agreements. Tier 2 and
service providers.
lower-level networks buy Internet transit from other
providers to reach at least some parties on the global
Internet, though they may also engage in peering. An ISP may use a single upstream
provider for connectivity, or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load
balancing. Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to
multiple ISPs. Large organizations, such as academic institutions, large enterprises, and
governments, may perform the same function as ISPs, engaging in peering and purchasing
transit on behalf of their internal networks. Research networks tend to interconnect with large
subnetworks such as GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2, and the UK's national research and
education network, JANET.

Access

Common methods of Internet access by users include dial-up with a computer modem via
telephone circuits, broadband over coaxial cable, fiber optics or copper wires, Wi-Fi, satellite,
and cellular telephone technology (e.g. 3G, 4G). The Internet may often be accessed from
computers in libraries and Internet cafes. Internet access points exist in many public places
such as airport halls and coffee shops. Various terms are used, such as public Internet kiosk,
public access terminal, and Web payphone. Many hotels also have public terminals that are
usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usages, such as ticket
booking, bank deposit, or online payment. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to the Internet via
local computer networks. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where users
need to bring their own wireless devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be
free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based.

Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi services that
cover large areas are available in many cities, such as New York, London, Vienna, Toronto,
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh, where the Internet can then be
accessed from places such as a park bench.[61] Experiments have also been conducted with

7/51
proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over
cellular networks, and fixed wireless services. Modern smartphones can also access the
Internet through the cellular carrier network. For Web browsing, these devices provide
applications such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and a wide variety of other Internet
software may be installed from app-stores. Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices
exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016.[62]

Mobile communication

World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development

Global Report 2017/2018

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that,

by the end of 2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to
the Internet, up from 34% in 2012.[63] Mobile Internet connectivity
has played an important role in expanding access in recent years
especially in Asia and the Pacific and in Africa.[64] The number of
unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.89 billion in
2012 to 4.83 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population,
with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific.
The number of subscriptions is predicted to rise to 5.69 billion Number of mobile cellular
users in 2020.[65] As of 2016, almost 60% of the world's population subscriptions 2012–2016

had access to a 4G broadband cellular network, up from almost

50% in 2015 and 11% in 2012.[65] The limits that users face on accessing information via
mobile applications coincide with a broader process of fragmentation of the Internet.
Fragmentation
[64] restricts access to media content and tends to affect poorest users the most.

Zero-rating, the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to
access specific content or applications without cost, has offered opportunities to surmount
economic hurdles, but has also been accused by its critics as creating a two-tiered Internet.
To address the issues with zero-rating, an alternative model has emerged in the concept of
'equal rating' and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa. Equal rating
prevents prioritization of one type of content and zero-rates all content up to a specified data
cap. A study published by Chatham House, 15 out of 19 countries researched in Latin
America had some kind of hybrid or zero-rated product offered. Some countries in the region
had a handful of plans to choose from (across all mobile network operators) while others,
such as Colombia, offered as many as 30 pre-paid and 34 post-paid plans.[66]

A study of eight countries in the Global South found that zero-rated data plans exist in every
country, although there is a great range in the frequency with which they are offered and
actually used in each.[67] The study looked at the top three to five carriers by market share in
Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru and Philippines. Across the 181

8/51
plans examined, 13 per cent were offering zero-rated services. Another study, covering
Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, found Facebook's Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero
to be the most commonly zero-rated content.[68]

Internet Protocol Suite

The Internet standards describe a framework known as the Internet protocol suite (also
called TCP/IP, based on the first two components.) This is a suite of protocols that are
ordered into a set of four conceptional layers by the scope of their operation, originally
documented in RFC 1122 and RFC 1123. At the top is the application layer, where
communication is described in terms of the objects or data structures most appropriate for
each application. For example, a web browser operates in a client–server application model
and exchanges information with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and an application-
germane data structure, such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

Below this top layer, the transport layer connects applications on different hosts with a logical
channel through the network. It provides this service with a variety of possible
characteristics, such as ordered, reliable delivery (TCP), and an unreliable datagram service
(UDP).

Underlying these layers are the networking technologies that interconnect networks at their
borders and exchange traffic across them. The Internet layer implements the Internet
Protocol (IP) which enables computers to identify and locate each other by IP address, and
route their traffic via intermediate (transit) networks.[69] The internet protocol layer code is
independent of the type of network that it is physically running over.

At the bottom of the architecture is the link layer, which connects nodes on the same
physical link, and contains protocols that do not require routers for traversal to other links.
The protocol suite does not explicitly specify hardware methods to transfer bits, or protocols
to manage such hardware, but assumes that appropriate technology is available. Examples
of that technology include Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and DSL.

As user data is processed through

the protocol stack, each
abstraction layer adds
encapsulation information at the

9/51
 sending host. Data is transmitted
over the wire at the link level
between hosts and routers.
Encapsulation is removed by the
receiving host. Intermediate relays
update link encapsulation at each
hop, and inspect the IP layer for
routing purposes.

Internet protocol

The most prominent component of the Internet model is

the Internet Protocol (IP). IP enables internetworking and,
in essence, establishes the Internet itself. Two versions of
the Internet Protocol exist, IPv4 and IPv6.

Conceptual data flow in a simple

network topology of two hosts (A
and B) connected by a link
between their respective routers.
The application on each host
executes read and write operations
as if the processes were directly
connected to each other by some
kind of data pipe. After the
establishment of this pipe, most
details of the communication are
hidden from each process, as the
underlying principles of
communication are implemented in
the lower protocol layers. In
analogy, at the transport layer the
communication appears as host-to-
host, without knowledge of the
application data structures and the
connecting routers, while at the
internetworking layer, individual
network boundaries are traversed
at each router.

10/51
IP Addresses

For locating individual computers on the network, the

Internet provides IP addresses. IP addresses are used by
the Internet infrastructure to direct internet packets to their
destinations. They consist of fixed-length numbers, which
are found within the packet. IP addresses are generally
A DNS resolver consults three
assigned to equipment either automatically via DHCP, or
name servers to resolve the
are configured. domain name user-visible
"www.wikipedia.org" to determine
However, the network also supports other addressing the IPv4 Address 207.142.131.234.
systems. Users generally enter domain names (e.g.
"en.wikipedia.org") instead of IP addresses because they are easier to remember, they are
converted by the Domain Name System (DNS) into IP addresses which are more efficient for
routing purposes.

IPv4

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.[69] IPv4 is the
initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was
designed to address up to ≈4.3 billion (109) hosts. However, the explosive growth of the
Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion, which entered its final stage in 2011,[70] when
the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted.

IPv6

Because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new
version of IP IPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides vastly larger addressing
capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic. IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address
and was standardized in 1998.[71][72][73] IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-
2000s and is currently in growing deployment around the world, since Internet address
registries
[74] (RIRs) began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion.

IPv6 is not directly interoperable by design with IPv4. In essence, it establishes a parallel
version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software. Thus, translation facilities
must exist for internetworking or nodes must have duplicate networking software for both
networks. Essentially all modern computer operating systems support both versions of the
Internet Protocol. Network infrastructure, however, has been lagging in this development.
Aside from the complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the
Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts, e.g., peering agreements,
and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the
network. Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

Subnetwork

11/51
A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision
of an IP network.[75]: 1, 16  The practice of
dividing a network into two or more networks is
called subnetting.

Computers that belong to a subnet are

addressed with an identical most-significant Creating a subnet by dividing the host identifier
bit-group in their IP addresses. This results in
the logical division of an IP address into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and
the rest field or host identifier. The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network
interface.

The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation
written as the first address of a network, followed by a slash character (/), and ending with
the bit-length of the prefix. For example, 198.51.100.0/24 is the prefix of the Internet Protocol
version 4 network starting at the given address, having 24 bits allocated for the network
prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing. Addresses in the range
198.51.100.0 to 198.51.100.255 belong to this network. The IPv6 address specification
2001:db8::/32 is a large address block with 296 addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix.

For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask, which is the
bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network,
yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed in dot-decimal notation like an
address. For example, 255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask for the prefix 198.51.100.0/24.

Traffic is exchanged between subnetworks through routers when the routing prefixes of the
source address and the destination address differ. A router serves as a logical or physical
boundary between the subnets.

The benefits of subnetting an existing network vary with each deployment scenario. In the
address allocation architecture of the Internet using CIDR and in large organizations, it is
necessary to allocate address space efficiently. Subnetting may also enhance routing
efficiency, or have advantages in network management when subnetworks are
administratively controlled by different entities in a larger organization. Subnets may be
arranged logically in a hierarchical architecture, partitioning an organization's network
address space into a tree-like routing structure.

Routing

Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to direct IP packets to
reach a node on a different subnetwork. Routing tables are maintained by manual
configuration or automatically by routing protocols. End-nodes typically use a default route
that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP routers use the Border Gateway

12/51
Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global
Internet. The default gateway is the node that serves as the forwarding host (router) to other
networks when no other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet.
[76][77]

IETF

While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support
other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of the software that
characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success. The
responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed
by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).[78] The IETF conducts standard-setting work
groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. The
resulting contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments (RFC)
documents on the IETF web site. The principal methods of networking that enable the
Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards.
Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or historical, or
document the best current practices (BCP) when implementing Internet technologies.

Applications and services

The Internet carries many applications and services, most prominently the World Wide Web,
including social media, electronic mail, mobile applications, multiplayer online games,
Internet telephony, file sharing, and streaming media services.

Most servers that provide these services are today hosted in data centers, and content is
often accessed through high-performance content delivery networks.

World Wide Web

Main article: World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents,
images, multimedia, applications, and other resources,
logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a
global system of named references. URIs symbolically
identify services, web servers, databases, and the
documents and resources that they can provide. Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of
the World Wide Web. Web services also use HTTP for This NeXT Computer was used by
communication between software systems for information Tim Berners-Lee at CERN and
transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and became the world's first Web
logistic and is one of many languages or protocols that server.
can be used for communication on the Internet.[79]

13/51
World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer/Edge, Mozilla
Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, lets users navigate from one web page
to another via the hyperlinks embedded in the documents. These documents may also
contain any combination of computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video,
multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page.
Client-side software can include animations, games, office applications and scientific
demonstrations. Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like
Yahoo!, Bing and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse
amount of online information. Compared to printed media, books, encyclopedias and
traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a
large scale.

The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a
potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a
web page, a blog, or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost-free services
are available. However, publishing and maintaining large, professional web sites with
attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition.
Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely
used as easily updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to
communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed
by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce, which is the sale of
products and services directly via the Web, continues to grow. Online advertising is a form of
marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing
messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social
media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and
mobile advertising. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed
those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[80]: 19  Many
common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

When the Web developed in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on
a web server, formatted in HTML, complete for transmission to a web browser in response to
a request. Over time, the process of creating and serving web pages has become dynamic,
creating a flexible design, layout, and content. Websites are often created using content
management software with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who
may be paid staff, members of an organization or the public, fill underlying databases with
content using editing pages designed for that purpose while casual visitors view and read
this content in HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems
built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target
visitors.

Communication

14/51
Email is an important communications service available via the Internet. The concept of
sending electronic text messages between parties, analogous to mailing letters or memos,
predates the creation of the Internet.[81][82] Pictures, documents, and other files are sent as
email attachments. Email messages can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses.

Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet. The name
of the principle internetworking protocol, the Internet Protocol, lends its name to voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP). The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice
applications for personal computers. VoIP systems now dominate many markets, and are as
easy to use and as convenient as a traditional telephone. The benefit has been substantial
cost savings over traditional telephone calls, especially over long distances. Cable, ADSL,
and mobile data networks provide Internet access in customer premises[83] and inexpensive
VoIP network adapters provide the connection for traditional analog telephone sets. The
voice quality of VoIP often exceeds that of traditional calls. Remaining problems for VoIP
include the situation that emergency services may not be universally available, and that
devices rely on a local power supply, while older traditional phones are powered from the
local loop, and typically operate during a power failure.

Data transfer

File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet. A
computer file can be emailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can
be uploaded to a website or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server for easy download by others.
It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The
load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-
peer networks. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user
authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and
money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote
charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually
fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be
checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests. These simple features of
the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale, and distribution of
anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of
print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the
other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that
previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or
enjoyment by end users. Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of
their live audio and video productions. They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening
such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined
by a range of pure Internet "broadcasters" who never had on-air licenses. This means that

15/51
an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used
to access online media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a
television or radio receiver. The range of available types of content is much wider, from
specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia services. Podcasting is a
variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is downloaded and played back on
a computer or shifted to a portable media player to be listened to on the move. These
techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control,
to broadcast audio-visual material worldwide.

Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth. For example,
standard image quality needs 1 Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p quality requires 2.5
Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5 Mbit/s for 1080p.[84]

Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full-
frame-rate video, the picture either is usually small or updates slowly. Internet users can
watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local
roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms and video
conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams, with and
without two-way sound. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading
website for free streaming video with more than two billion users.[85] It uses an HTML5 based
web player by default to stream and show video files.[86] Registered users may upload an
unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims that its users
watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily.

Social impact
The Internet has enabled new forms of social interaction, activities, and social associations.
This phenomenon has given rise to the scholarly study of the sociology of the Internet.

Users
See also: Global Internet usage, English in computing, and Languages used on the Internet
From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users globally
rose from 394 million to 1.858 billion.[90] By 2010, 22
percent of the world's population had access to computers
with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million
Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed
daily on YouTube.[91] In 2014 the world's Internet users
surpassed 3 billion or 43.6 percent of world population, but
Share of population using the
two-thirds of the users came from richest countries, with
Internet.[87] See or edit source
78.0 percent of Europe countries population using the data.
Internet, followed by 57.4 percent of the Americas.[92]
However, by 2018, Asia alone accounted for 51% of all

16/51
Internet users, with 2.2 billion out of the 4.3 billion Internet
users in the world coming from that region. The number of
China's Internet users surpassed a major milestone in
2018, when the country's Internet regulatory authority,
China Internet Network Information Centre, announced
that China had 802 million Internet users.[93] By 2019,
China was the world's leading country in terms of Internet
users, with more than 800 million users, followed closely Internet users per 100 population
by India, with some 700 million users, with the United members and GDP per capita for
States a distant third with 275 million users. However, in selected countries
terms of penetration, China has a 38.4%
penetration rate compared to India's 40% and
the United States's 80%.[94] As of 2020, it was
estimated that 4.5 billion people use the
Internet, more than half of the world's
population.[95][96]

The prevalent language for communication via

the Internet has always been English. This may
be a result of the origin of the Internet, as well
as the language's role as a lingua franca and as
a world language. Early computer systems were
limited to the characters in the American Internet users per 100 inhabitants
Standard Code for Information Interchange Source: International Telecommunication
[89] Union.[88]
(ASCII), a subset of the Latin alphabet.

After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese
(25%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each), Arabic, French
and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%).[97] By region, 42% of the world's Internet users
are based in Asia, 24% in Europe, 14% in North America, 10% in Latin America and the
Caribbean taken together, 6% in Africa, 3% in the Middle East and 1% in Australia/Oceania.
[98]
The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use
of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in the
world's widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display
of some languages' characters) still remain.

In an American study in 2005, the percentage of men using the Internet was very slightly
ahead of the percentage of women, although this difference reversed in those under 30. Men
logged on more often, spent more time online, and were more likely to be broadband users,
whereas women tended to make more use of opportunities to communicate (such as email).
Men were more likely to use the Internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, and for
recreation such as downloading music and videos. Men and women were equally likely to
use the Internet for shopping and banking.[99]
More recent studies indicate that in 2008,

17/51
women significantly outnumbered men on most social networking services, such as
Facebook and Myspace, although the ratios varied with age.[100] In addition, women watched
more streaming content, whereas men downloaded more.[101] In terms of blogs, men were
more likely to blog in the first place; among those who blog, men were more likely to have a
professional blog, whereas women were more likely to have a personal blog.[102]

Splitting by country, in 2012 Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark had
the highest Internet penetration by the number of users, with 93% or more of the population
with access.[103]

Several neologisms exist that refer to Internet users: Netizen (as in "citizen of the net")[104]
refers to those actively involved in improving online communities, the Internet in general or
surrounding political affairs and rights such as free speech,[105][106] Internaut refers to
operators or technically highly capable users of the Internet,[107][108] digital citizen refers to a
person using the Internet in order to engage in society, politics, and government
participation.[109]

Internet users by language[97]

18/51
 Website content languages[110]

Usage

Main articles: Global digital divide and

Digital divide
The Internet allows greater flexibility in
working hours and location, especially
with the spread of unmetered high-
speed connections. The Internet can
be accessed almost anywhere by
numerous means, including through
mobile Internet devices. Mobile
phones, datacards, handheld game Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country's
consoles and cellular routers allow population
users to connect to the Internet Source: International Telecommunication Union.[103]
wirelessly. Within the limitations
imposed by small screens and other
limited facilities of such pocket-sized
devices, the services of the Internet,
including email and the web, may be
available. Service providers may
restrict the services offered and mobile
data charges may be significantly
higher than other access methods.

Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012

as a percentage of a country's population

19/51
Educational material at all levels from Source: International Telecommunication Union.[111]
pre-school to post-doctoral is available
from websites. Examples range from
CBeebies, through school and high-
school revision guides and virtual
universities, to access to top-end
scholarly literature through the likes of
Google Scholar. For distance
education, help with homework and
other assignments, self-guided
learning, whiling away spare time or
just looking up more detail on an Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population

interesting fact, it has never been

Source: International Telecommunication Union.[112]
easier for people to access
educational information at any level
from anywhere. The Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular are important
enablers of both formal and informal education. Further, the Internet allows researchers
(especially those from the social and behavioral sciences) to conduct research remotely via
virtual laboratories, with profound changes in reach and generalizability of findings as well as
in communication between scientists and in the publication of results.[113]

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills have made
collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software. Not only can a
group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide reach of the Internet allows such
groups more easily to form. An example of this is the free software movement, which has
produced, among other things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org (later forked into
LibreOffice). Internet chat, whether using an IRC chat room, an instant messaging system, or
a social networking service, allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way while
working at their computers during the day. Messages can be exchanged even more quickly
and conveniently than via email. These systems may allow files to be exchanged, drawings
and images to be shared, or voice and video contact between team members.

Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of

documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work. Business and
project teams can share calendars as well as documents and other information. Such
collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software
development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing. Social and political
collaboration is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access and computer
literacy spread.

The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and information
stores easily from any access point. Access may be with computer security, i.e.
authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is

20/51
encouraging new ways of remote work, collaboration and information sharing in many
industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another
country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in
a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in other
remote locations, based on information emailed to them from offices all over the world. Some
of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of
private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker
away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday,
can access their emails, access their data using cloud computing, or open a remote desktop
session into their office PC using a secure virtual private network (VPN) connection on the
Internet. This can give the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data,
including email and other applications, while away from the office. It has been referred to
among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare,[114] because it extends the
secure perimeter of a corporate network into remote locations and its employees' homes.

