Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ARPANET had succeeded beyond its designers' expectations and in
ways they had not anticipated. The development of e-mail in the
1970
s, as well as other technological advances, had taken the original
network far beyond its original remit. It started to become a way
of communicating for people outside the computer science and
military communities for whom it was originally intended. This was
helped by the development of a number of 'protocols' for the
transmission of data over networks, starting with 'Ethernet', in
,
developed by Harvard student Bob Metcalfe in his PhD dissertation
on 'Packet Networks'. This became a standard protocol for the
linking of local networks. 'Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol' (TCP/IP) developed by Bob Kahn at BBN and further
developed by Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf at Stanford and others through-
out the
1974
s, was a protocol for remote networks, and was adopted
by the Defense Department in
1970
. Other
important developments included 'Newsgroups', discussion groups
focusing on a topic, providing a means of exchanging information
throughout the world, and; 'Multi-User Domains or Dungeons'
(MUDs), the first of which was created by Richard Bartle and Roy
Trubshaw at the University of Essex, which allowed users to enter
shared virtual spaces to communicate and role play using text. The
BITNET (Because It's Time Network) connected IBM mainframes
around the educational community and the world to provide mail
services, beginning in
1980
and universally in
1983
. Listserv software was developed for this
network and later others, and gateways were developed to connect
BITNET with the other networks, allowing the exchange of e-mail,
particularly for e-mail discussion lists.
The increasing civilian use of the ARPANET was first acknowl-
edged when ARPANET was split into two separate networks,
ARPANET and MILNET and then, in
1981
by its dissolution. This
heralded the start of the Internet as an entity in its own right,
composed of many different networks, all held together by agreed
transmission protocols. But though it was becoming more accessible,
1989
