History of the Internet

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Initially a tool to link research center computers, the Internet has become a vital utensil of social change. Created by means of a chain of engineering modernizations, the Internet is changing business practices, educational pursuits, and personal communications. By providing global access to news, commerce, and vast stores of information, the Internet brings us together and adds convenience and efficiency to our lives. We will talk about the history of the internet, give you a definition of it, and show you how much internet usage has grown.

On the heels of Sputnik and the beginning of the Cold War, President Eisenhower thought it wise to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958, to keep the United States at the forefront of technology. ARPA would soon begin the research that eventually lead to the Internet.

The engineering challenges were numerous and complicated, beginning with the design of a packet switching network; a system that could make computers communicate with each other without the need for a traditional central system.

Other challenges included the design of the machines, data exchange protocols, and software to run it.

Communication links are assigned to packets, providing a highly efficient technology for sending packets over links (fiber, copper, radio) from one network connection to another. These connections are routers (or switches), which collectively share the job of directing the packets from connection to connection on the way to their destinations. The packet switching technology was a dramatic improvement over the circuit-switched telephone network where the entire path connecting a voice call between two parties was restricted to their conversation, even when they were silent.

In 1963, JCR Licklider, head of the computer research effort at ARPA, expressed an idea of a network that would connect machines and people worldwide. In the mid-1960s, ARPA determined...