By late 2010s Internet has been described as "the main source of scientific information "for
the majority of the global North population".[115]: 111 

Social networking and entertainment

See also: Social networking service § Social impact
Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan
and book vacations and to pursue their personal interests. People use chat, messaging and
email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some
previously had pen pals. Social networking services such as Facebook have created new
ways to socialize and interact. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of
information to pages, pursue common interests, and connect with others. It is also possible
to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing groups of people.
Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr
specialize in users' videos and photographs. Social networking services are also widely used
by businesses and other organizations to promote their brands, to market to their customers
and to encourage posts to "go viral". "Black hat" social media techniques are also employed
by some organizations, such as spam accounts and astroturfing.

A risk for both individuals and organizations writing posts (especially public posts) on social
networking services, is that especially foolish or controversial posts occasionally lead to an
unexpected and possibly large-scale backlash on social media from other Internet users.
This is also a risk in relation to controversial offline behavior, if it is widely made known. The
nature of this backlash can range widely from counter-arguments and public mockery,
through insults and hate speech, to, in extreme cases, rape and death threats. The online
disinhibition effect describes the tendency of many individuals to behave more stridently or
offensively online than they would in person. A significant number of feminist women have

21/51
been the target of various forms of harassment in response to posts they have made on
social media, and Twitter in particular has been criticised in the past for not doing enough to
aid victims of online abuse.[116]

For organizations, such a backlash can cause overall brand damage, especially if reported
by the media. However, this is not always the case, as any brand damage in the eyes of
people with an opposing opinion to that presented by the organization could sometimes be
outweighed by strengthening the brand in the eyes of others. Furthermore, if an organization
or individual gives in to demands that others perceive as wrong-headed, that can then
provoke a counter-backlash.

Some websites, such as Reddit, have rules forbidding the posting of personal information of
individuals (also known as doxxing), due to concerns about such postings leading to mobs of
large numbers of Internet users directing harassment at the specific individuals thereby
identified. In particular, the Reddit rule forbidding the posting of personal information is widely
understood to imply that all identifying photos and names must be censored in Facebook
screenshots posted to Reddit. However, the interpretation of this rule in relation to public
Twitter posts is less clear, and in any case, like-minded people online have many other ways
they can use to direct each other's attention to public social media posts they disagree with.

Children also face dangers online such as cyberbullying and approaches by sexual
predators, who sometimes pose as children themselves. Children may also encounter
material which they may find upsetting, or material that their parents consider to be not age-
appropriate. Due to naivety, they may also post personal information about themselves
online, which could put them or their families at risk unless warned not to do so. Many
parents choose to enable Internet filtering or supervise their children's online activities in an
attempt to protect their children from inappropriate material on the Internet. The most popular
social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter, commonly forbid users under the
age of 13. However, these policies are typically trivial to circumvent by registering an account
with a false birth date, and a significant number of children aged under 13 join such sites
anyway. Social networking services for younger children, which claim to provide better levels
of protection for children, also exist.[117]

The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertaining
social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and
humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic. Many Internet forums have sections
devoted to games and funny videos. The Internet pornography and online gambling
industries have taken advantage of the World Wide Web. Although many governments have
attempted to restrict both industries' use of the Internet, in general, this has failed to stop
their widespread popularity.[118]

22/51
Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming.[119] This form of
recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced
world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-
playing video games to online gambling. While online gaming has been around since the
1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as GameSpy
and MPlayer.[120] Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of game play or certain
games. Many people use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other
works for their enjoyment and relaxation. Free and fee-based services exist for all of these
activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Some of these
sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists' copyrights than others.

Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness.[121] Lonely people tend to use the
Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I
am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.

A 2017 book claimed that the Internet consolidates most aspects of human endeavor into
singular arenas of which all of humanity are potential members and competitors, with
fundamentally negative impacts on mental health as a result. While successes in each field
of activity are pervasively visible and trumpeted, they are reserved for an extremely thin
sliver of the world's most exceptional, leaving everyone else behind. Whereas, before the
Internet, expectations of success in any field were supported by reasonable probabilities of
achievement at the village, suburb, city or even state level, the same expectations in the
Internet world are virtually certain to bring disappointment today: there is always someone
else,
[122] somewhere on the planet, who can do better and take the now one-and-only top spot.

Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small

groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context
and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who
share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader.
Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts,
participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with
outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual
communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in the collective study
via email, online chat rooms, and web-based message boards."[123] In particular, the British
government has raised concerns about the prospect of young British Muslims being
indoctrinated into Islamic extremism by material on the Internet, being persuaded to join
terrorist groups such as the so-called "Islamic State", and then potentially committing acts of
terrorism on returning to Britain after fighting in Syria or Iraq.

Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spent
57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work, according to a 2003 study by Peninsula
Business Services.[124] Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes

23/51
with daily life. Nicholas G. Carr believes that Internet use has other effects on individuals, for
instance improving skills of scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to
true creativity.[125]

Electronic business
Electronic business (e-business) encompasses business processes spanning the entire
value chain: purchasing, supply chain management, marketing, sales, customer service, and
business relationship. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build
and enhance relationships with clients and partners. According to International Data
Corporation, the size of worldwide e-commerce, when global business-to-business and -
consumer transactions are combined, equate to $16 trillion for 2013. A report by Oxford
Economics added those two together to estimate the total size of the digital economy at
$20.4 trillion, equivalent to roughly 13.8% of global sales.[126]

While much has been written of the economic advantages of Internet-enabled commerce,
there is also evidence that some aspects of the Internet such as maps and location-aware
services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and the digital divide.[127] Electronic
commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and
mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality.[128][129][130]

Author Andrew Keen, a long-time critic of the social transformations caused by the Internet,
has focused on the economic effects of consolidation from Internet businesses. Keen cites a
2013 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report saying brick-and-mortar retailers employ 47
people for every $10 million in sales while Amazon employs only 14. Similarly, the 700-
employee room rental start-up Airbnb was valued at $10 billion in 2014, about half as much
as Hilton Worldwide, which employs 152,000 people. At that time, Uber employed 1,000 full-
time employees and was valued at $18.2 billion, about the same valuation as Avis Rent a
Car
[131] and The Hertz Corporation combined, which together employed almost 60,000 people.

Remote work

Remote work is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference
calling, videotelephony, and VoIP so that work may be performed from any location, most
conveniently the worker's home. It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows
workers to communicate over long distances, saving significant amounts of travel time and
cost. More workers have adequate bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home
to their corporate intranet and internal communication networks.

Collaborative publishing

Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of
information across institutional and international boundaries.[132] In those settings, they have
been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental

24/51
documentation, and committee work.[133] The United States Patent and Trademark Office
uses a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to examination of
pending patent applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to
collaborate on the design and planning of a local park.[134] The English Wikipedia has the
largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web[135] and ranks in the top 10 among all
Web sites in terms of traffic.[136]

Politics and political revolutions

This section needs expansion with: E-government. You can help by adding to it.
(July 2021)

See also: Internet censorship, Mass surveillance, and Social media use in politics
The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political
tool. The presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004
in the United States was notable for its success in
soliciting donation via the Internet. Many political groups
use the Internet to achieve a new method of organizing for
carrying out their mission, having given rise to Internet
activism, most notably practiced by rebels in the Arab
Spring.[137][138] The New York Times suggested that social
media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, helped
Banner in Bangkok during the 2014
people organize the political revolutions in Egypt, by Thai coup d'état, informing the Thai
helping activists organize protests, communicate public that 'like' or 'share' activities
grievances, and disseminate information.[139] on social media could result in
imprisonment (observed 30 June
Many have understood the Internet as an extension of the 2014)
Habermasian notion of the public sphere, observing how
network communication technologies provide something like a global civic forum. However,
incidents of politically motivated Internet censorship have now been recorded in many
countries, including western democracies.[140][141]

Philanthropy
The spread of low-cost Internet access in developing countries has opened up new
possibilities for peer-to-peer charities, which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to
charitable projects for other individuals. Websites, such as DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving,
allow small-scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their choice. A popular twist
on Internet-based philanthropy is the use of peer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes.
Kiva pioneered this concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual
loan profiles for funding. Kiva raises funds for local intermediary microfinance organizations
that post stories and updates on behalf of the borrowers. Lenders can contribute as little as

25/51
$25 to loans of their choice, and receive their money back as borrowers repay. Kiva falls
short of being a pure peer-to-peer charity, in that loans are disbursed before being funded by
lenders and borrowers do not communicate with lenders themselves.[142][143]

Security
Main article: Internet security
Internet resources, hardware, and software components are the target of criminal or
malicious attempts to gain unauthorized control to cause interruptions, commit fraud, engage
in blackmail or access private information.

Malware
Malware is malicious software used and distributed via the Internet. It includes computer
viruses which are copied with the help of humans, computer worms which copy themselves
automatically, software for denial of service attacks, ransomware, botnets, and spyware that
reports on the activity and typing of users. Usually, these activities constitute cybercrime.
Defense theorists have also speculated about the possibilities of hackers using cyber
warfare using similar methods on a large scale.[144]

Surveillance

Main article: Computer and network surveillance

See also: Signals intelligence and Mass surveillance
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the
Internet.[145] In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For
Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic,
instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by
Federal law enforcement agencies.[146][147][148] Packet capture is the monitoring of data
traffic on a computer network. Computers communicate over the Internet by breaking up
messages (emails, images, videos, web pages, files, etc.) into small chunks called "packets",
which are routed through a network of computers, until they reach their destination, where
they are assembled back into a complete "message" again. Packet Capture Appliance
intercepts these packets as they are traveling through the network, in order to examine their
contents using other programs. A packet capture is an information gathering tool, but not an
analysis tool. That is it gathers "messages" but it does not analyze them and figure out what
they mean. Other programs are needed to perform traffic analysis and sift through
intercepted data looking for important/useful information. Under the Communications
Assistance For Law Enforcement Act all U.S. telecommunications providers are required to
install packet sniffing technology to allow Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies
to intercept all of their customers' broadband Internet and VoIP traffic.[149]

26/51
The large amount of data gathered from packet capturing requires surveillance software that
filters and reports relevant information, such as the use of certain words or phrases, the
access of certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with certain parties.
[150] Agencies, such as the Information Awareness Office, NSA, GCHQ and the FBI, spend

billions of dollars per year to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems for
interception and analysis of data.[151] Similar systems are operated by Iranian secret police
to identify and suppress dissidents. The required hardware and software was allegedly
installed by German Siemens AG and Finnish Nokia.[152]

Censorship
Main articles: Internet censorship and Internet freedom
See also: Culture of fear and Great Firewall

Some governments, such as those of Burma, Iran, North Korea, Mainland China, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, restrict access to content on the Internet within their
territories,
[158] especially to political and religious content, with domain name and keyword filters.

In Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily
agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities. While this list of forbidden resources is
supposed to contain only known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.[159]
Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws against the possession or
distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, via the Internet, but do not
mandate filter software. Many free or commercially available software programs, called
content-control software are available to users to block offensive websites on individual
computers or networks, in order to limit access by children to pornographic material or
depiction of violence.

Performance
As the Internet is a heterogeneous network, the physical characteristics, including for
example the data transfer rates of connections, vary widely. It exhibits emergent phenomena
that depend on its large-scale organization.[160]

27/51
Traffic volume

Global Internet Traffic

The volume of Internet traffic is difficult to measure, because no single point of measurement
exists in the multi-tiered, non-hierarchical topology. Traffic data may be estimated from the
aggregate volume through the peering points of the Tier 1 network providers, but traffic that
stays local in large provider networks may not be accounted for.

Outages
An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signalling interruptions. Disruptions of
submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas, such
as in the 2008 submarine cable disruption. Less-developed countries are more vulnerable
due to a small number of high-capacity links. Land cables are also vulnerable, as in 2011
when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.
[161] Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as

a form of Internet censorship, as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt, whereby

approximately 93%[162] of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop
mobilization for anti-government protests.[163]

Energy use

Estimates of the Internet's electricity usage have been the subject of controversy, according
to a 2014 peer-reviewed research paper that found claims differing by a factor of 20,000
published in the literature during the preceding decade, ranging from 0.0064 kilowatt hours
per gigabyte transferred (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB.[164] The researchers attributed these
discrepancies mainly to the year of reference (i.e. whether efficiency gains over time had
been taken into account) and to whether "end devices such as personal computers and
servers are included" in the analysis.[164]

In 2011, academic researchers estimated the overall energy used by the Internet to be
between 170 and 307 GW, less than two percent of the energy used by humanity. This
estimate included the energy needed to build, operate, and periodically replace the
estimated 750 million laptops, a billion smart phones and 100 million servers worldwide as
well as the energy that routers, cell towers, optical switches, Wi-Fi transmitters and cloud
storage devices use when transmitting Internet traffic.[165][166] According to a non-peer
reviewed study published in 2018 by The Shift Project (a French think tank funded by
corporate sponsors), nearly 4% of global CO2 emissions could be attributed to global data
transfer and the necessary infrastructure.[167] The study also said that online video streaming
alone accounted for 60% of this data transfer and therefore contributed to over 300 million
tons of CO2 emission per year, and argued for new "digital sobriety" regulations restricting
the use and size of video files.[168]

28/51
See also

Notes
1. ^ See Capitalization of Internet.
2. ^ Despite the name, TCP/IP also includes UDP traffic, which is significant.[1]

References
1. ^ Amogh Dhamdhere. "Internet Traffic Characterization". Retrieved 6 May 2022.
2. ^ a b "A Flaw in the Design". The Washington Post. 30 May 2015. Archived from the
original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2020. “The Internet was born of a
big idea: Messages could be chopped into chunks, sent through a network in a series
of transmissions, then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently.
Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American
engineer Paul Baran. ... The most important institutional force ... was the Pentagon's
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... as ARPA began work on a
groundbreaking computer network, the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the
nation's top universities.”
3. ^ Stewart, Bill (January 2000). "Internet History – One Page Summary". The Living
Internet. Archived from the original on 2 July 2014.
4. ^ "#3 1982: the ARPANET community grows" in 40 maps that explain the internet
Archived 6 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Timothy B. Lee, Vox Conversations,
2 June 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
5. ^ Strickland, Jonathan (3 March 2008). "How Stuff Works: Who owns the Internet?".
Archived from the original on 19 June 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
6. ^ Hoffman, P.; Harris, S. (September 2006). The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to
Internet Engineering Task Force. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC4677. RFC 4677.
7. ^ "New Seven Wonders panel". USA Today. 27 October 2006. Archived from the
original on 15 July 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
8. ^ "Internetted". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University
Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.) nineteenth-
century use as an adjective.
9. ^ a b Cerf, Vint; Dalal, Yogen; Sunshine, Carl (December 1974). Specification of
Internet Transmission Control Protocol. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0675. RFC 675.
10. ^ a b c d Corbett, Philip B. (1 June 2016). "It's Official: The 'Internet' Is Over". The New
York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 14 October 2020.
Retrieved 29 August 2020.
11. ^ a b Herring, Susan C. (19 October 2015). "Should You Be Capitalizing the Word
'Internet'?". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on 31 October 2020.
Retrieved 29 August 2020.

29/51
12. ^ Coren, Michael J. (2 June 2016). "One of the internet's inventors thinks it should still
be capitalized". Quartz. Archived from the original on 27 September 2020. Retrieved 8
September 2020.
13. ^ "World Wide Web Timeline". Pews Research Center. 11 March 2014. Archived from
the original on 29 July 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
14. ^ "HTML 4.01 Specification". World Wide Web Consortium. Archived from the original
on 6 October 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2008. “[T]he link (or hyperlink, or Web link) [is]
the basic hypertext construct. A link is a connection from one Web resource to another.
Although a simple concept, the link has been one of the primary forces driving the
success of the Web.”
15. ^ Hauben, Michael; Hauben, Ronda (1997). "5 The Vision of Interactive Computing
And the Future". Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (PDF).
Wiley. ISBN 978-0-8186-7706-9. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 January 2021.
Retrieved 2 March 2020.
16. ^ Zelnick, Bob; Zelnick, Eva (1 September 2013). The Illusion of Net Neutrality: Political
Alarmism, Regulatory Creep and the Real Threat to Internet Freedom. Hoover Press.
ISBN 978-0-8179-1596-4. Archived from the original on 10 January 2021. Retrieved 7
May 2020.
17. ^ Peter, Ian (2004). "So, who really did invent the Internet?". The Internet History
Project. Archived from the original on 3 September 2011. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
18. ^ "Inductee Details - Paul Baran". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the
original on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017; "Inductee Details - Donald
Watts Davies". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 6
September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
19. ^ Kim, Byung-Keun (2005). Internationalising the Internet the Co-evolution of Influence
and Technology. Edward Elgar. pp. 51–55. ISBN 978-1-84542-675-0.
20. ^ Gromov, Gregory (1995). "Roads and Crossroads of Internet History". Archived from
the original on 27 January 2016.
21. ^ Hafner, Katie (1998). Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet.
Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-83267-8.
22. ^ Hauben, Ronda (2001). "From the ARPANET to the Internet". Archived from the
original on 21 July 2009. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
23. ^ "Internet Pioneers Discuss the Future of Money, Books, and Paper in 1972".
Paleofuture. 23 July 2013. Archived from the original on 17 October 2020. Retrieved 31
August 2020.
24. ^ Townsend, Anthony (2001). "The Internet and the Rise of the New Network Cities,
1969–1999". Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. 28 (1): 39–58.
doi:10.1068/b2688. ISSN 0265-8135. S2CID 11574572.
25. ^ "NORSAR and the Internet". NORSAR. Archived from the original on 21 January
2013.

30/51
26. ^ Kirstein, P.T. (1999). "Early experiences with the Arpanet and Internet in the United
Kingdom" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 21 (1): 38–44.
doi:10.1109/85.759368. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 1558618. Archived from the original
(PDF) on 7 February 2020.
27. ^ Leiner, Barry M. "Brief History of the Internet: The Initial Internetting Concepts".
Internet Society. Archived from the original on 9 April 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
28. ^ Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" (PDF).
IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648.
doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. Archived (PDF) from the original
on 13 September 2006. “The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful
comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R.
Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who
constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker
who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.”
29. ^ Leiner, Barry M.; Cerf, Vinton G.; Clark, David D.; Kahn, Robert E.; Kleinrock,
Leonard; Lynch, Daniel C.; Postel, Jon; Roberts, Larry G.; Wolff, Stephen (2003). "A
Brief History of Internet". Internet Society. p. 1011. arXiv:cs/9901011.
Bibcode:1999cs........1011L. Archived from the original on 4 June 2007. Retrieved 28
May 2009.
30. ^ "The internet's fifth man". The Economist. 30 November 2013. ISSN 0013-0613.
Archived from the original on 19 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020. “In the early
1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked locations in France,
Italy and Britain. Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could
connect not just dozens of machines, but millions of them. It captured the imagination
of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now
power the internet.”
31. ^ Schatt, Stan (1991). Linking LANs: A Micro Manager's Guide. McGraw-Hill. p. 200.
ISBN 0-8306-3755-9.
32. ^ Frazer, Karen D. (1995). "NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking, Final
Report 1987–1995" (PDF). Merit Network, Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10
February 2015.
33. ^ Ben Segal (1995). "A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN". Archived from the
original on 19 June 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2011.
34. ^ Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE)
35. ^ "The History of NORDUnet" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March
2016.
36. ^ Clarke, Roger. "Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia". Archived from the
original on 9 February 2021. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
37. ^ Zakon, Robert (November 1997). RFC 2235. IETF. p. 8. doi:10.17487/RFC2235.
Retrieved 2 December 2020.

