The Evolution of the Internet :: essays research papers

The Evolution of the Internet So you believe Al bloodbath stimulated the Internet? vigorous thats not possible, because I did. Yes, its true, a few years ago I was sitting in my basement with nothing to do and suddenly the idea came to me why not create an inter-connected interlocking of profitss that will allow users to send mail instantly, download procure songs, and order pizza, all from the comfort of their own living room? OK, so maybe I didnt exactly invent the Internet, but uncomplete did Al Gore.So who was the genius behind the information superhighway, you ask? Well lets take a step back to the sixties, a decade when Cold War tension caused nationwide fear of atomic warfare. Early in the decade, two groups of researchers, privately owned RAND Corporation (Americas leading nuclear war think-tank) and federal agency ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), grappled with a bizarre strategic mystery in the event of nuclear war, how could governmental and military off icials communicate successfully? It was obvious that a web, linking cities and military bases, would be necessary. But the advent of the atomic bomb made switches, wiring, and command posts for this network highly vulnerable. A nuclear-safe network would need to operate with missing cerebrate and without central authority. In 1964, RAND Corporations Paul Barran made normal his solution to the problem. Essentially, the concept was simple. Barrans network would be assumed to be unreliable at all times. Information would be broken into much small pieces called packets and then sent to various points, or nodes, in the network until they reached their destination. ARPA embraced Barrans idea for three reasons. First, if nuclear bombs blew away large components of the network, information would still reach its destination. Second, it would be relatively secure from espionage, since spies tapping into parts of the network would be able to intercept only portions of transmissions. Last ly, it would be much more efficient because files and transmissions couldnt clog portions of the network. Only five years later on Barran proposed his version of a computer network, ARPANET went online. Named after its federal sponsor, ARPANET initially relate four high-speed supercomputers and was intended to allow scientists and researchers to share computing facilities by long-distance. By 1971, ARPANET had grown to fifteen nodes, and by 1972, thirty-seven. ARPAs original exemplar for communication was cognise as Network Control Protocol or NCP. As time passed, however, NCP grew obsolete and was replaced by a new, higher-level standard known as TCP-IP, which is still in use today.