Java Reference
In-Depth Information
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ANDOM
F
ACT
2.2: The Evolution of the Internet
In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider was head of the first computer research program at
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He wrote a series of
papers describing a Ȓgalactic networkȓ through which computer users could
access data and programs from other sites. This was well before computer
networks were invented. By 1969, four computersȌthree in California and one in
UtahȌwere connected to the ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet. The
network grew quickly, linking computers at many universities and research
organizations. It was originally thought that most network users wanted to run
programs on remote computers. Using remote execution, a researcher at one
institution would be able to access an underutilized computer at a different site. It
quickly became apparent that remote execution was not what the network was
actually used for. Instead, the Ȓkiller applicationȓ was electronic mail: the transfer
of messages between computer users at different locations.
In 1972, Bob Kahn proposed to extend ARPANET into the Internet: a collection
of interoperable networks. All networks on the Internet share common protocols
for data transmission. Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed protocols, now called
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). On January 1, 1983,
all hosts on the Internet simultaneously switched to the TCP/IP protocol (which is
used to this day).
Over time, researchers, computer scientists, and hobbyists published increasing
amounts of information on the Internet. For example, the GNU (GNU's Not
UNIX) project is producing a free set of high-quality operating system utilities
and program development tools [
5
]. Project Gutenberg makes available the text of
important classical topics, whose copyright has expired, in computer-readable
form [
6
]. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee started work on hyperlinked documents,
allowing users to browse by following links to related documents. This
infrastructure is now known as the World Wide Web (WWW).
The first interfaces to retrieve this information were, by today's standards,
unbelievably clumsy a
nd hard to use. In March 1993, WWW traffic was 0.1% of
all Internet traffic. Al
l that changed when Marc Andreesen, then a graduate
student working for NCSA (the National Center for Supercomputing
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