31/51
38. ^ Inc, InfoWorld Media Group (25 September 1989). "InfoWorld". Archived from the
original on 29 January 2017 – via Google Books. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic
name (help)
39. ^ "INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS". February 1990. Archived from the original on 25
May 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
40. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim. "The Original HTTP as defined in 1991". W3C.org. Archived from
the original on 5 June 1997.
41. ^ "The website of the world's first-ever web server". info.cern.ch. Archived from the
original on 5 January 2010.
42. ^ "Stanford Federal Credit Union Pioneers Online Financial Services" (Press release).
21 June 1995. Archived from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 21
December 2018.
43. ^ Harris, Susan R.; Gerich, Elise (April 1996). "Retiring the NSFNET Backbone
Service: Chronicling the End of an Era". ConneXions. 10 (4). Archived from the original
on 17 August 2013.
44. ^ "Measuring digital development: Facts and figures 2021". Telecommunication
Development Bureau, International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Retrieved 16
November 2022.
45. ^ "Total Midyear Population for the World: 1950-2050"". International Programs Center
for Demographic and Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the
original on 17 April 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2020.
46. ^ Jindal, R. P. (2009). "From millibits to terabits per second and beyond - Over 60 years
of innovation". 2009 2nd International Workshop on Electron Devices and
Semiconductor Technology: 1–6. doi:10.1109/EDST.2009.5166093. ISBN 978-1-4244-
3831-0. S2CID 25112828. Archived from the original on 23 August 2019. Retrieved 24
August 2019.
47. ^ Ward, Mark (3 August 2006). "How the web went world wide". Technology
Correspondent. BBC News. Archived from the original on 21 November 2011.
Retrieved 24 January 2011.
48. ^ "Brazil, Russia, India and China to Lead Internet Growth Through 2011". Clickz.com.
Archived from the original on 4 October 2008. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
49. ^ Coffman, K.G; Odlyzko, A.M. (2 October 1998). "The size and growth rate of the
Internet" (PDF). AT&T Labs. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 June 2007.
Retrieved 21 May 2007.
50. ^ Comer, Douglas (2006). The Internet book. Prentice Hall. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-13-
233553-9.
51. ^ "World Internet Users and Population Stats". Internet World Stats. Miniwatts
Marketing Group. 22 June 2011. Archived from the original on 23 June 2011. Retrieved
23 June 2011.

32/51
52. ^ Hilbert, Martin; López, Priscila (April 2011). "The World's Technological Capacity to
Store, Communicate, and Compute Information". Science. 332 (6025): 60–65.
Bibcode:2011Sci...332...60H. doi:10.1126/science.1200970. PMID 21310967.
S2CID 206531385. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 May 2011.
53. ^ Klein, Hans (2004). "ICANN and Non-Territorial Sovereignty: Government Without the
Nation State". Internet and Public Policy Project. Georgia Institute of Technology.
Archived from the original on 24 May 2013.
54. ^ Packard, Ashley (2010). Digital Media Law. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-4051-
8169-3.
55. ^ McCarthy, Kieren (1 July 2005). "Bush administration annexes internet". The
Register. Archived from the original on 19 September 2011.
56. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet
Governance. MIT Press. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
57. ^ "Internet Society (ISOC) All About The Internet: History of the Internet". ISOC.
Archived from the original on 27 November 2011. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
58. ^ Pasternak, Sean B. (7 March 2006). "Toronto Hydro to Install Wireless Network in
Downtown Toronto". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 10 April 2006. Retrieved
8 August 2011.
59. ^ "Mobile and Tablet Internet Usage Exceeds Desktop for First Time Worldwide".
StatCounter: Global Stats, Press Release. 1 November 2016. Archived from the
original on 1 November 2016. “StatCounter Global Stats finds that mobile and tablet
devices accounted for 51.3% of Internet usage worldwide in October compared to
48.7% by desktop.”
60. ^ "World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database 2020 (24th Edition/July 2020)".
International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 2017a. Archived from the original on 21
April 2019. “Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world
(totals and penetration rates). World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database”
61. ^ a b World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report
2017/2018 (PDF). UNESCO. 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 September
2018. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
62. ^ a b "GSMA The Mobile Economy 2019 - The Mobile Economy". 11 March 2019.
Archived from the original on 11 March 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
63. ^ Galpaya, Helani (12 April 2019). "Zero-rating in Emerging Economies" (PDF). Global
Commission on Internet Governance. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 April
2019. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
64. ^ Alison GillwAld, ChenAi ChAir, Ariel Futter, KweKu KorAntenG, FolA oduFuwA, John
wAlubenGo (12 September 2016). "Much Ado About Nothing? Zero Rating in the
African Context" (PDF). Researchictafrica. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16
December 2020. Retrieved 28 November 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple
names: authors list (link)

33/51
65. ^ a b J. Postel, ed. (September 1981). Internet Protocol, DARPA Internet Program
Protocol Specification. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0791. RFC 791. Updated by RFC 1349,
2474, 6864
66. ^ Huston, Geoff. "IPv4 Address Report, daily generated". Archived from the original on
1 April 2009. Retrieved 20 May 2009.
67. ^ S. Deering; R. Hinden (December 1995). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6)
Specification. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC1883. RFC 1883.
68. ^ S. Deering; R. Hinden (December 1998). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6)
Specification. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC2460. RFC 2460.
69. ^ S. Deering; R. Hinden (July 2017). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification.
IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC8200. RFC 8200.
70. ^ "Notice of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) Address Depletion" (PDF). Archived from
the original (PDF) on 7 January 2010. Retrieved 7 August 2009.
71. ^ Jeffrey Mogul; Jon Postel (August 1985). Internet Standard Subnetting Procedure.
IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0950. RFC 950. Updated by RFC 6918.
72. ^ Fisher, Tim. "How to Find Your Default Gateway IP Address". Lifewire. Archived from
the original on 25 February 2019. Retrieved 25 February 2019.
73. ^ "Default Gateway". techopedia.com. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020.
74. ^ "IETF Home Page". Ietf.org. Archived from the original on 18 June 2009. Retrieved
20 June 2009.
75. ^ "The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web". Webopedia.com.
QuinStreet Inc. 24 June 2010. Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 1
May 2014.
76. ^ "IAB Internet advertising revenue report: 2012 full year results" (PDF).
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet Advertising Bureau. April 2013. Archived from the
original (PDF) on 4 October 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
77. ^ Brown, Ron (26 October 1972). "Fax invades the mail market". New Scientist. 56
(817): 218–221.
78. ^ Luckett, Herbert P. (March 1973). "What's News: Electronic-mail delivery gets
started". Popular Science. 202 (3): 85.
79. ^ Booth, C (2010). "Chapter 2: IP Phones, Software VoIP, and Integrated and Mobile
VoIP". Library Technology Reports. 46 (5): 11–19.
80. ^ Morrison, Geoff (18 November 2010). "What to know before buying a 'connected' TV
– Technology & science – Tech and gadgets – Tech Holiday Guide". NBC News.
Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
81. ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (2 October 2017). "Technology Adoption". Our World in
Data. Archived from the original on 12 October 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2019.
82. ^ "Individuals using the Internet 2005 to 2014" Archived 28 May 2015 at the Wayback
Machine, Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world
(totals and penetration rates), International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Retrieved
25 May 2015.

34/51
 83. ^ "Internet users per 100 inhabitants 1997 to 2007" Archived 17 May 2015 at the
Wayback Machine, ICT Data and Statistics (IDS), International Telecommunication
Union (ITU). Retrieved 25 May 2015.
84. ^ Internet users graphs Archived 9 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Market
Information and Statistics, International Telecommunication Union
85. ^ "Google Earth demonstrates how technology benefits RI's civil society, govt". Antara
News. 26 May 2011. Archived from the original on 29 October 2012. Retrieved 19
November 2012.
86. ^ Steve Dent. "There are now 3 billion Internet users, mostly in rich countries".
Archived from the original on 28 November 2014. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
87. ^ "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China" (PDF). Cnnic.com. January
2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 April 2019.
88. ^ "Digital 2020: 3.8 billion people use social media". 30 January 2020. Archived from
the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
89. ^ a b "Number of Internet Users by Language". Internet World Stats, Miniwatts
Marketing Group. 31 May 2011. Archived from the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved
22 April 2012.
90. ^ "World Internet Usage Statistics News and Population Stats". 30 June 2010. Archived
from the original on 19 March 2017. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
91. ^ How men and women use the Internet Pew Research Center 28 December 2005
92. ^ "Rapleaf Study on Social Network Users". Archived from the original on 20 March
2009.
93. ^ "Women Ahead of Men in Online Tv, Dvr, Games, And Social Media".
Entrepreneur.com. 1 May 2008. Archived from the original on 16 September 2008.
Retrieved 8 August 2011.
94. ^ "Technorati's State of the Blogosphere". Technorati. Archived from the original on 2
October 2009. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
95. ^ a b "Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000–2012" Archived 9 February
2014 at the Wayback Machine, International Telecommunication Union (Geneva), June
2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
96. ^ Seese, Michael (2009). Scrappy Information Security. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-60005-
132-6. Archived from the original on 5 September 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
97. ^ netizen Archived 21 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Dictionary.com
98. ^ Hauben, Michael. "The Net and Netizens". Columbia University. Archived from the
original on 4 June 2011.
99. ^ "A Brief History of the Internet". the Internet Society. Archived from the original on 4
June 2007.
100. ^ "Oxford Dictionaries – internaut". oxforddictionaries.com. Archived from the original
on 13 June 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
101. ^ "Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012" Archived 26 July
2019 at the Wayback Machine, Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE, International
Telecommunication Union. Retrieved 29 June 2013.

35/51
102. ^ "Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012" Archived 26 July
2019 at the Wayback Machine, Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE, International
Telecommunication Union. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
103. ^ Reips, U.-D. (2008). "How Internet-mediated research changes science".
Psychological aspects of cyberspace: Theory, research, applications. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. pp. 268–294. ISBN 9780521694643. Archived from the
original on 9 August 2014.
104. ^ "The Virtual Private Nightmare: VPN". Librenix. 4 August 2004. Archived from the
original on 15 May 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2010.
105. ^ Dariusz Jemielniak; Aleksandra Przegalinska (18 February 2020). Collaborative
Society. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-35645-9. Archived from the original on 23
November 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
106. ^ Moore, Keith (27 July 2013). "Twitter 'report abuse' button calls after rape threats".
BBC News. Archived from the original on 4 September 2014. Retrieved 7 December
2014.
107. ^ Kessler, Sarah (11 October 2010). "5 Fun and Safe Social Networks for Children".
Mashable. Archived from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 7 December
2014.
108. ^ Goldman, Russell (22 January 2008). "Do It Yourself! Amateur Porn Stars Make
Bank". ABC News. Archived from the original on 30 December 2011.
109. ^ Spohn, Dave (15 December 2009). "Top Online Game Trends of the Decade".
About.com. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011.
110. ^ Spohn, Dave (2 June 2011). "Internet Game Timeline: 1963 – 2004". About.com.
Archived from the original on 25 April 2006.
111. ^ Carole Hughes; Boston College. "The Relationship Between Internet Use and
Loneliness Among College Students". Boston College. Archived from the original on 7
November 2015. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
112. ^ Barker, Eric (2017). Barking Up the Wrong Tree. HarperCollins. pp. 235–6.
ISBN 9780062416049.
113. ^ Thornton, Patricia M. (2003). "The New Cybersects: Resistance and Repression in
the Reform era". In Perry, Elizabeth; Selden, Mark (eds.). Chinese Society: Change,
Conflict and Resistance (2 ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 149–150.
ISBN 9780415560740.
114. ^ "Net abuse hits small city firms". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. 11 September 2003.
Archived from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 7 August 2009.
115. ^ Carr, Nicholas G. (7 June 2010). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our
Brains. W.W. Norton. p. 276. ISBN 978-0393072228.
116. ^ "The New Digital Economy: How it will transform business" (PDF). Oxford
Economics. 2 July 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 July 2014.
117. ^ Badger, Emily (6 February 2013). "How the Internet Reinforces Inequality in the Real
World". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 11 February 2013. Retrieved 13
February 2013.

36/51
118. ^ "E-commerce will make the shopping mall a retail wasteland". ZDNet. 17 January
2013. Archived from the original on 19 February 2013.
119. ^ "'Free Shipping Day' Promotion Spurs Late-Season Online Spending Surge,
Improving Season-to-Date Growth Rate to 16 Percent vs. Year Ago". Comscore. 23
December 2012. Archived from the original on 28 January 2013.
120. ^ "The Death of the American Shopping Mall". The Atlantic – Cities. 26 December
2012. Archived from the original on 15 February 2013.
121. ^ Harris, Michael (2 January 2015). "Book review: 'The Internet Is Not the Answer' by
Andrew Keen". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 20 January 2015.
Retrieved 25 January 2015.
122. ^ MM Wanderley; D Birnbaum; J Malloch (2006). New Interfaces For Musical
Expression. IRCAM – Centre Pompidou. p. 180. ISBN 978-2-84426-314-8.
123. ^ Nancy T. Lombardo (June 2008). "Putting Wikis to Work in Libraries". Medical
Reference Services Quarterly. 27 (2): 129–145. doi:10.1080/02763860802114223.
PMID 18844087. S2CID 11552140.
124. ^ Noveck, Beth Simone (March 2007). "Wikipedia and the Future of Legal Education".
Journal of Legal Education. 57 (1). Archived from the original on 3 July 2014.
(subscription required)
125. ^ "WikiStats by S23". S23Wiki. 3 April 2008. Archived from the original on 25 August
2014. Retrieved 7 April 2007.
126. ^ "The Arab Uprising's Cascading Effects". Miller-mccune.com. 23 February 2011.
Archived from the original on 27 February 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2011.
127. ^ "The Role of the Internet in Democratic Transition: Case Study of the Arab Spring"
(PDF). 5 July 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 July 2012., Davit
Chokoshvili, Master's Thesis, June 2011
128. ^ Kirkpatrick, David D. (9 February 2011). "Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide
Revolt". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 29 January 2017.
129. ^ Ronald Deibert; John Palfrey; Rafal Rohozinski; Jonathan Zittrain (25 January 2008).
Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering. MIT Press.
ISBN 978-0-262-29072-2.
130. ^ Larry Diamond; Marc F. Plattner (30 July 2012). Liberation Technology: Social Media
and the Struggle for Democracy. JHU Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-0568-1.
131. ^ Roodman, David (2 October 2009). "Kiva Is Not Quite What It Seems". Center for
Global Development. Archived from the original on 10 February 2010. Retrieved 16
January 2010.
132. ^ Strom, Stephanie (9 November 2009). "Confusion on Where Money Lent via Kiva
Goes". The New York Times. p. 6. Archived from the original on 29 January 2017.
133. ^ Andriole, Steve. "Cyberwarfare Will Explode In 2020 (Because It's Cheap, Easy And
Effective)". Forbes. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
134. ^ Diffie, Whitfield; Susan Landau (August 2008). "Internet Eavesdropping: A Brave
New World of Wiretapping". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 13
November 2008. Retrieved 13 March 2009.

37/51
135. ^ "CALEA Archive". Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). Archived from the original
on 25 October 2008. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
136. ^ "CALEA: Frequently Asked Questions". Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). 20
September 2007. Archived from the original on 1 May 2009. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
137. ^ "American Council on Education vs. FCC, Decision, United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit" (PDF). 9 June 2006. Archived from the original
(PDF) on 7 September 2012. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
138. ^ Hill, Michael (11 October 2004). "Government funds chat room surveillance
research". USA Today. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 11 May 2010.
Retrieved 19 March 2009.
139. ^ McCullagh, Declan (30 January 2007). "FBI turns to broad new wiretap method".
ZDNet News. Archived from the original on 7 April 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2009.
140. ^ "Freedom on the Net 2018" (PDF). Freedom House. November 2018. Archived from
the original (PDF) on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
141. ^ OpenNet Initiative "Summarized global Internet filtering data spreadsheet" Archived
10 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine, 8 November 2011 and "Country Profiles"
Archived 26 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine, the OpenNet Initiative is a
collaborative partnership of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs,
University of Toronto; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University;
and the SecDev Group, Ottawa
142. ^ Due to legal concerns the OpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering of child
pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering, they do not
include other types of censorship.
143. ^ "Enemies of the Internet 2014: Entities at the heart of censorship and surveillance".
Reporters Without Borders. Paris. 11 March 2014. Archived from the original on 12
March 2014.
144. ^ "Internet Enemies" (PDF). Reporters Without Borders. Paris. 12 March 2012.
Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 July 2017.
145. ^ Deibert, Ronald J.; Palfrey, John G.; Rohozinski, Rafal; Zittrain, Jonathan (April
2010). Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace. MIT
Press. ISBN 9780262514354. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011.
146. ^ "Finland censors anti-censorship site". The Register. 18 February 2008. Archived
from the original on 20 February 2008. Retrieved 19 February 2008.
147. ^ Albert, Réka; Jeong, Hawoong; Barabási, Albert-László (9 September 1999).
"Diameter of the World-Wide Web". Nature. 401 (6749): 130–131. arXiv:cond-
mat/9907038. Bibcode:1999Natur.401..130A. doi:10.1038/43601. S2CID 4419938.
148. ^ "Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia". The Guardian. 6 April
2011. Archived from the original on 25 August 2013. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
149. ^ Cowie, James. "Egypt Leaves the Internet". Renesys. Archived from the original on
28 January 2011. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
150. ^ "Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest". BBC News. 28 January
2011. Archived from the original on 23 January 2012.

38/51
151. ^ a b Coroama, Vlad C.; Hilty, Lorenz M. (February 2014). "Assessing Internet energy
intensity: A review of methods and results" (PDF). Environmental Impact Assessment
Review. 45: 63–68. doi:10.1016/j.eiar.2013.12.004. Archived (PDF) from the original on
23 September 2020. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
152. ^ Giles, Jim (26 October 2011). "Internet responsible for 2 per cent of global energy
usage". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 1 October 2014.,
153. ^ Raghavan, Barath; Ma, Justin (14 November 2011). "The Energy and Emergy of the
Internet" (PDF). Proceedings of the 10th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks.
Cambridge, MA.: ACM SIGCOMM: 1–6. doi:10.1145/2070562.2070571.
ISBN 9781450310598. S2CID 6125953. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 August
2014.
154. ^ Cwienk, Jeannette (11 July 2019). "Is Netflix bad for the environment? How
streaming video contributes to climate change | DW | 11.07.2019". Deutsche Welle.
Archived from the original on 12 July 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
155. ^ ""Climate crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video" : Our new report". The Shift
Project. 10 July 2019. Archived from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 19 July
2019.

Sources
 This article incorporates text from a free content work. . Text taken from World
Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017/2018​,
202, UNESCO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see
this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms
of use.

Further reading
First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet by the University Library of the
University of Illinois at Chicago, ISSN 1396-0466
The Internet Explained, Vincent Zegna & Mike Pepper, Sonet Digital, November 2005,
pp. 1–7.
Abram, Cleo (8 January 2020). "How Does the Internet Work?". YouTube. Vox Media.
Archived from the original on 27 October 2021. Retrieved 30 August 2020.

