The Inter(esting)net

Essay by Anonymous UserUniversity, Bachelor'sB+, October 1996

download word file, 4 pages 4.0

With only 1000 or so networks in the mid 1980's, the Internet has become tremendous technological change to society over the past few years. In 1994, more than twenty-five million people gained access to the Internet (Groiler..). The Internet users are mainly from the United States of America and Europe, but other countries around the world will be connected soon as improvements of communication lines are made.

The Internet originated in the United States Defense Department's ARPAnet (Advanced Research Project Agency, produced by the Pentagon) Project in 1969 (Krol). Military planners sought to design a computer networking system that could withstand an attack such as a nuclear war. In the 1980's, the National Science Foundation built five Superconductor Computer Centers to give several universities academic access to high powered computers formerly available to only the United State's military (Krol). The National Science Foundation then built its own network chaining more universities together.

Later, the network connections were being used for purposes unrelated to the National Science Foundation's idea such as the universities sending electronic mail (today, it is understood as Email). The United States government then helped pushed the evolution of the Internet, calling the project: Information Super Highway (Groiler..).

In the early 1990's the trend then boomed. Businesses soon connected to the Internet, and started using the Internet as a way of saving money through advertising products and electronic mailing (Abbot). Communications between different companies also arose due to the convenience of the Internet. Owners of personal computers soon became eager to connect to the Internet. Through a modem or Ethernet adapter (computer hardware devices that allow a physical connection to Internet), home computers can now be made to be accessible to the Internet (Groiler..).

New Internet servers have evolved since the National Sciences Foundation's basic idea back...