External links
Internet at Wikipedia's sister projects

Media culture

39/51
Media 24-hour news cycle
Alternative media
Digital media
Electronic media
Mass media
Mainstream media
New media
News broadcasting
News media
Old media
Social media

Ideology Mainstream
Advanced capitalism
American Dream
Bipartisanship
Consumerism
Pensée unique
Pop music

Deception
Forms Advertising
Propaganda
Fake news
Public relations
Spin
Tabloid journalism

Techniques Cult of personality

Dumbing down
Framing
Media circus
Media event
Narcotizing dysfunction
Recuperation
Sensationalism
Viral phenomenon

Others Catch and kill

Crowd manipulation
Managing the news
Media manipulation

40/51
Philosophers Theodor W. Adorno
Jean Baudrillard
Edward Bernays
Noam Chomsky
Guy Debord
Walter Lippmann
Marshall McLuhan
Jacques Rancière

Counterculture Boycott
Call-out culture
Cancel culture
Civil disobedience
Culture jamming
Demonstration
Graffiti
Occupation
Political satire
Protest
Punk
Review bomb
Strike action

In academia Influence of mass media

Media studies
Mediatization
Semiotic democracy
The Lonely Crowd

Issues Anonymity
Concentration of media ownership
Freedom of speech
Media bias
Privacy
Social influence

Synonyms Advanced capitalism

Culture industry
Mass society
Post-Fordism
Society of the Spectacle

Semantic Web

41/51
Background Databases
Hypertext
Internet
Ontologies
Semantics
Semantic networks
World Wide Web

Sub-topics Dataspaces
Hyperdata
Linked data
Rule-based systems

Applications Semantic analytics

Semantic broker
Semantic computing
Semantic mapper
Semantic matching
Semantic publishing
Semantic reasoner
Semantic search
Semantic service-oriented architecture
Semantic wiki
Solid

Related Collective intelligence

topics Description logic
Folksonomy
Geotagging
Information architecture
Knowledge extraction
Knowledge management
Knowledge representation and reasoning
Library 2.0
Digital library
Digital humanities
Metadata
References
Topic map
Web 2.0
Web engineering
Web Science Trust

Standards

42/51
Syntax and supporting HTTP
technologies IRI
URI
RDF
triples
RDF/XML
JSON-LD
Turtle
TriG
Notation3
N-Triples
TriX (no W3C standard)
RRID
SPARQL
XML
Semantic HTML

Schemas, ontologies and rules Common Logic

OWL
RDFS
Rule Interchange Format
Semantic Web Rule
Language
ALPS
SHACL

Semantic annotation eRDF

GRDDL
Microdata
Microformats
RDFa
SAWSDL
Facebook Platform

Common vocabularies DOAP

Dublin Core
FOAF
Schema.org
SIOC
SKOS

Microformat vocabularies hAtom

hCalendar
hCard
hProduct
hRecipe
hReview

43/51
Cloud computing

As a service Content as a service

Data as a service
Desktop as a service
Function as a service
Infrastructure as a service
Integration platform as a service
Mobile backend as a service
Network as a service
Platform as a service
Security as a service
Software as a service

Technologies Cloud database

Cloud storage
Data centers
Distributed file system for cloud
Hardware virtualization
Internet
Native cloud application
Networking
Security
Structured storage
Virtual appliance
Web APIs
Virtual private cloud

Applications Box
Dropbox
Google
Workspace
Drive
HP Cloud (closed)
IBM Cloud
Microsoft
Office 365
OneDrive
Nextcloud
Oracle Cloud
Rackspace
Salesforce
Workday
Zoho

44/51
Platforms Alibaba Cloud
Amazon Web Services
AppScale
Box
Bluemix
CloudBolt
Cloud Foundry
Cocaine (PaaS)
Creatio
Engine Yard
Helion
GE Predix
Google App Engine
GreenQloud
Heroku
IBM Cloud
Inktank
Jelastic
Microsoft Azure
MindSphere
Netlify
Oracle Cloud
OutSystems
openQRM
OpenShift
PythonAnywhere
RightScale
Scalr
Force.com
SAP Cloud Platform
Splunk
Vercel
VMware vCloud Air
WaveMaker

45/51
Infrastructure Alibaba Cloud
Amazon Web Services
Abiquo Enterprise Edition
CloudStack
Citrix Cloud
CtrlS
Deft
DigitalOcean
EMC Atmos
Eucalyptus
Fujitsu
Google Cloud Platform
GreenButton
GreenQloud
IBM Cloud
iland
Joyent
Linode
Lunacloud
Microsoft Azure
Mirantis
Netlify
Nimbula
Nimbus
OpenIO
OpenNebula
OpenStack
Oracle Cloud
OrionVM
Rackspace Cloud
Safe Swiss Cloud
Zadara
libvirt
libguestfs
OVirt
Virtual Machine Manager
Wakame-vdc
Vercel
Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand

Category
Commons

Telecommunications

History Beacon
Broadcasting
Cable protection system
Cable TV

46/51
Communications satellite
Computer network
Data compression
audio
DCT
image
video
Digital media
Internet video
online video platform
social media
streaming
Drums
Edholm's law
Electrical telegraph
Fax
Heliographs
Hydraulic telegraph
Information Age
Information revolution
Internet
Mass media
Mobile phone
Smartphone
Optical telecommunication
Optical telegraphy
Pager
Photophone
Prepaid mobile phone
Radio
Radiotelephone
Satellite communications
Semaphore
Semiconductor
device
MOSFET
transistor
Smoke signals
Telecommunications history
Telautograph
Telegraphy
Teleprinter (teletype)
Telephone
The Telephone Cases
Television
digital
streaming
Undersea telegraph line
Videotelephony
Whistled language
Wireless revolution

47/51
Pioneers Nasir Ahmed
Edwin Howard Armstrong
Mohamed M. Atalla
John Logie Baird
Paul Baran
John Bardeen
Alexander Graham Bell
Emile Berliner
Tim Berners-Lee
Francis Blake (telephone)
Jagadish Chandra Bose
Charles Bourseul
Walter Houser Brattain
Vint Cerf
Claude Chappe
Yogen Dalal
Daniel Davis Jr.
Donald Davies
Amos Dolbear
Thomas Edison
Lee de Forest
Philo Farnsworth
Reginald Fessenden
Elisha Gray
Oliver Heaviside
Robert Hooke
Erna Schneider Hoover
Harold Hopkins
Gardiner Greene Hubbard
Internet pioneers
Bob Kahn
Dawon Kahng
Charles K. Kao
Narinder Singh Kapany
Hedy Lamarr
Innocenzo Manzetti
Guglielmo Marconi
Robert Metcalfe
Antonio Meucci
Samuel Morse
Jun-ichi Nishizawa
Charles Grafton Page
Radia Perlman
Alexander Stepanovich Popov
Tivadar Puskás
Johann Philipp Reis
Claude Shannon
Almon Brown Strowger
Henry Sutton
Charles Sumner Tainter
Nikola Tesla
Camille Tissot

48/51
 Alfred Vail
Thomas A. Watson
Charles Wheatstone
Vladimir K. Zworykin

Transmission Coaxial cable

media
Fiber-optic communication
optical fiber
Free-space optical communication
Molecular communication
Radio waves
wireless
Transmission line
data transmission circuit
telecommunication circuit

Network topology Bandwidth

and switching
Links
Nodes
terminal
Network switching
circuit
packet
Telephone exchange

Multiplexing Space-division
Frequency-division
Time-division
Polarization-division
Orbital angular-momentum
Code-division

Concepts Communication protocol

Computer network
Data transmission
Store and forward
Telecommunications equipment

49/51
Types of network Cellular network
Ethernet
ISDN
LAN
Mobile
NGN
Public Switched Telephone
Radio
Television
Telex
UUCP
WAN
Wireless network

Notable networks ARPANET

BITNET
CYCLADES
FidoNet
Internet
Internet2
JANET
NPL network
Toasternet
Usenet

Locations Africa
Americas
North
South
Antarctica
Asia
Europe
Oceania
(Global telecommunications regulation bodies)

 Telecommunication portal
Category
Outline
Commons

Authority control

50/51
National libraries Spain
France (data)
Ukraine
Germany
Israel
United States
Japan
Czech Republic

Other Historical Dictionary of Switzerland

National Archives (US)

51/51
Packet switching
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching

In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into packets that

are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in
the header is used by networking hardware to direct the packet to its destination, where the
payload is extracted and used by an operating system, application software, or higher layer
protocols. Packet switching is the primary basis for data communications in computer
networks worldwide.

In the early 1960s, American computer scientist Paul Baran developed the concept that he
called "distributed adaptive message block switching", with the goal of providing a fault-
tolerant, efficient routing method for telecommunication messages as part of a research
program at the RAND Corporation, funded by the United States Department of Defense.[1]
His ideas contradicted then-established principles of pre-allocation of network bandwidth,
exemplified by the development of telecommunications in the Bell System. The new concept
found little resonance among network implementers until the independent work of British
computer scientist Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory in 1965. Davies is
credited with coining the modern term packet switching and inspiring numerous packet
switching networks in the decade following, including the incorporation of the concept into
the design of the ARPANET in the United States.[2][3] The ARPANET was the primary
precursor network of the modern Internet.

Concept
A simple definition of packet switching
is:

The routing and transferring of data by

means of addressed packets so that a
channel is occupied during the
transmission of the packet only, and
upon completion of the transmission
the channel is made available for the
transfer of other traffic.[4][5]
An animation demonstrating datagram type of packet
Packet switching allows delivery of switching across a network
variable bit rate data streams, realized
as sequences of packets, over a computer network which allocates transmission resources as
needed using statistical multiplexing or dynamic bandwidth allocation techniques. As they
traverse networking hardware, such as switches and routers, packets are received, buffered,

1/27
queued, and retransmitted (stored and forwarded), resulting in variable latency and
throughput depending on the link capacity and the traffic load on the network. Packets are
normally forwarded by intermediate network nodes asynchronously using first-in, first-out
buffering, but may be forwarded according to some scheduling discipline for fair queuing,
traffic shaping, or for differentiated or guaranteed quality of service, such as weighted fair
queuing or leaky bucket. Packet-based communication may be implemented with or without
intermediate forwarding nodes (switches and routers). In case of a shared physical medium
(such as radio or 10BASE5), the packets may be delivered according to a multiple access
scheme.

Packet switching contrasts with another principal networking paradigm, circuit switching, a
method which pre-allocates dedicated network bandwidth specifically for each
communication session, each having a constant bit rate and latency between nodes. In cases
of billable services, such as cellular communication services, circuit switching is
characterized by a fee per unit of connection time, even when no data is transferred, while
packet switching may be characterized by a fee per unit of information transmitted, such as
characters, packets, or messages.

A packet switch has four components: input ports, output ports, routing processor, and
switching fabric.[6]

History
Further information: History of the Internet

Invention and development

The concept of switching small blocks of data was first explored independently by Paul Baran
at the RAND Corporation in the early 1960s in the US and Donald Davies at the National
Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK in 1965.[7][8]

In the late 1950s, the US Air Force established a wide area network for the Semi-Automatic
Ground Environment (SAGE) radar defense system. Recognizing vulnerabilities in this
network, the Air Force sought a system that might survive a nuclear attack to enable a
response, thus diminishing the attractiveness of the first strike advantage by enemies (see
Mutual assured destruction).[9] Baran developed the concept of distributed adaptive
message block switching in support of the Air Force initiative.[10] The concept was first
presented to the Air Force in the summer of 1961 as briefing B-265,[9] later published as
RAND report P-2626 in 1962,[11] and finally in report RM 3420 in 1964.[12] Report P-2626
described a general architecture for a large-scale, distributed, survivable communications
network. The work focuses on three key ideas: use of a decentralized network with multiple
paths between any two points, dividing user messages into message blocks, and delivery of
these messages by store and forward switching.[13][14]

2/27
Davies independently developed a similar message routing concept and more detailed
network design in 1965. He coined the term packet switching, and proposed building a
commercial nationwide data network in the UK.[15] He gave a talk on the proposal in 1966,
after which a person from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) told him about Baran's work. Roger
Scantlebury, a member of Davies' team met Lawrence Roberts at the 1967 Symposium on
Operating Systems Principles and suggested it for use in the ARPANET.[16] Davies had
chosen some of the same parameters for his original network design as did Baran, such as a
packet size of 1024 bits. In 1966, Davies proposed that a network should be built at the
laboratory to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of packet switching. To deal
with packet permutations (due to dynamically updated route preferences) and to datagram
losses (unavoidable when fast sources send to a slow destinations), he assumed that "all users
of the network will provide themselves with some kind of error control",[17] thus inventing
what came to be known the end-to-end principle. After a pilot experiment in 1969, the NPL
Data Communications Network entered service in 1970.[18]

Leonard Kleinrock conducted research into queueing theory for his doctoral dissertation at
MIT in 1961-2 and published it as a book in 1964 in the field of message switching.[19] In
1968, Lawrence Roberts contracted with Kleinrock to carry out theoretical work at UCLA to
measure and model the performance of the ARPANET, which underpinned the development
of the network in the early 1970s.[7] The NPL team also carried out simulation work on
packet networks, including datagram networks.[18][20]

The French CYCLADES network was designed by Louis Pouzin in the early 1970s to study
internetworking. It was the first to implement the end-to-end principle of Davies, and make
the hosts responsible for the reliable delivery of data on a packet-switched network, rather
than this being a service of the network itself. His team was thus first to tackle the highly
complex problem of providing user applications with a reliable virtual circuit service while
using a best-effort service, an early contribution to what will be Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP).

In May 1974, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn described the Transmission Control Program, an
internetworking protocol for sharing resources using packet-switching among the nodes.[21]
The specifications of the TCP were then published in RFC 675 (Specification of Internet
Transmission Control Program), written by Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine in
December 1974.[22] This monolithic protocol was later layered as the Transmission Control
Protocol, TCP, atop the Internet Protocol, IP.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, national and international public data networks emerged
based on the X.25 protocol. X.25 is built on the concept of virtual circuits emulating
traditional telephone connections.

3/27
For a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the network engineering community was
polarized over the implementation of competing protocol suites, commonly known as the
Protocol Wars. It was unclear which of the OSI model and the Internet protocol suite would
result in the best and most robust computer networks.[23][24][25]

Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) VLSI (very-large-scale integration)

technology led to the development of high-speed broadband packet switching during the
1980s–1990s.[26][27][28]

'Paternity' dispute

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Leonard Kleinrock sought to be recognized as the "father of

modern data networking".[29] However, Kleinrock's claims that his work in the early 1960s
originated the concept of packet switching and that this work was the source of the packet
switching concepts used in the ARPANET are disputed by other Internet pioneers,[29][30][31]
including by Robert Taylor,[32] Paul Baran,[33] and Donald Davies.[34][35] Baran and Davies
are recognized by historians and the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame for independently
inventing the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking
including the Internet.[36][37]

Connectionless and connection-oriented modes

Packet switching may be classified into connectionless packet switching, also known as
datagram switching, and connection-oriented packet switching, also known as virtual circuit
switching. Examples of connectionless systems are Ethernet, Internet Protocol (IP), and the
User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Connection-oriented systems include X.25, Frame Relay,
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

In connectionless mode each packet is labeled with a destination address, source address,
and port numbers. It may also be labeled with the sequence number of the packet. This
information eliminates the need for a pre-established path to help the packet find its way to
its destination, but means that more information is needed in the packet header, which is
therefore larger. The packets are routed individually, sometimes taking different paths
resulting in out-of-order delivery. At the destination, the original message may be
reassembled in the correct order, based on the packet sequence numbers. Thus a virtual
circuit carrying a byte stream is provided to the application by a transport layer protocol,
although the network only provides a connectionless network layer service.

Connection-oriented transmission requires a setup phase to establish the parameters of

communication before any packet is transferred. The signaling protocols used for setup allow
the application to specify its requirements and discover link parameters. Acceptable values
for service parameters may be negotiated. The packets transferred may include a connection
identifier rather than address information and the packet header can be smaller, as it only

4/27
needs to contain this code and any information, such as length, timestamp, or sequence
number, which is different for different packets. In this case, address information is only
transferred to each node during the connection setup phase, when the route to the
destination is discovered and an entry is added to the switching table in each network node
through which the connection passes. When a connection identifier is used, routing a packet
requires the node to look up the connection identifier in a table.

Connection-oriented transport layer protocols such as TCP provide a connection-oriented

service by using an underlying connectionless network. In this case, the end-to-end principle
dictates that the end nodes, not the network itself, are responsible for the connection-
oriented behavior.

Packet switching in networks

Packet switching is used to optimize the use of the channel capacity available in digital
telecommunication networks, such as computer networks, and minimize the transmission
latency (the time it takes for data to pass across the network), and to increase robustness of
communication.

Packet switching is used in the Internet and most local area networks. The Internet is
implemented by the Internet Protocol Suite using a variety of link layer technologies. For
example, Ethernet and Frame Relay are common. Newer mobile phone technologies (e.g.,
GSM, LTE) also use packet switching. Packet switching is associated with connectionless
networking because, in these systems, no connection agreement needs to be established
between communicating parties prior to exchanging data.

X.25 is a notable use of packet switching in that, despite being based on packet switching
methods, it provides virtual circuits to the user. These virtual circuits carry variable-length
packets. In 1978, X.25 provided the first international and commercial packet switching
network, the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS). Asynchronous Transfer Mode
(ATM) also is a virtual circuit technology, which uses fixed-length cell relay connection
oriented packet switching.

Technologies such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and the Resource Reservation
Protocol (RSVP) create virtual circuits on top of datagram networks. MPLS and its
predecessors, as well as ATM, have been called "fast packet" technologies. MPLS, indeed, has
been called "ATM without cells".[38] Virtual circuits are especially useful in building robust
failover mechanisms and allocating bandwidth for delay-sensitive applications.

Packet-switched networks
Further information: History of the Internet

5/27
The history of packet-switched networks can be divided into three overlapping eras: early
networks before the introduction of X.25; the X.25 era when many postal, telephone, and
telegraph (PTT) companies provided public data networks with X.25 interfaces; and the
Internet era which initially competed with the OSI model.[39][40][41]

Early networks

Research into packet switching at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) began with a
proposal for a wide-area network in 1965,[2] and a local-area network in 1966.[42] ARPANET
funding was secured in 1966 by Bob Taylor, and planning began in 1967 when he hired Larry
Roberts. The NPL network, ARPANET, and SITA HLN became operational in 1969.

Before the introduction of X.25 in 1976,[43] about twenty different network technologies had
been developed. Two fundamental differences involved the division of functions and tasks
between the hosts at the edge of the network and the network core. In the datagram system,
operating according to the end-to-end principle, the hosts have the responsibility to ensure
orderly delivery of packets. In the virtual call system, the network guarantees sequenced
delivery of data to the host. This results in a simpler host interface but complicates the
network. The X.25 protocol suite uses this network type.

AppleTalk

AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple in 1985 for

Apple Macintosh computers. It was the primary protocol used by Apple devices through the
1980s and 1990s. AppleTalk included features that allowed local area networks to be
established ad hoc without the requirement for a centralized router or server. The AppleTalk
system automatically assigned addresses, updated the distributed namespace, and
configured any required inter-network routing. It was a plug-n-play system.[44][45]

AppleTalk implementations were also released for the IBM PC and compatibles, and the
Apple IIGS. AppleTalk support was available in most networked printers, especially laser
printers, some file servers and routers. AppleTalk support was terminated in 2009, replaced
by TCP/IP protocols.[44]

ARPANET

The ARPANET was a progenitor network of the Internet and one of the first networks, along
with ARPA's SATNET, to run the TCP/IP suite using packet switching technologies.

BNRNET

BNRNET was a network which Bell-Northern Research developed for internal use. It initially
had only one host but was designed to support many hosts. BNR later made major
contributions to the CCITT X.25 project.[46]

6/27
Cambridge Ring

The Cambridge Ring was an experimental ring network developed at the Computer
Laboratory, University of Cambridge. It operated from 1974 until the 1980s.

CompuServe

CompuServe developed its own packet switching network, implemented on DEC PDP-11
minicomputers acting as network nodes that were installed throughout the US (and later, in
other countries) and interconnected. Over time, the CompuServe network evolved into a
complicated multi-tiered network incorporating ATM, Frame Relay, Internet Protocol (IP)
and X.25 technologies.

CYCLADES

The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French research network designed and
directed by Louis Pouzin. First demonstrated in 1973, it was developed to explore alternatives
to the early ARPANET design and to support network research generally. It was the first
network to use the end-to-end principle and make the hosts responsible for reliable delivery
of data, rather than the network itself. Concepts of this network influenced later ARPANET
architecture.[47][48]

DECnet

DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation, originally

released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers.[49] It evolved into one of the
first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC into a networking
powerhouse in the 1980s. Initially built with three layers, it later (1982) evolved into a seven-
layer OSI-compliant networking protocol. The DECnet protocols were designed entirely by
Digital Equipment Corporation. However, DECnet Phase II (and later) were open standards
with published specifications, and several implementations were developed outside DEC,
including one for Linux.

DDX-1

DDX-1 was an experimental network from Nippon PTT. It mixed circuit switching and packet
switching. It was succeeded by DDX-2.[50]

EIN

The European Informatics Network (EIN), originally called COST 11, was a project beginning
in 1971 to link networks in Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland and Euratom. Six other
European countries also participated in the research on network protocols. Derek Barber
directed the project,and Roger Scantlebury led the UK technical contribution; both were
from NPL.[51][52][53] The contract for its implementation was awarded to an Anglo French
consortium led by the UK systems house Logica and Sesa and managed by Andrew Karney.

7/27
Work began in 1973 and it became operational in 1976 including nodes linking the NPL
network and CYCLADES.[54] The transport protocol of the EIN was the basis of the one
adopted by the International Networking Working Group.[55][56] EIN was replaced by
Euronet in 1979.[57]

EPSS

The Experimental Packet Switched Service (EPSS) was an experiment of the UK Post Office
Telecommunications. It was the first public data network in the UK when it began operating
in 1977.[58] Ferranti supplied the hardware and software. The handling of link control
messages (acknowledgements and flow control) was different from that of most other
networks.[59][60][61]

GEIS

As General Electric Information Services (GEIS), General Electric was a major international
provider of information services. The company originally designed a telephone network to
serve as its internal (albeit continent-wide) voice telephone network.

In 1965, at the instigation of Warner Sinback, a data network based on this voice-phone
network was designed to connect GE's four computer sales and service centers (Schenectady,
New York, Chicago, and Phoenix) to facilitate a computer time-sharing service.

After going international some years later, GEIS created a network data center near
Cleveland, Ohio. Very little has been published about the internal details of their network.
The design was hierarchical with redundant communication links.[62][63]

IPSANET

IPSANET was a semi-private network constructed by I. P. Sharp Associates to serve their

time-sharing customers. It became operational in May 1976.[64]

IPX/SPX

The Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) and Sequenced Packet Exchange (SPX) are Novell
networking protocols from the 1980s derived from Xerox Network Systems' IDP and SPP
protocols, respectively which date back to the 1970s. IPX/SPX was used primarily on
networks using the Novell NetWare operating systems.[65]

Merit Network

Merit Network, an independent nonprofit organization governed by Michigan's public

universities,[66] was formed in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad
to explore computer networking between three of Michigan's public universities as a means
to help the state's educational and economic development.[67] With initial support from the
State of Michigan and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the packet-switched network

8/27
was first demonstrated in December 1971 when an interactive host-to-host connection was
made between the IBM mainframe systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and
Wayne State University in Detroit.[68] In October 1972, connections to the CDC mainframe at
Michigan State University in East Lansing completed the triad. Over the next several years, in
addition to host-to-host interactive connections, the network was enhanced to support
terminal-to-host connections, host-to-host batch connections (remote job submission,
remote printing, batch file transfer), interactive file transfer, gateways to the Tymnet and
Telenet public data networks, X.25 host attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks,
Ethernet attached hosts, and eventually TCP/IP; additionally, public universities in Michigan
joined the network.[68][69] All of this set the stage for Merit's role in the NSFNET project
starting in the mid-1980s.

NPL

In 1965, Donald Davies of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) designed and
proposed a national commercial data network based on packet switching. The proposal was
not taken up nationally but, in 1966, he designed a local network using "interface
computers", today known as routers, to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of
packet switching.[70][71][72]

By 1968 Davies had begun building the NPL network to meet the needs of the
multidisciplinary laboratory and prove the technology under operational conditions.[73][18][74]
In 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached,[75] and more were added until
the network was replaced in 1986. NPL and the ARPANET were the first two networks to use
packet switching, and were interconnected in the early 1970s.[76][77][78]

Octopus

Octopus was a local network at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It connected

sundry hosts at the lab to interactive terminals and various computer peripherals including a
bulk storage system.[79][80][81]

Philips Research

Philips Research Laboratories in Redhill, Surrey developed a packet switching network for
internal use. It was a datagram network with a single switching node.[82]

PUP

PARC Universal Packet (PUP or Pup) was one of the two earliest internetworking protocol
suites; it was created by researchers at Xerox PARC in the mid-1970s. The entire suite
provided routing and packet delivery, as well as higher level functions such as a reliable byte
stream, along with numerous applications. Further developments led to Xerox Network
Systems (XNS).[83]

9/27
RCP

RCP was an experimental network created by the French PTT. It was used to gain experience
with packet switching technology before the specification of TRANSPAC was frozen.[84] RCP
was a virtual-circuit network in contrast to CYCLADES which was based on datagrams. RCP
emphasised terminal-to-host and terminal-to-terminal connection; CYCLADES was
concerned with host-to-host communication. RCP influenced the X.25 specification, which
was deployed on TRANSPAC and other public data networks.[85][86][87]

RETD

Red Especial de Transmisión de Datos (RETD) was a network developed by Compañía

Telefónica Nacional de España. It became operational in 1972 and thus was the first public
network.[88][89][90]

SCANNET

"The experimental packet-switched Nordic telecommunication network SCANNET was

implemented in Nordic technical libraries in the 1970s, and it included first Nordic electronic
journal Extemplo. Libraries were also among first ones in universities to accommodate
microcomputers for public use in the early 1980s."[91]

SITA HLN

SITA is a consortium of airlines. Its High Level Network (HLN) became operational in 1969
at about the same time as ARPANET. It carried interactive traffic and message-switching
traffic. As with many non-academic networks, very little has been published about it.[92]

SRCnet/SERCnet

A number of computer facilities serving the Science Research Council (SRC) community in
the United Kingdom developed beginning in the early 1970s. Each had their own star
network (ULCC London, UMRCC Manchester, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory). There were
also regional networks centred on Bristol (on which work was initiated in the late 1960s)
followed in the mid-late 1970s by Edinburgh, the Midlands and Newcastle. These groups of
institutions shared resources to provide better computing facilities than could be afforded
individually. The networks were each based on one manufacturer's standards and were
mutually incompatible and overlapping.[93][94][95] In 1981, the SRC was renamed the Science
and Engineering Research Council (SERC). In the early 1980s a standardisation and
interconnection effort started, hosted on an expansion of the SERCnet research network and
based on the Coloured Book protocols, later evolving into JANET.[96][97][98]

Systems Network Architecture

10/27
Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is IBM's proprietary networking architecture created in
1974. An IBM customer could acquire hardware and software from IBM and lease private
lines from a common carrier to construct a private network.[99]

Telenet

Telenet was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Telenet was
incorporated in 1973 and started operations in 1975. It was founded by Bolt Beranek &
Newman with Larry Roberts as CEO as a means of making packet switching technology
public. Telenet initially used a proprietary virtual connection host interface, but changed the
host interface to X.25 and the terminal interface to X.29.[100] It went public in 1979 and was
then sold to GTE.[101][102]

Tymnet

Tymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in San Jose, CA

that utilized virtual call packet switched technology and used X.25, SNA/SDLC, BSC and
ASCII interfaces to connect host computers (servers) at thousands of large companies,
educational institutions, and government agencies. Users typically connected via dial-up
connections or dedicated asynchronous serial connections. The business consisted of a large
public network that supported dial-up users and a private network business that allowed
government agencies and large companies (mostly banks and airlines) to build their own
dedicated networks. The private networks were often connected via gateways to the public
network to reach locations not on the private network. Tymnet was also connected to dozens
of other public networks in the U.S. and internationally via X.25/X.75 gateways.[103][104]

XNS

Xerox Network Systems (XNS) was a protocol suite promulgated by Xerox, which provided
routing and packet delivery, as well as higher level functions such as a reliable stream, and
remote procedure calls. It was developed from PARC Universal Packet (PUP).[105][106]

X.25 era
See also: Public data network
There were two kinds of X.25 networks. Some such as
DATAPAC and TRANSPAC were initially implemented
with an X.25 external interface. Some older networks such
as TELENET and TYMNET were modified to provide a
X.25 host interface in addition to older host connection
schemes. DATAPAC was developed by Bell-Northern
Research which was a joint venture of Bell Canada (a
CCITT SGVII X25 Advocates
common carrier) and Northern Telecom (a
telecommunications equipment supplier). Northern

11/27
Telecom sold several DATAPAC clones to foreign PTTs including the Deutsche Bundespost.
X.75 and X.121 allowed the interconnection of national X.25 networks. A user or host could
call a host on a foreign network by including the DNIC of the remote network as part of the
destination address.

AUSTPAC

AUSTPAC was an Australian public X.25 network operated by Telstra. Started by Telecom
Australia in the early 1980s, AUSTPAC was Australia's first public packet-switched data
network and supported applications such as on-line betting, financial applications—the
Australian Tax Office made use of AUSTPAC—and remote terminal access to academic
institutions, who maintained their connections to AUSTPAC up until the mid-late 1990s in
some cases. Access was via a dial-up terminal to a PAD, or, by linking a permanent X.25 node
to the network.[107]

ConnNet

ConnNet was a network operated by the Southern New England Telephone Company serving
the state of Connecticut.[108][109] Launched on March 11, 1985, it was the first local public
packet-switched network in the United States.[110]

Datanet 1

Datanet 1 was the public switched data network operated by the Dutch PTT Telecom (now
known as KPN). Strictly speaking Datanet 1 only referred to the network and the connected
users via leased lines (using the X.121 DNIC 2041), the name also referred to the public PAD
service Telepad (using the DNIC 2049). And because the main Videotex service used the
network and modified PAD devices as infrastructure the name Datanet 1 was used for these
services as well.[111]

DATAPAC

DATAPAC was the first operational X.25 network (1976).[112] It covered major Canadian
cities and was eventually extended to smaller centers.

Datex-P

Deutsche Bundespost operated the Datex-P national network in Germany. The technology
was acquired from Northern Telecom.[113]

Eirpac

Eirpac is the Irish public switched data network supporting X.25 and X.28. It was launched
in 1984, replacing Euronet. Eirpac is run by Eircom.[114][115][116]

Euronet

12/27
Nine member states of the European Economic Community contracted with Logica and the
French company SESA to set up a joint venture in 1975 to undertake the Euronet
development, using X.25 protocols to form virtual circuits. It was to replace EIN and
established a network in 1979 linking a number of European countries until 1984 when the
network was handed over to national PTTs.[117][118]

HIPA-NET

Hitachi designed a private network system for sale as a turnkey package to multi-national
organizations. In addition to providing X.25 packet switching, message switching software
was also included. Messages were buffered at the nodes adjacent to the sending and receiving
terminals. Switched virtual calls were not supported, but through the use of logical ports an
originating terminal could have a menu of pre-defined destination terminals.[119]

Iberpac

Iberpac is the Spanish public packet-switched network, providing X.25 services. It was based
on RETD which was operational since 1972. Iberpac was run by Telefonica.[120]

IPSS

In 1978, X.25 provided the first international and commercial packet-switching network, the
International Packet Switched Service (IPSS).

JANET

JANET was the UK academic and research network, linking all universities, higher education
establishments, and publicly funded research laboratories following its launch in 1984.[121]
The X.25 network, which used the Coloured Book protocols, was based mainly on GEC 4000
series switches, and ran X.25 links at up to 8 Mbit/s in its final phase before being converted
to an IP-based network in 1991. The JANET network grew out of the 1970s SRCnet, later
called SERCnet.[122]

PSS

Packet Switch Stream (PSS) was the Post Office Telecommunications (later to become British
Telecom) national X.25 network with a DNIC of 2342. British Telecom renamed PSS Global
Network Service (GNS), but the PSS name has remained better known. PSS also included
public dial-up PAD access, and various InterStream gateways to other services such as Telex.

REXPAC

REXPAC was the nationwide experimental packet switching data network in Brazil,
developed by the research and development center of Telebrás, the state-owned public
telecommunications provider.[123]

13/27
TRANSPAC

TRANSPAC was the national X.25 network in France.[124] It was developed locally at about
the same time as DATAPAC in Canada. The development was done by the French PTT and
influenced by the experimental RCP network.[84] It began operation in 1978, and served
commercial users and, after Minitel began, consumers.[125]

UNINETT

UNINETT was a wide-area Norwegian packet-switched network established through a joint

effort between Norwegian universities, research institutions and the Norwegian
Telecommunication administration. The original network was based on X.25; Internet
protocols were adopted later.[126]

VENUS-P

VENUS-P was an international X.25 network that operated from April 1982 through March
2006. At its subscription peak in 1999, VENUS-P connected 207 networks in 87 countries.
[127]

Venepaq

Venepaq is the national X.25 public network in Venezuela. It is run by Cantv and allows
direct and dial-up connections. Venepaq provides nationwide access at low cost. It provides
national and international access and allows connection from 19.2 to 64 kbit/s in direct
connections, and 1200, 2400 and 9600 bit/s in dial-up connections.

Internet era
When Internet connectivity was made available to anyone who could pay for an Internet
service provider subscription, the distinctions between national networks blurred. The user
no longer saw network identifiers such as the DNIC. Some older technologies such as circuit
switching have resurfaced with new names such as fast packet switching. Researchers have
created some experimental networks to complement the existing Internet.[128]

CSNET

The Computer Science Network (CSNET) was a computer network funded by the NSF that
began operation in 1981. Its purpose was to extend networking benefits for computer science
departments at academic and research institutions that could not be directly connected to
ARPANET due to funding or authorization limitations. It played a significant role in
spreading awareness of, and access to, national networking and was a major milestone on the
path to the development of the global Internet.[129][130]

Internet2

14/27
Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members
from the research and education communities, industry, and government.[131] The Internet2
community, in partnership with Qwest, built the first Internet2 Network, called Abilene, in
1998 and was a prime investor in the National LambdaRail (NLR) project.[132] In 2006,
Internet2 announced a partnership with Level 3 Communications to launch a brand new
nationwide network, boosting its capacity from 10 Gbit/s to 100 Gbit/s.[133] In October,
2007, Internet2 officially retired Abilene and now refers to its new, higher capacity network
as the Internet2 Network.

NSFNET

Main article: NSFNET

The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was
a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by
the National Science Foundation (NSF) beginning in 1985
to promote advanced research and education networking
in the United States.[134] NSFNET was also the name given
to several nationwide backbone networks operating at
speeds of 56 kbit/s, 1.5 Mbit/s (T1), and 45 Mbit/s (T3)
that were constructed to support NSF's networking NSFNET Traffic 1991, NSFNET
initiatives from 1985-1995. Initially created to link backbone nodes are shown at the
researchers to the nation's NSF-funded supercomputing top, regional networks below,
centers, through further public funding and private traffic volume is depicted from
industry partnerships it developed into a major part of the purple (zero bytes) to white (100
Internet backbone. billion bytes), visualization by
NCSA using traffic data provided
by the Merit Network.

NSFNET regional networks

In addition to the five NSF supercomputer centers, NSFNET provided connectivity to eleven
regional networks and through these networks to many smaller regional and campus
networks in the United States. The NSFNET regional networks were:[135][136]

BARRNet, the Bay Area Regional Research Network in Palo Alto, California;
CERFNET, California Education and Research Federation Network in San Diego,
California, serving California and Nevada;
CICNet, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation Network via the Merit Network in
Ann Arbor, Michigan and later as part of the T3 upgrade via Argonne National
Laboratory outside of Chicago, serving the Big Ten Universities and the University of
Chicago in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin;
Merit/MichNet in Ann Arbor, Michigan serving Michigan, formed in 1966, still in
operation as of 2016;[137]

15/27
 MIDnet in Lincoln, Nebraska serving Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, and South Dakota;
NEARNET, the New England Academic and Research Network in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, added as part of the upgrade to T3, serving Connecticut, Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, established in late 1988,
operated by BBN under contract to MIT, BBN assumed responsibility for NEARNET on
1 July 1993;[138]
NorthWestNet in Seattle, Washington, serving Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota,
Oregon, and Washington, founded in 1987;[139]
NYSERNet, New York State Education and Research Network in Ithaca, New York;
JVNCNet, the John von Neumann National Supercomputer Center Network in
Princeton, New Jersey, serving Delaware and New Jersey;
SESQUINET, the Sesquicentennial Network in Houston, Texas, founded during the
150th anniversary of the State of Texas;
SURAnet, the Southeastern Universities Research Association network in College Park,
Maryland and later as part of the T3 upgrade in Atlanta, Georgia serving Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, sold to BBN in 1994; and
Westnet in Salt Lake City, Utah and Boulder, Colorado, serving Arizona, Colorado, New
Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

National LambdaRail

The National LambdaRail was launched in September 2003. It is a 12,000-mile high-speed

national computer network owned and operated by the U.S. research and education
community that runs over fiber-optic lines. It was the first transcontinental 10 Gigabit
Ethernet network. It operates with high aggregate capacity of up to 1.6 Tbit/s and a high
40 Gbit/s bitrate, with plans for 100 Gbit/s.[140][141] The upgrade never took place and NLR
ceased operations in March 2014.

TransPAC, TransPAC2, and TransPAC3

TransPAC2 and TransPAC3, continuations of the TransPAC project, a high-speed

international Internet service connecting research and education networks in the Asia-Pacific
region to those in the US.[142][143] TransPAC is part of the NSF's International Research
Network Connections (IRNC) program.[144]

Very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS)

The Very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) came on line in April 1995 as part of
a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored project to provide high-speed
interconnection between NSF-sponsored supercomputing centers and select access points in
the United States.[145] The network was engineered and operated by MCI
Telecommunications under a cooperative agreement with the NSF. By 1998, the vBNS had

16/27
grown to connect more than 100 universities and research and engineering institutions via 12
national points of presence with DS-3 (45 Mbit/s), OC-3c (155 Mbit/s), and OC-12c (622
Mbit/s) links on an all OC-12c backbone, a substantial engineering feat for that time. The
vBNS installed one of the first ever production OC-48c (2.5 Gbit/s) IP links in February 1999
and went on to upgrade the entire backbone to OC-48c.[146]

In June 1999 MCI WorldCom introduced vBNS+ which allowed attachments to the vBNS
network by organizations that were not approved by or receiving support from NSF.[147] After
the expiration of the NSF agreement, the vBNS largely transitioned to providing service to
the government. Most universities and research centers migrated to the Internet2
educational backbone. In January 2006, when MCI and Verizon merged,[148] vBNS+ became
a service of Verizon Business.[149]

See also

References
1. ^ Baran, Paul (August 1964). On Distributed Communications. Vol. I–XI. Rand
Corporation Research Report.
2. ^ Jump up to: a b Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of
Packet Switching". Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 5
September 2017. “Almost immediately after the 1965 meeting, Donald Davies
conceived of the details of a store-and-forward packet switching system”
3. ^ Post, The Washington (2015-11-10). The Threatened Net: How the Web Became a
Perilous Place. Diversion Books. ISBN 978-1-68230-136-4. “Historians credit seminal
insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran”
4. ^ Weik, Martin (6 Dec 2012). Fiber Optics Standard Dictionary. Springer Science &
Business Media. ISBN 978-1461560234.
5. ^ National Telecommunication Information Administration (1 April 1997).
Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunications Terms. Vol. 1037, Part 3 of
Federal Standard. Government Institutes. ISBN 1461732328.
6. ^ Forouzan, Behrouz A.; Fegan, Sophia Chung (2007). Data Communications and
Networking. Huga Media. ISBN 978-0-07-296775-3.
7. ^ Jump up to: a b Abbate, Jane (2000). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. pp. 37–8,
58–9. ISBN 978-0262261333.
8. ^ "Inductee Details - Donald Watts Davies". National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Retrieved 6 September 2017; "Inductee Details - Paul Baran". National Inventors Hall
of Fame. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
9. ^ Jump up to: a b Stewart, Bill (2000-01-07). "Paul Baran Invents Packet Switching".
Living Internet. Retrieved 2008-05-08.

17/27
10. ^ Baran, Paul (May 27, 1960). "Reliable Digital Communications Using Unreliable
Network Repeater Nodes" (PDF). The RAND Corporation: 1. Archived (PDF) from the
original on 2022-10-10. Retrieved July 7, 2016.
11. ^ Baran, Paul (1962). "RAND Paper P-2626".
12. ^ Baran, Paul (January 1964). "On Distributed Communications".
13. ^ Baran, Paul (2002). "The beginnings of packet switching: some underlying
concepts" (PDF). IEEE Communications Magazine. 40 (7): 42–48.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2002.1018006. ISSN 0163-6804. Archived (PDF) from the
original on 2022-10-10. “Essentially all the work was defined by 1961, and fleshed out
and put into formal written form in 1962. The idea of hot potato routing dates from
late 1960.”
14. ^ Monica, 1776 Main Street Santa; California 90401-3208. "Paul Baran and the
Origins of the Internet". www.rand.org. Retrieved 2020-02-15.
15. ^ Davies, D. W. (17 March 1986), Oral History 189: D. W. Davies interviewed by
Martin Campbell-Kelly at the National Physical Laboratory, Charles Babbage
Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, archived from the original on 29 July
2014, retrieved 21 July 2014
16. ^ Gillies, James; Cailliau, Robert (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the
World Wide Web. Oxford University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0192862075.
17. ^
18. ^ Jump up to: a b c C. Hempstead; W. Worthington (2005). Encyclopedia of 20th-
Century Technology. Routledge. pp. 573–5. ISBN 9781135455514.
19. ^ Isaacson, Walter (2014). The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and
Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon and Schuster. p. 246.
ISBN 9781476708690.
20. ^ Pelkey, James. "6.3 CYCLADES Network and Louis Pouzin 1971-1972".
Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications
1968-1988.
21. ^ Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"
(PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648.
doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. Archived (PDF) from the original
on 2022-10-10. “The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful
comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R.
Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin
who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S.
Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.”
22. ^ Cerf, Vinton; Dalal, Yogen; Sunshine, Carl (December 1974). Specification of
Internet Transmission Control Protocol. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0675. RFC 675.
23. ^ Andrew L. Russell (30 July 2013). "OSI: The Internet That Wasn't". IEEE Spectrum.
Vol. 50, no. 8.

18/27
24. ^ Russell, Andrew L. "Rough Consensus and Running Code' and the Internet-OSI
Standards War" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Archived (PDF)
from the original on 2019-11-17.
25. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice (2010-04-26). A History of International
Research Networking: The People who Made it Happen. John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
26. ^
27. ^
28. ^ Gibson, Jerry D. (2018). The Communications Handbook. CRC Press.
ISBN 9781420041163.
29. ^ Jump up to: a b Isaacson, Walter (2014). The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers,
Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster. pp. 244–5.
ISBN 9781476708690. “This led to an outcry among many of the other Internet
pioneers, who publicly attacked Kleinrock and said that his brief mention of breaking
messages into smaller pieces did not come close to being a proposal for packet
switching”
30. ^ Alex McKenzie (2009), Comments on Dr. Leonard Kleinrock's claim to be "the
Father of Modern Data Networking", retrieved April 23, 2015 "... there is nothing in
the entire 1964 book that suggests, analyzes, or alludes to the idea of packetization."
31. ^ Trevor Harris, University of Wales (2009). "Who is the Father of the Internet?".
Variety in Mass Communication Research. Archived from the original on 2021-10-10.
Retrieved 2021-03-08. “Dr Willis H. Ware, Senior Computer Scientist and Research at
the RAND Corporation, notes that Davies (and others) were troubled by what they
regarded as in appropriate claims on the invention of packet switching”
32. ^ Robert Taylor (November 22, 2001), "Birthing the Internet: Letters From the
Delivery Room; Disputing a Claim", New York Times, “Authors who have interviewed
dozens of Arpanet pioneers know very well that the Kleinrock-Roberts claims are not
believed.”
33. ^ Katie Hafner (November 8, 2001), "A Paternity Dispute Divides Net Pioneers", New
York Times, “The Internet is really the work of a thousand people," Mr. Baran said.
"And of all the stories about what different people have done, all the pieces fit
together. It's just this one little case that seems to be an aberration.”
34. ^ Donald Davies (2001), "A Historical Study of the Beginnings of Packet Switching",
Computer Journal, British Computer Society, 44 (3): 152–162,
doi:10.1093/comjnl/44.3.152, “I can find no evidence that he understood the principles
of packet switching.”
35. ^ Scantlebury, Roger (25 June 2013). "Internet pioneers airbrushed from history".
The Guardian. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
36. ^ "The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable". Washington Post.
Archived from the original on 2015-05-30. Retrieved 2020-02-18. “Historians credit
seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul
Baran”

19/27
37. ^ "Inductee Details - Paul Baran". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from
the original on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017; "Inductee Details -
Donald Watts Davies". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the original
on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
38. ^ Pildush, G. "Interview with the author (of an MPLS-based VPN article)". Archived
from the original on 2007-09-29.
39. ^ Moore, Roger D. (August 2006). "This is a temporary index for a collection of
papers about packet-switching in the 1970s". Archived from the original on 24 July
2017. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
40. ^ Kirstein, Peter T. (1973). "A SURVEY OF PRESENT AMD PLANNED GENERAL
PURPOSE EUROPEAN DATA AND COMPUTER NETWORKS". Archived from the
original on 2 March 2017. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
41. ^ National Research Council (U.S.). National Research Network Review Committee,
Leonard Kleinrock; et al. (1988). Toward a National Research Network. National
Academies. p. 40. ISBN 9780309581257.
42. ^ "A SURVEY OF THE CAPABILITIES OF 8 PACKET SWITCHING NETWORKS".
1975. Archived from the original on 26 April 2017. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
“Research in packet switching networks at the British National Physical Laboratory
(NPL) predates ARPANET, having commenced in 1966.”
43. ^ Taylor, Steve; Jim Metzler (2008). "Vint Cerf on why TCP/IP was so long in
coming".
44. ^ Jump up to: a b Oppenheimer, Alan (January 2004). "A History of Macintosh
Networking". MacWorld Expo. Archived from the original on 2006-10-16.
45. ^ Sidhu, Gursharan; Andrews, Richard; Oppenheiner, Alan (1989). Inside AppleTalk
(2 ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-55021-0.
46. ^ Martel, C. C.; J. M. Cunningham; M. S. Grushcow. "THE BNR NETWORK: A
CANADIAN EXPERIENCE WITH PACKET SWITCHING TECHNOLOGY". IFIP
Congress 1974. pp. 10–14. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-
08-30.
47. ^ "A Technical History of CYCLADES". Technical Histories of the Internet & other
Network Protocols. Computer Science Department, University of Texas Austin.
Archived from the original on 2013-09-01.
48. ^ Zimmermann, Hubert (August 1977). "The Cyclades Experience-Results and
Impacts". IFIP Congress 1977. Toronto: 465–469.
49. ^ Digital Equipment Corporation, Nineteen Fifty-Seven to the Present (PDF), Digital
Equipment Corporation, 1978, p. 53, archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-06-30
50. ^ Wood, David C. (1975). "A Survey of the Capabilities of 8 Packet Switching
Networks". Proceedings of Symposium on Computer Networks. Archived from the
original on 2020-08-06. Retrieved 2020-03-13.
51. ^ Barber, D L. (1975). "Cost project 11". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication
Review. 5 (3): 12–15. doi:10.1145/1015667.1015669. S2CID 28994436.

20/27
52. ^ Scantlebury, Roger (1986). "X.25 - past, present and future". In Stokes, A. V. (ed.).
Communications Standards: State of the Art Report. Pergamon. pp. 203–216.
ISBN 978-1-4831-6093-1.
53. ^ "EIN (European Informatics Network)". Computer History Museum. Retrieved
2020-02-05.
54. ^ Abbate, Janet (2000). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-262-
51115-5.
55. ^ Davies, Donald Watts (1979). Computer networks and their protocols. John Wiley &
Sons. pp. 464. ISBN 9780471997504.
56. ^ Hardy, Daniel; Malleus, Guy (2002). Networks: Internet, Telephony, Multimedia:
Convergences and Complementarities. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 505.
ISBN 978-3-540-00559-9.
57. ^ Beauchamp, K. G. (2012-12-06). Interlinking of Computer Networks: Proceedings of
the NATO Advanced Study Institute held at Bonas, France, August 28 – September 8,
1978. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 55. ISBN 978-94-009-9431-7.
58. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice, eds. (2010). A history of international research
networking: the people who made it happen. John Wiley & Sons. p. 2. ISBN 978-
3527327102.
59. ^ Smith, Ed; Miller, Chris; Norton, Jim. "Packet Switching: The first steps on the road
to the information society".
60. ^ Bright, Roy D.; Smith, Michael A. (1973). "EXPERIMENTAL PACKET SWITCHING
PROJECT OF THE UK POST OFFICE". Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study
Institute on Computer Communication Networks. Sussex, United Kingdom: Noordhoff
International Publishing. pp. 435–44. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20.
Retrieved 2013-08-30.
61. ^ Pearson, DJ; Wilkin, D (1974). "Some Design Aspects of a public packet switching
network". Proceedings of the 2nd ICCC 74. pp. 199–213. Archived from the original on
2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
62. ^ Schwartz, Mischa; Boorstyn, Rober R.; Pickholtz, Raymond L. (November 1972).
"Terminal-Oriented Computer-Communication Networks". Proceedings of the IEEE.
60 (11): 1408–23. doi:10.1109/proc.1972.8912. Archived from the original on 2013-
10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
63. ^ Kirstein, Peter T. (1973). "A SURVEY OF PRESENT AND PLANNED GENERAL
PURPOSE EUROPEAN DATA AND COMPUTER NETWORKS". Proceedings of the
NATO Advanced Study Institute on Computer Communication Networks. Sussex,
United Kingdom: Noordhoff International Publishing. Archived from the original on
2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
64. ^ "IPSANET Documents". Archived from the original on 2021-02-25. Retrieved 2020-
10-22.
65. ^ Lee, Rich (1 March 1998). "Maintaining IPX Compatibility During a Migration to
TCP/IP on a NetWare Network". Novell. Retrieved 3 September 2013.

21/27
66. ^ Merit receives administrative services under an agreement with the University of
Michigan.
67. ^ John Mulcahy (1989), A Chronicle of Merit's Early History, Ann Arbor, Michigan:
Merit Network, archived from the original on 2009-02-07
68. ^ Jump up to: a b Merit Network Timeline: 1970–1979, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Merit
Network, archived from the original on 2016-01-01
69. ^ Merit Network Timeline: 1980–1989, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Merit Network,
archived from the original on 2016-01-01
70. ^ Pelkey, James (2007), "NPL Network and Donald Davies 1966 - 1971",
Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications
1968-1988, retrieved 13 April 2016
71. ^ K.G. Coffman; A.M. Odlyzco (22 May 2002). "Optics and Photonics". In I.
Kaminow; T. Li (eds.). Optical Fiber Telecommunications IV-B: Systems and
Impairments. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0080513195. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
72. ^ B. Steil; David G. Victor; Richard R. Nelson, eds. (1 Jan 2002). Technological
Innovation and Economic Performance. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-
0691090917. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
73. ^ Scantlebury, R. A.; Wilkinson, P.T. (1974). "The National Physical Laboratory Data
Communications Network". Proceedings of the 2nd ICCC 74. pp. 223–228. Archived
from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
74. ^ Ward, Mark (October 29, 2009). "Celebrating 40 years of the net". BBC News.
75. ^ "The National Physical Laboratory Data Communications Netowrk". 1974.
Archived from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
76. ^ "Donald Davies". thocp.net. Archived from the original on 2020-11-05. Retrieved
2017-08-28.
77. ^ "Donald Davies". internethalloffame.org.
78. ^ Mendicino, Samuel F. (1972). "1970 OCTOPUS: THE LAWRENCE RADIATION
LABORATORY NETWORK". Computer Networks. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall Inc.: 95–100. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
79. ^ Pehrson, David L. (1970). "AN ENGINEERING VIEW OF THE LRL OCTOPUS
COMPUTER NETWORK".
80. ^ Fletcher, John G. (1975). "Principles of Design in the Octopus Computer network".
81. ^ Burnett, D.J.; Sethi, H.R. (1977). "Packet Switching at Philips Research
Laboratories". Computer Networks. 1 (6): 341–348. doi:10.1016/0376-
5075(77)90010-1. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
82. ^ David R. Boggs; John F. Shoch; Edward A. Taft; Robert M. Metcalfe (April 1980).
"Pup: An Internetwork Architecture". IEEE Transactions on Communications. 28 (4):
612–624. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1980.1094684. S2CID 62684407.
83. ^ Després, R. (1974). "RCP, THE EXPERIMENTAL PACKET-SWITCHED DATA
TRANSMISSION SERVICE OF THE FRENCH PTT". Proceedings of ICCC 74. pp. 171–
85. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.

22/27
84. ^ Bache, A.; Matras, Y. (1976). "Fundamental Choices in the Development of RCP, the
Experimental Packet-Switching Data Transmission Service of the French PTT".
Proceedings of ICCC 76. pp. 311–16. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20.
Retrieved 2013-08-30.
85. ^ Bache, A.; L. Guillou; H. Layec; B. Long; Y. Matras (1976). "RCP, the Experimental
Packet-Switched Data Transmission Service of the French PTT: History, Connections,
Control". Proceedings of ICCC 76. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20.
Retrieved 2013-08-30.
86. ^ Alarcia, G.; Herrera, S. (1974). "C.T.N.E.'s PACKET SWITCHING NETWORK. ITS
APPLICATIONS". Proceedings of 2nd ICCC 74. pp. 163–170. Archived from the
original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
87. ^ Cuenca, L. (1980). "A Public Packet Switching Data Communications Network:
Eight Years of Operating Experience". Conference Record of ICC 80. IEEE. pp. 39.3.1–
39.3.5. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
88. ^ Lavandera, Luis (1980). "Architecture, Protocols and Performance of RETD".
Conference Record of ICC 80. IEEE. pp. 28.4.1–28.4.5. Archived from the original on
2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
89. ^ Haarala, Arja-Riitta (2001). "The Role of Libraries in Information Management in
Finnish University Setting". Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of
European University Information Systems. doi:10.18452/1040.
90. ^ Chretien, G.J.; Konig, W.M.; Rech, J.H. (1973). "The SITA Network". Proceedings of
the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Computer Communication Networks. Sussex,
United Kingdom: Noordhoff International Publishing. pp. 373–396. Archived from
the original on 2013-10-20.
91. ^ Rutter, Dorian (2005). From Diversity to Convergence: British Computer Networks
and the Internet, 1970-1995 (PDF) (Computer Science thesis). The University of
Warwick. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-10.
92. ^ Powell, Kit (1980-07-01). "Evolution of networks using standard protocols".
Computer Communications. 3 (3): 117–122. doi:10.1016/0140-3664(80)90069-9.
ISSN 0140-3664.
93. ^ Kirstein, Peter T. (Jan–Mar 1999). "Early Experiences with the ARPANET and
INTERNET in the UK" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 21 (1).
doi:10.1109/85.759368. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 August 2017.
Retrieved 18 May 2020.
94. ^ Wells, Mike (1988-11-01). "JANET-the United Kingdom Joint Academic Network".
Serials. 1 (3): 28–36. doi:10.1629/010328. ISSN 1475-3308.
95. ^ Reid, Jim (3 April 2007). "The Good Old Days: Networking in UK Academia ~25
Years Ago" (PDF). UKNOF7. Manchester. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28
May 2008. Retrieved 16 April 2008.
96. ^ "6th UK Network Operators' Forum Meeting Agenda". www.uknof.org.uk. Archived
from the original on 2007-06-21. Retrieved 2020-02-12. “See "15:00 Starting the
Commercial Internet in the UK (Peter Houlder)"”

23/27
 97. ^ Sundstrom, R.J.; G.D. Schultz (1980). "1980 SNA'S First Six Years: 1974-1980".
Proceedings of 5th ICCC 80. pp. 578–585. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20.
98. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching"
(PDF). IEEE Invited Paper. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 31, 2018.
Retrieved September 10, 2017.
99. ^ Johnson, Timothy (May 13, 1976). "Electronic post for switching data". New
Scientist.
100. ^ Mathison, S.L.; Roberts, L.G.; Walker, P.M. (May 2012). "The history of telenet and
the commercialization of packet switching in the U.S." IEEE Communications
Magazine. 50 (5): 28–45. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2012.6194380. S2CID 206453987.
101. ^ TYMES, LA ROY W. "TYMNET — A terminal oriented communication network".
Proceedings of the SJCC 1971. Vol. 38. pp. 211–16. Archived from the original on 2013-
05-09. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
102. ^ TYMES, LA ROY W. (April 1981). "Routing and Flow Control in TYMNET". IEEE
Transactions on Communications. COM-29 (4): 392–98.
doi:10.1109/tcom.1981.1095020. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved
2013-08-30.
103. ^ "Chapter 12: Xerox Network Systems". AIX Version 4.3 Communications
Programming Concepts. International Business Machines. October 1997.
104. ^ Andrew Colley (28 January 2004). "Telstra drops Austpac; reaches for finance
market". ZDNet. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
105. ^ Maidasani, Dinesh (June 2009). Straight To The Point - Networking. Laxmi
Publications Pvt Limited. ISBN 9788131805299.
106. ^ Smith, Christopher A. (1985). Technology for Disabled Persons: Conference Papers,
Discovery '84, October 1-3, 1984, Chicago, Illinois. Materials Development Center,
Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute, University of Wisconsin-Stout. p. 195.
ISBN 978-0-916671-61-7. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
107. ^ Rucker, Chauncy N.; And Others (1985). Establishing a Computer Network for
Connecticut.
108. ^ Steneker, H.J. (16 May 1991). "Graduation Report on X.25 data services in GSM
network" (PDF). Electrical Engineering - TUE. p. 20. Archived (PDF) from the
original on 2022-10-10. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
109. ^ Rybczynski, Tony (11 December 2009). "Commercialization of packet switching
(1975-1985): A Canadian perspective [History of Communications]". IEEE
Communications Magazine. Vol. 47, no. 12. pp. 26–31.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2009.5350364. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
110. ^ Parodi, Roberto (1992). Towards a New World in Computer Communication:
Eleventh International Conference on Computer Communication, Genova, Italy,
1992 : Proceedings of the Conference. IOS Press. ISBN 978-90-5199-110-9.
111. ^ Telecommunications Directory. Gale Research. 2000. p. 593. ISBN 978-0-7876-
3352-3.

24/27
112. ^ Gareth Locksley (1990). The Single European Market and the Information and
Communication Technologies. Belhaven Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-85293-101-8.
113. ^
114. ^
115. ^ Tomaru, K.; T. Kato; S.I. Yamaguchi (1980). "A Private Packet Network and Its
Application in A Worldwide Integrated Communication Network". Proceedings of
ICCC '80. pp. 517–22. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-08-
30.
116. ^ Infante, Jorge, El Desarrollo de la Red Publica de Datos en Espana (1971-1991): Un
Caso de Avance Technologico en Condiciones Adversas (PDF), archived from the
original (PDF) on 2010-04-05
117. ^ "1984-2014: 30 years of the Janet network" (PDF). Disc. Archived (PDF) from the
original on 2022-10-10. Retrieved 23 September 2017.
118. ^ Wells, Mike (1988-11-01). "JANET-the United Kingdom Joint Academic Network".
Serials. 1 (3): 28–36. doi:10.1629/010328. ISSN 1475-3308.
119. ^ "REXPAC-A Brazilian Packet Switching Data Network". 2017-06-09. Archived from
the original on 2017-06-09. Retrieved 2022-08-30.
120. ^ "X.25 Virtual Circuits - Transpac in France - Pre-Internet Data Networking".
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2010.5621965. S2CID 23639680.
121. ^ Epstein, Nadine (1986-03-09). "Et Voila! Le Minitel". The New York Times.
122. ^ "UNINETT Packet Switched Network Connecting Universities and Research
Institutes in Norway". 2017-06-09. Archived from the original on 2017-06-09.
Retrieved 2022-08-30.
123. ^ "KDDI to Close VENUS-P International Public Data Communications Service".
KDDI. 9 November 2005. Archived from the original on 2013-09-04. Retrieved 3
September 2013.
124. ^ Mike C. Smith (7 September 2017). "What is Dedicated Internet Access?". Retrieved
21 December 2018.
125. ^ "The Internet—From Modest Beginnings". NSF website. Archived from the original
on August 28, 2011. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
126. ^ "About Internet2". Retrieved 2009-06-26.
127. ^ Reardon, Marguerite (October 11, 2004). "Optical networking: The next
generation". CNET. Archived from the original on 10 July 2012.
128. ^ Jesdanun, Anick (October 11, 2007). "Speedy Internet2 gets 10x boost". USA Today.
Retrieved 26 June 2009.
129. ^ Harris, Susan R.; Gerich, Elise (April 1996). "Retiring the NSFNET Backbone
Service: Chronicling the End of an Era". ConneXions. Archived from the original on
2013-08-17.
130. ^ Gale, Doug (29 November 2007). "NSFNET: The Community" (PDF). NSFNET: The
Partnership That Changed The World. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-
10.

25/27
131. ^ Aupperle, Eric M. (1998). "Merit–Who, What, and Why, Part One: The Early Years,
1964-1983" (PDF). Merit Network, Inc., in Library Hi Tech. Archived (PDF) from the
original on 2013-04-23.
132. ^ "About NorthWestNet". NorthWestNet User Services Internet Resource Guide,
NorthWestNet Academic Computing Consortium, Inc. 24 March 1992. Retrieved 3
July 2012.
133. ^ Michael Feldman (October 28, 2008). "National LambdaRail Opens for Business".
HPCwire. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
134. ^ "About NLR". National LambdaRail. 3 September 2013. Archived from the original
on 2013-09-04.
135. ^ "International TransPAC2 Inaugurated". Archived from the original on 20 June
2013., HPC Wire, 8 April 2005.
136. ^ "TransPAC website". Archived from the original on 17 July 2013. Retrieved 3
September 2013.
137. ^ "TransPAC3 - Asia-US High Performance International Networking". International
Research Network Connections Program (IRNC), U.S. National Science Foundation,
October 2011. Archived from the original on 14 August 2013. Retrieved 3 September
2013.
138. ^ "NSF Solicitation 93-52-Network Access Point Manager, Routing Arbiter, Regional
Network Providers, and Very High Speed Backbone Network Services Provider for
NSFNET and the NREN(SM) Program". May 6, 1993. Archived from the original on
2016-03-05.
139. ^ Jamison, John; Nicklas, Randy; Miller, Greg; Thompson, Kevin; Wilder, Rick;
Cunningham, Laura; Song, Chuck (July 1998). "vBNS: not your father's Internet".
IEEE Spectrum. 35 (7): 38–46. doi:10.1109/6.694354.
140. ^ "vBNS+". Verizon Business.

Bibliography

Paul Baran et al., On Distributed Communications, Volumes I-XI Archived 2011-03-29

at the Wayback Machine (RAND Corporation Research Documents, August, 1964)
Paul Baran, On Distributed Communications: I Introduction to Distributed
Communications Network (RAND Memorandum RM-3420-PR. August 1964)
Paul Baran, On Distributed Communications Networks, (IEEE Transactions on
Communications Systems, Vol. CS-12 No. 1, pp. 1–9, March 1964)
D. W. Davies, K. A. Bartlett, R. A. Scantlebury, and P. T. Wilkinson, A digital
communications network for computers giving rapid response at remote terminals
(ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. October 1967)
R. A. Scantlebury, P. T. Wilkinson, and K. A. Bartlett, The design of a message
switching Centre for a digital communication network (IFIP 1968)
Lawrence Roberts, The Evolution of Packet Switching (Proceedings of the IEEE,
November, 1978)

26/27
Further reading
Abbate, Janet (2000), Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, ISBN 9780262511155
Hafner, Katie Where Wizards Stay Up Late (Simon and Schuster, 1996) pp 52–67
Norberg, Arthur; O'Neill, Judy E. Transforming Computer Technology: Information
Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1982 (Johns Hopkins University, 1996)

External links
Wilkinson, Peter (Summer 2020), "Packet Switching and the NPL Network",
Computer Resurrection: The Journal of the Computer Conservation Society (90),
ISSN 0958-7403
Oral history interview with Paul Baran. Charles Babbage Institute University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis. Baran describes his working environment at RAND, as well as
his initial interest in survivable communications, and the evolution, writing and
distribution of his eleven-volume work, "On Distributed Communications". Baran
discusses his interaction with the group at ARPA who were responsible for the later
development of the ARPANET.
NPL Data Communications Network NPL video, 1970s
Packet Switching History and Design, site reviewed by Baran, Roberts, and Kleinrock
Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet
20+ articles on packet switching in the 1970s Archived 2009-08-01 at the Wayback
Machine
"An Introduction to Packet Switched Networks", Phrack, 05/3/88

Telecommunications

Authority control: National libraries Israel

United States

27/27
What Is The Internet (And What Makes It Work) - December, 1999
By Robert E. Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf
(http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/what_is_internet.html)

This paper was prepared by the authors at the request of the Internet Policy Institute (IPI), a non-profit
organization based in Washington, D.C., for inclusion in their upcoming series of Internet related papers. It is
a condensation of a longer paper in preparation by the authors on the same subject. Many topics of potential
interest were not included in this condensed version because of size and subject matter constraints.
Nevertheless, the reader should get a basic idea of the Internet, how it came to be, and perhaps even how
to begin thinking about it from an architectural perspective. This will be especially important to policy makers
who need to distinguish the Internet as a global information system apart from its underlying
communications infrastructure.

INTRODUCTION

As we approach a new millennium, the Internet is revolutionizing our society, our economy and our
technological systems. No one knows for certain how far, or in what direction, the Internet will evolve. But no
one should underestimate its importance.

Over the past century and a half, important technological developments have created a global environment
that is drawing the people of the world closer and closer together. During the industrial revolution, we
learned to put motors to work to magnify human and animal muscle power. In the new Information Age, we
are learning to magnify brainpower by putting the power of computation wherever we need it, and to provide
information services on a global basis. Computer resources are infinitely flexible tools; networked together,
they allow us to generate, exchange, share and manipulate information in an uncountable number of ways.
The Internet, as an integrating force, has melded the technology of communications and computing to
provide instant connectivity and global information services to all its users at very low cost.

Ten years ago, most of the world knew little or nothing about the Internet. It was the private enclave of
computer scientists and researchers who used it to interact with colleagues in their respective disciplines.
Today, the Internet’s magnitude is thousands of times what it was only a decade ago. It is estimated that
about 60 million host computers on the Internet today serve about 200 million users in over 200 countries
and territories. Today’s telephone system is still much larger: about 3 billion people around the world now
talk on almost 950 million telephone lines (about 250 million of which are actually radio-based cell phones).
But by the end of the year 2000, the authors estimate there will be at least 300 million Internet users. Also,
the total numbers of host computers and users have been growing at about 33% every six months since
1988 – or roughly 80% per year. The telephone service, in comparison, grows an average of about 5-10%
per year. That means if the Internet keeps growing steadily the way it has been growing over the past few
years, it will be nearly as big as today’s telephone system by about 2006.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET

The underpinnings of the Internet are formed by the global interconnection of hundreds of thousands of
otherwise independent computers, communications entities and information systems. What makes this
interconnection possible is the use of a set of communication standards, procedures and formats in common
among the networks and the various devices and computational facilities connected to them. The
procedures by which computers communicate with each other are called "protocols." While this
infrastructure is steadily evolving to include new capabilities, the protocols initially used by the Internet are
called the "TCP/IP" protocols, named after the two protocols that formed the principal basis for Internet
operation.

On top of this infrastructure is an emerging set of architectural concepts and data structures for
heterogeneous information systems that renders the Internet a truly global information system. In essence,
the Internet is an architecture, although many people confuse it with its implementation. When the Internet is
looked at as an architecture, it manifests two different abstractions. One abstraction deals with
communications connectivity, packet delivery and a variety of end-end communication services. The other
abstraction deals with the Internet as an information system, independent of its underlying communications
infrastructure, which allows creation, storage and access to a wide range of information resources, including
digital objects and related services at various levels of abstraction.
Interconnecting computers is an inherently digital problem. Computers process and exchange digital
information, meaning that they use a discrete mathematical “binary” or “two-valued” language of 1s and 0s.
For communication purposes, such information is mapped into continuous electrical or optical waveforms.
The use of digital signaling allows accurate regeneration and reliable recovery of the underlying bits. We use
the terms “computer,” “computer resources” and “computation” to mean not only traditional computers, but
also devices that can be controlled digitally over a network, information resources such as mobile programs
and other computational capabilities.

The telephone network started out with operators who manually connected telephones to each other through
“patch panels” that accepted patch cords from each telephone line and electrically connected them to one
another through the panel, which operated, in effect, like a switch. The result was called circuit switching,
since at its conclusion, an electrical circuit was made between the calling telephone and the called
telephone. Conventional circuit switching, which was developed to handle telephone calls, is inappropriate
for connecting computers because it makes limited use of the telecommunication facilities and takes too
long to set up connections. Although reliable enough for voice communication, the circuit-switched voice
network had difficulty delivering digital information without errors.

For digital communications, packet switching is a better choice, because it is far better suited to the typically
"burst" communication style of computers. Computers that communicate typically send out brief but intense
bursts of data, then remain silent for a while before sending out the next burst. These bursts are
communicated as packets, which are very much like electronic postcards. The postcards, in reality packets,
are relayed from computer to computer until they reach their destination. The special computers that perform
this forwarding function are called variously "packet switches" or "routers" and form the equivalent of many
bucket brigades spanning continents and oceans, moving buckets of electronic postcards from one
computer to another. Together these routers and the communication links between them form the
underpinnings of the Internet.

Without packet switching, the Internet would not exist as we now know it. Going back to the postcard
analogy, postcards can get lost. They can be delivered out of order, and they can be delayed by varying
amounts. The same is true of Internet packets, which, on the Internet, can even be duplicated. The Internet
Protocol is the postcard layer of the Internet. The next higher layer of protocol, TCP, takes care of re-
sending the “postcards” to recover packets that might have been lost, and putting packets back in order if
they have become disordered in transit.

Of course, packet switching is about a billion times faster than the postal service or a bucket brigade would
be. It also has to operate over many different communications systems, or substrata. The authors designed
the basic architecture to be so simple and undemanding that it could work with most communication
services. Many organizations, including commercial ones, carried out research using the TCP/IP protocols in
the 1970s. Email was steadily used over the nascent Internet during that time and to the present. It was not
until 1994 that the general public began to be aware of the Internet by way of the World Wide Web
application, particularly after Netscape Communications was formed and released its browser and
associated server software.

Thus, the evolution of the Internet was based on two technologies and a research dream. The technologies
were packet switching and computer technology, which, in turn, drew upon the underlying technologies of
digital communications and semiconductors. The research dream was to share information and
computational resources. But that is simply the technical side of the story. Equally important in many ways
were the other dimensions that enabled the Internet to come into existence and flourish. This aspect of the
story starts with cooperation and far-sightedness in the U.S. Government, which is often derided for lack of
foresight but is a real hero in this story.

It leads on to the enthusiasm of private sector interests to build upon the government funded developments
to expand the Internet and make it available to the general public. Perhaps most important, it is fueled by the
development of the personal computer industry and significant changes in the telecommunications industry
in the 1980s, not the least of which was the decision to open the long distance market to competition. The
role of workstations, the Unix operating system and local area networking (especially the Ethernet) are
themes contributing to the spread of Internet technology in the 1980s into the research and academic
community from which the Internet industry eventually emerged.

Many individuals have been involved in the development and evolution of the Internet covering a span of
almost four decades if one goes back to the early writings on the subject of computer networking by
Kleinrock [i], Licklider [ii], Baran [iii], Roberts [iv], and Davies [v]. The ARPANET, described below, was the
first wide-area computer network. The NSFNET, which followed more than a decade later under the
leadership of Erich Bloch, Gordon Bell, Bill Wulf and Steve Wolff, brought computer networking into the
mainstream of the research and education communities. It is not our intent here to attempt to attribute credit
to all those whose contributions were central to this story, although we mention a few of the key players. A
readable summary on the history of the Internet, written by many of the key players, may be found at
www.isoc.org/internet/history. [vi]

From One Network to Many: The role of DARPA

Modern computer networking technologies emerged in the early 1970s. In 1969, The U.S. Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (variously called ARPA and DARPA), an agency within the
Department of Defense, commissioned a wide-area computer network called the ARPANET. This network
made use of the new packet switching concepts for interconnecting computers and initially linked computers
at universities and other research institutions in the United States and in selected NATO countries. At that
time, the ARPANET was essentially the only realistic wide-area computer network in existence, with a base
of several dozen organizations, perhaps twice that number of computers and numerous researchers at
those sites. The program was led at DARPA by Larry Roberts. The packet switches were built by Bolt
Beranek and Newman (BBN), a DARPA contractor. Others directly involved in the ARPANET activity
included the authors, Len Kleinrock, Frank Heart, Howard Frank, Steve Crocker, Jon Postel and many many
others in the ARPA research community.

Back then, the methods of internetworking (that is interconnecting computer networks) were primitive or non-
existent. Two organizations could interwork technically by agreeing to use common equipment, but not every
organization was interested in this approach. Absent that, there was jury-rigging, special case development
and not much else. Each of these networks stood on its own with essentially no interaction between them –
a far cry from today’s Internet.

In the early 1970s, ARPA began to explore two alternative applications of packet switching technology
based on the use of synchronous satellites (SATNET) and ground-based packet radio (PRNET). The
decision by Kahn to link these two networks and the ARPANET as separate and independent networks
resulted in the creation of the Internet program and the subsequent collaboration with Cerf. These two
systems differed in significant ways from the ARPANET so as to take advantage of the broadcast and
wireless aspects of radio communications. The strategy that had been adopted for SATNET originally was to
embed the SATNET software into an ARPANET packet switch, and interwork the two networks through
memory-to-memory transfers within the packet switch. This approach, in place at the time, was to make
SATNET an “embedded” network within the ARPANET; users of the network would not even need to know
of its existence. The technical team at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), having built the ARPANET
switches and now building the SATNET software, could easily produce the necessary patches to glue the
programs together in the same machine. Indeed, this is what they were under contract with DARPA to
provide. By embedding each new network into the ARPANET, a seamless internetworked capability was
possible, but with no realistic possibility of unleashing the entrepreneurial networking spirit that has manifest
itself in modern day Internet developments. A new approach was in order.

The Packet Radio (PRNET) program had not yet gotten underway so there was ample opportunity to
change the approach there. In addition, up until then, the SATNET program was only an equipment
development activity. No commitments had been obtained for the use of actual satellites or ground stations
to access them. Indeed, since there was no domestic satellite industry in the U.S. then, the only two viable
alternatives were the use of Intelsat or U.S. military satellites. The time for a change in strategy, if it was to
be made, was then.

THE INTERNET ARCHITECTURE

The authors created an architecture for interconnecting independent networks that could then be federated
into a seamless whole without changing any of the underlying networks. This was the genesis of the Internet
as we know it today.

In order to work properly, the architecture required a global addressing mechanism (or Internet address) to
enable computers on any network to reference and communicate with computers on any other network in
the federation. Internet addresses fill essentially the same role as telephone numbers do in telephone
networks. The design of the Internet assumed first that the individual networks could not be changed to
accommodate new architectural requirements; but this was largely a pragmatic assumption to facilitate
progress. The networks also had varying degrees of reliability and speed. Host computers would have to be
able to put disordered packets back into the correct order and discard duplicate packets that had been
generated along the way. This was a major change from the virtual circuit-like service provided by
ARPANET and by then contemporary commercial data networking services such as Tymnet and Telenet. In
these networks, the underlying network took responsibility for keeping all information in order and for re-
sending any data that might have been lost. The Internet design made the computers responsible for
tending to these network problems.

A key architectural construct was the introduction of gateways (now called routers) between the networks to
handle the disparities such as different data rates, packet sizes, error conditions, and interface
specifications. The gateways would also check the destination Internet addresses of each packet to
determine the gateway to which it should be forwarded. These functions would be combined with certain
end-end functions to produce the reliable communication from source to destination. A draft paper by the
authors describing this approach was given at a meeting of the International Network Working Group in
1973 in Sussex, England and the final paper was subsequently published by the Institute for Electrical and
Electronics Engineers, the leading professional society for the electrical engineering profession, in its
Transactions on Communications in May, 1974 [vii]. The paper described the TCP/IP protocol.

DARPA contracted with Cerf's group at Stanford to carry out the initial detailed design of the TCP software
and, shortly thereafter, with BBN and University College London to build independent implementations of the
TCP protocol (as it was then called – it was later split into TCP and IP) for different machines. BBN also had
a contract to build a prototype version of the gateway. These three sites collaborated in the development
and testing of the initial protocols on different machines. Cerf, then a professor at Stanford, provided the
day-to-day leadership in the initial TCP software design and testing. BBN deployed the gateways between
the ARPANET and the PRNET and also with SATNET. During this period, under Kahn's overall leadership
at DARPA, the initial feasibility of the Internet Architecture was demonstrated.

The TCP/IP protocol suite was developed and refined over a period of four more years and, in 1980, it was
adopted as a standard by the U.S. Department of Defense. On January 1, 1983 the ARPANET converted to
TCP/IP as its standard host protocol. Gateways (or routers) were used to pass packets to and from host
computers on “local area networks.” Refinement and extension of these protocols and many others
associated with them continues to this day by way of the Internet Engineering Task Force [viii].

GOVERNMENT’S HISTORICAL ROLE

Other political and social dimensions that enabled the Internet to come into existence and flourish are just as
important as the technology upon which it is based. The federal government played a large role in creating
the Internet, as did the private sector interests that made it available to the general public. The development
of the personal computer industry and significant changes in the telecommunications industry also
contributed to the Internet’s growth in the 1980s. In particular, the development of workstations, the Unix
operating system, and local area networking (especially the Ethernet) contributed to the spread of the
Internet within the research community from which the Internet industry eventually emerged.

The National Science Foundation and others

In the late 1970s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) became interested in the impact of the ARPANET
on computer science and engineering. NSF funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET), which was a
logical design for interconnecting universities that were already on the ARPANET and those that were not.
Telenet was used for sites not connected directly to the ARPANET and a gateway was provided to link the
two. Independent of NSF, another initiative called BITNET ("Because it's there" Net) [ix] provided campus
computers with email connections to the growing ARPANET. Finally, AT&T Bell Laboratories development
of the Unix operating system led to the creation of a grass-roots network called USENET [x], which rapidly
became home to thousands of “newsgroups” where Internet users discussed everything from aerobics to
politics and zoology.

In the mid 1980s, NSF decided to build a network called NSFNET to provide better computer connections
for the science and education communities. The NSFNET made possible the involvement of a large
segment of the education and research community in the use of high speed networks. A consortium
consisting of MERIT (a University of Michigan non-profit network services organization), IBM and MCI
Communications won a 1987 competition for the contract to handle the network’s construction. Within two
years, the newly expanded NSFNET had become the primary backbone component of the Internet,
augmenting the ARPANET until it was decommissioned in 1990.At about the same time, other parts of the
U.S. government had moved ahead to build and deploy networks of their own, including NASA and the
Department of Energy. While these groups originally adopted independent approaches for their networks,
they eventually decided to support the use of TCP/IP.

The developers of the NSFNET, led by Steve Wolff who had the direct responsibility for the NSFNET
program, also decided to create intermediate level networks to serve research and education institutions
and, more importantly, to allow networks that were not commissioned by the U.S. government to connect to
the NSFNET. This strategy reduced the overall load on the backbone network operators and spawned a
new industry: Internet Service Provision. Nearly a dozen intermediate level networks were created, most
with NSF support, [xi] some, such as UUNET, with Defense support, and some without any government
support. The NSF contribution to the evolution of the Internet was essential in two respects. It opened the
Internet to many new users and, drawing on the properties of TCP/IP, structured it so as to allow many more
network service providers to participate.

For a long time, the federal government did not allow organizations to connect to the Internet to carry out
commercial activities. By 1988, it was becoming apparent, however, that the Internet's growth and use in
the business sector might be seriously inhibited by this restriction. That year, CNRI requested permission
from the Federal Networking Council to interconnect the commercial MCI Mail electronic mail system to the
Internet as part of a general electronic mail interconnection experiment. Permission was given and the
interconnection was completed by CNRI, under Cerf’s direction, in the summer of 1989. Shortly thereafter,
two of the then non-profit Internet Service Providers (UUNET [xii] and NYSERNET) produced new for-profit
companies (UUNET and PSINET [xiii] respectively). In 1991, they were interconnected with each other and
CERFNET [xiv]. Commercial pressure to alleviate restrictions on interconnections with the NSFNET began
to mount.

In response, Congress passed legislation allowing NSF to open the NSFNET to commercial usage. Shortly
thereafter, NSF determined that its support for NSFNET might not be required in the longer term and, in
April 1995, NSF ceased its support for the NSFNET. By that time, many commercial networks were in
operation and provided alternatives to NSFNET for national level network services. Today, approximately
10,000 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are in operation. Roughly half the world's ISPs currently are based
in North America and the rest are distributed throughout the world.

A DEFINITION FOR THE INTERNET

The authors feel strongly that efforts should be made at top policy levels to define the Internet. It is tempting
to view it merely as a collection of networks and computers. However, as indicated earlier, the authors
designed the Internet as an architecture that provided for both communications capabilities and information
services. Governments are passing legislation pertaining to the Internet without ever specifying to what the
law applies and to what it does not apply. In U.S. telecommunications law, distinctions are made between
cable, satellite broadcast and common carrier services. These and many other distinctions all blur in the
backdrop of the Internet. Should broadcast stations be viewed as Internet Service Providers when their
programming is made available in the Internet environment? Is use of cellular telephones considered part of
the Internet and if so under what conditions? This area is badly in need of clarification.

The authors believe the best definition currently in existence is that approved by the Federal Networking
Council in 1995, http://www.fnc.gov and which is reproduced in the footnote below [xv] for ready reference.
Of particular note is that it defines the Internet as a global information system, and included in the definition,
is not only the underlying communications technology, but also higher-level protocols and end-user
applications, the associated data structures and the means by which the information may be processed,
manifested, or otherwise used. In many ways, this definition supports the characterization of the Internet as
an “information superhighway.” Like the federal highway system, whose underpinnings include not only
concrete lanes and on/off ramps, but also a supporting infrastructure both physical and informational,
including signs, maps, regulations, and such related services and products as filling stations and gasoline,
the Internet has its own layers of ingress and egress, and its own multi-tiered levels of service.

The FNC definition makes it clear that the Internet is a dynamic organism that can be looked at in myriad
ways. It is a framework for numerous services and a medium for creativity and innovation. Most importantly,
it can be expected to evolve.
WHO RUNS THE INTERNET

The Domain Name System

The Internet evolved as an experimental system during the 1970s and early 1980s. It then flourished after
the TCP/IP protocols were made mandatory on the ARPANET and other networks in January 1983; these
protocols thus became the standard for many other networks as well. Indeed, the Internet grew so rapidly
that the existing mechanisms for associating the names of host computers (e.g. UCLA, USC-ISI) to Internet
addresses (known as IP addresses) were about to be stretched beyond acceptable engineering limits. Most
of the applications in the Internet referred to the target computers by name. These names had to be
translated into Internet addresses before the lower level protocols could be activated to support the
application. For a time, a group at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA, called the Network Information
Center (NIC), maintained a simple, machine-readable list of names and associated Internet addresses which
was made available on the net. Hosts on the Internet would simply copy this list, usually daily, so as to
maintain a local copy of the table. This list was called the "host.txt" file (since it was simply a text file). The
list served the function in the Internet that directory services (e.g. 411 or 703-555-1212) do in the US
telephone system - the translation of a name into an address.

As the Internet grew, it became harder and harder for the NIC to keep the list current. Anticipating that this
problem would only get worse as the network expanded, researchers at USC Information Sciences Institute
launched an effort to design a more distributed way of providing this same information. The end result was
the Domain Name System (DNS) [xvi] which allowed hundreds of thousands of "name servers" to maintain
small portions of a global database of information associating IP addresses with the names of computers on
the Internet.

The naming structure was hierarchical in character. For example, all host computers associated with
educational institutions would have names like "stanford.edu" or "ucla.edu". Specific hosts would have
names like "cs.ucla.edu" to refer to a computer in the computer science department of UCLA, for example. A
special set of computers called "root servers" maintained information about the names and addresses of
other servers that contained more detailed name/address associations. The designers of the DNS also
developed seven generic "top level" domains, as follows:

Education - EDU
Government - GOV
Military - MIL
International - INT
Network - NET
(non-profit) Organization - ORG
Commercial - COM

Under this system, for example, the host name "UCLA" became "UCLA.EDU" because it was operated by
an educational institution, while the host computer for "BBN" became "BBN.COM" because it was a
commercial organization. Top-level domain names also were created for every country: United Kingdom
names would end in “.UK,” while the ending “.FR” was created for the names of France.

The Domain Name System (DNS) was and continues to be a major element of the Internet architecture,
which contributes to its scalability. It also contributes to controversy over trademarks and general rules for
the creation and use of domain names, creation of new top-level domains and the like. At the same time,
other resolution schemes exist as well. One of the authors (Kahn) has been involved in the development of a
different kind of standard identification and resolution scheme [xvii] that, for example, is being used as the
base technology by book publishers to identify books on the Internet by adapting various identification
schemes for use in the Internet environment. For example, International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs)
can be used as part of the identifiers. The identifiers then resolve to state information about the referenced
books, such as location information (e.g. multiple sites) on the Internet that is used to access the books or to
order them. These developments are taking place in parallel with the more traditional means of managing
Internet resources. They offer an alternative to the existing Domain Name System with enhanced
functionality.

The growth of Web servers and users of the Web has been remarkable, but some people are confused
about the relationship between the World Wide Web and the Internet. The Internet is the global information
system that includes communication capabilities and many high level applications. The Web is one such
application. The existing connectivity of the Internet made it possible for users and servers all over the world
to participate in this activity. Electronic mail is another important application. As of today, over 60 million
computers take part in the Internet and about 3.6 million web sites were estimated to be accessible on the
net. Virtually every user of the net has access to electronic mail and web browsing capability. Email remains
a critically important application for most users of the Internet, and these two functions largely dominate the
use of the Internet for most users.

The Internet Standards Process

Internet standards were once the output of research activity sponsored by DARPA. The principal
investigators on the internetting research effort essentially determined what technical features of the TCP/IP
protocols would become common. The initial work in this area started with the joint effort of the two authors,
continued in Cerf's group at Stanford, and soon thereafter was joined by engineers and scientists at BBN
and University College London. This informal arrangement has changed with time and details can be found
elsewhere [xviii]. At present, the standards efforts for Internet is carried out primarily under the auspices of
the Internet Society (ISOC). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) operates under the leadership of its
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), which is populated by appointees approved by the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB) which is, itself, now part of the Internet Society.

The IETF comprises over one hundred working groups categorized and managed by Area Directors
specializing in specific categories.

There are other bodies with considerable interest in Internet standards or in standards that must interwork
with the Internet. Examples include the International Telecommunications Union Telecommunications
standards group (ITU-T), the International Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) local area
network standards group (IEEE 801), the Organization for International Standardization (ISO), the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and many others.

As Internet access and services are provided by existing media such as telephone, cable and broadcast,
interactions with standards bodies and legal structures formed to deal with these media will become an
increasingly complex matter. The intertwining of interests is simultaneously fascinating and complicated,
and has increased the need for thoughtful cooperation among many interested parties.

Managing the Internet

Perhaps the least understood aspect of the Internet is its management. In recent years, this subject has
become the subject of intense commercial and international interest, involving multiple governments and
commercial organizations, and recently congressional hearings. At issue is how the Internet will be managed
in the future, and, in the process, what oversight mechanisms will insure that the public interest is
adequately served.

In the 1970s, managing the Internet was easy. Since few people knew about the Internet, decisions about
almost everything of real policy concern were made in the offices of DARPA. It became clear in the late
1970s, however, that more community involvement in the decision-making processes was essential. In
1979, DARPA formed the Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB) to insure that knowledgeable
members of the technical community discussed critical issues, educated people outside of DARPA about the
issues, and helped others to implement the TCP/IP protocols and gateway functions. At the time, there were
no companies that offered turnkey solutions to getting on the Internet. It would be another five years or so
before companies like Cisco Systems were formed, and while there were no PCs yet, the only workstations
available were specially built and their software was not generally configured for use with external networks;
they were certainly considered expensive at the time.

In 1983, the small group of roughly twelve ICCB members was reconstituted (with some substitutions) as the
Internet Activities Board (IAB), and about ten “Task Forces” were established under it to address issues in
specific technical areas. The attendees at Internet Working Group meetings were invited to become
members of as many of the task forces as they wished.

The management of the Domain Name System offers a kind of microcosm of issues now frequently
associated with overall management of the Internet's operation and evolution. Someone had to take
responsibility for overseeing the system's general operation. In particular, top-level domain names had to be
selected, along with persons or organizations to manage each of them. Rules for the allocation of Internet
addresses had to be established. DARPA had previously asked the late Jon Postel of the USC Information
Sciences Institute to take on numerous functions related to administration of names, addresses and protocol
related matters. With time, Postel assumed further responsibilities in this general area on his own, and
DARPA, which was supporting the effort, gave its tacit approval. This activity was generally referred to as
the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [xix]. In time, Postel became the arbitrator of all
controversial matters concerning names and addresses until his untimely death in October 1998.

It is helpful to consider separately the problem of managing the domain name space and the Internet
address space. These two vital elements of the Internet architecture have rather different characteristics that
color the management problems they generate. Domain names have semantics that numbers may not
imply; and thus a means of determining who can use what names is needed. As a result, speculators on
Internet names often claim large numbers of them without intent to use them other than to resell them later.
Alternate resolution mechanisms [xx], if widely adopted, could significantly change the landscape here.

The rapid growth of the Internet has triggered the design of a new and larger address space (the so-called
IP version 6 address space); today's Internet uses IP version 4 [xxi]. However, little momentum has yet
developed to deploy IPv6 widely. Despite concerns to the contrary, the IPv4 address space will not be
depleted for some time. Further, the use of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to dynamically
assign IP addresses has also cut down on demand for dedicated IP addresses. Nevertheless, there is
growing recognition in the Internet technical community that expansion of the address space is needed, as is
the development of transition schemes that allow interoperation between IPv4 and IPv6 while migrating to
IPv6.

In 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was formed as a private
sector, non-profit, organization to oversee the orderly progression in use of Internet names and numbers, as
well as certain protocol related matters that required oversight. The birth of this organization, which was
selected by the Department of Commerce for this function, has been difficult, embodying as it does many of
the inherent conflicts in resolving discrepancies in this arena. However, there is a clear need for an oversight
mechanism for Internet domain names and numbers, separate from their day-to-day management.

Many questions about Internet management remain. They may also prove difficult to resolve quickly. Of
specific concern is what role the U.S. government and indeed governments around the world need to play in
its continuing operation and evolution. This is clearly a subject for another time.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

As we struggle to envision what may be commonplace on the Internet in a decade, we are confronted with
the challenge of imagining new ways of doing old things, as well as trying to think of new things that will be
enabled by the Internet, and by the technologies of the future.

In the next ten years, the Internet is expected to be enormously bigger than it is today. It will be more
pervasive than the older technologies and penetrate more homes than television and radio programming.
Computer chips are now being built that implement the TCP/IP protocols and recently a university
announced a two-chip web server. Chips like this are extremely small and cost very little. And they can be
put into anything. Many of the devices connected to the Internet will be Internet-enabled appliances (cell
phones, fax machines, household appliances, hand-held organizers, digital cameras, etc.) as well as
traditional laptop and desktop computers. Information access will be directed to digital objects of all kinds
and services that help to create them or make use of them [xxii].

Very high-speed networking has also been developing at a steady pace. From the original 50,000 bit-per-
second ARPANET, to the 155 million bit-per-second NSFNET, to today’s 2.4 – 9.6 billion bit-per-second
commercial networks, we routinely see commercial offerings providing Internet access at increasing speeds.
Experimentation with optical technology using wavelength division multiplexing is underway in many
quarters; and testbeds operating at speeds of terabits per second (that is trillions of bits-per-second) are
being constructed.

Some of these ultra-high speed systems may one-day carry data from very far away places, like Mars.
Already, design of the interplanetary Internet as a logical extension of the current Internet, is part of the
NASA Mars mission program now underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California [xxiii].
By 2008, we should have a well functioning Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of the
interplanetary Internet.
Wireless communication has exploded in recent years with the rapid growth of cellular telephony.
Increasingly, however, Internet access is becoming available over these networks. Alternate forms for
wireless communication, including both ground radio and satellite are in development and use now, and the
prospects for increasing data rates look promising. Recent developments in high data rate systems appear
likely to offer ubiquitous wireless data services in the 1-2 Mbps range. It is even possible that wireless
Internet access may one day be the primary way most people get access to the Internet.

A developing trend that seems likely to continue in the future is an information centric view of the Internet
that can live in parallel with the current communications centric view. Many of the concerns about intellectual
property protection are difficult to deal with, not because of fundamental limits in the law, but rather by
technological and perhaps management limitations in knowing how best to deal with these issues. A digital
object infrastructure that makes information objects “first-class citizens” in the packetized “primordial soup”
of the Internet is one step in that direction. In this scheme, the digital object is the conceptual elemental unit
in the information view; it is interpretable (in principle) by all participating information systems. The digital
object is thus an abstraction that may be implemented in various ways by different systems. It is a critical
building block for interoperable and heterogeneous information systems. Each digital object has a unique
and, if desired, persistent identifier that will allow it to be managed over time. This approach is highly
relevant to the development of third-party value added information services in the Internet environment.

Of special concern to the authors is the need to understand and manage the downside potential for network
disruptions, as well as cybercrime and terrorism. The ability to deal with problems in this diverse arena is at
the forefront of maintaining a viable global information infrastructure. “ IOPS.org” [xxiv] – a private-sector
group dedicated to improving coordination among ISPs - deals with issues of ISP outages, disruptions, other
trouble conditions, as well as related matters, by discussion, interaction and coordination between and
among the principal players. Business, the academic community and government all need as much
assurance as possible that they can conduct their activities on the Internet with high confidence that security
and reliability will be present. The participation of many organizations around the world, including especially
governments and the relevant service providers will be essential here.

The success of the Internet in society as a whole will depend less on technology than on the larger
economic and social concerns that are at the heart of every major advance. The Internet is no exception,
except that its potential and reach are perhaps as broad as any that have come before.