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History of the Internet

1970's

The internet was a government research project run by Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency). The Internet begins with the creation of a system for communication among networks designed and used by small groups of government and academic researchers. The earliest group was engaged in military research that received principal support from the Department of Defense in the 1960's and 70's. Scientists and engineers at U.S. universities working on basic research funded primarily by the National Science Foundation soon began to join the network.

Highlights:

• Unix operating system was born. This open source code operating system started out with 16kb of memory and a 512kb floppy disc.
• Intel founders Forbert Noyce and Gordon Moore create the 8080 microprocessor, and the PC is born.
• Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Their first operating system Basic is purchased by MITS of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the manufacturer of the Altair 8800 personal computer.
• E-mail is invented by Arpanet contractor BBN.
• FTP (file transfer protocol) is invented, allowing to like computers to share files across a network.
• Arpanet adopts TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) as the method to transfer files across its network.

1980's

Cisco Systems begins supporting the infrastructure of the network with their routers, switches and hubs. DNS (Domain Name Server) protocol is invented allowing users to locate servers with the English language instead of a confusing string of numbers. The Internet at this point had grown to about 2,000 active computers and a decision was made to implement a formalized hierarchy of alphabetic names and a regular, scalable system for their distribution. Most of the connected sites could be easily identified by their institutional name and a three letter descriptive abbreviation known as top level domains (.com, .net, .org, .mil, .gov, etc).

Highlights:

• Network Solutions performs the first commercial TCP/IP installation.
• Universities begin hooking up to the network through high speed phone lines (56Kb per second).
• UUNet starts offering commercial connections to the network.
• The National Science Foundation establishes the NSFNET national backbone network that connected the NSF supercomputing centers to U.S. universities.
• Compuserve creates the GIF, a free and open file format for computer images.
• Internet relay (Chat) protocol is invented by Jarkko Oikarinen.
• The first version of PERL, a programming language derived from C, is released by inventor Larry Wall.
• Microsoft is busy at work on their MS-DOS operating system, the precursor to Windows.
• Quantum Computer Services launches its America Online service. It is available for MAC and Apple II users only.
• Arpanet is dismantled and the Department of Defense asks the National Science Foundation to assume responsibility for supporting registration services for the non-military portion of the Internet.

  1990's

The National Science Foundation enters into a 5-year cooperative agreement with Network Solutions, Inc. to provide support for Internet registration services for the non-military part of the Internet, which was then primarily composed of research and education institutions. The world wide web is effectively born as the public becomes aware and begins to connect to and browse the web.

Highlights:

• Quantum changes its name to AOL and goes public with an IPO price of $11.50. AOL software allows both MAC's and PC's onto the internet.
• Unix 4.0 is released, this is the first version to incorporate shells and network protocols. Linus Torvalds creates Linux, an open source operating system for these computers.
• Microsoft responds with their Windows NT operating system, and the race is on.
• Thousands of internet access and hosting providers emerge to support the astounding growth of both content and users on the internet.
• Yahoo! is started as a hobby for David Filo and Jerry Yang, two engineering students at Stanford.
• With $100K from Andy Bechtolsheim of Sun Microsystems, Larry Page and Sergey Brin form Google in 3rd quarter of 1998.
• Content providers AOL, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, MSN, Hotbot, Altavista, Netscape, Ebay and others become "portals" or entry points into the web. They enjoy audiences rivaling national television networks and build staggering warchests primarily through IPO's.
• The GIF89a standard is born and animations start to appear on web pages everywhere.
• The Apache server is born, and the UNIX environment takes a clear lead in the web hosting industry.
• Allaire Corporation releases their first version of Cold Fusion, a server side software application which raises the bar on scalable ecommerce and business database and business process automation on the web. Early versions of this software run on NT boxes which helps close the gap between UNIX and NT on the web.
• PHP is born, a HTML-embedded scripting language that helped close the gap between bandwith needs and connectivity.
• Netscape and Microsoft engage in a bitter war to gain the lion's share of users to their browsers which people will use for web surfing and email.
• The browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft fueled to a legal battle that ended with Netscape effectively beaten and Microsoft fined but victorious in the landmark United States v. Microsoft case (which resulted in Microsoft being found guilty for having used its monopoly status to manipulate the market).
• Helper applications such as Adobe Acrobat, Progressive Network's Real Player and Macromedia's Flash are built into newer versions of both Microsoft and Netscape browsers to extend the capabilities of the core programs.
• E-Commerce pioneers such as Amazon.com and Ebay prove the viability of commerce on the web.
• The National Science Foundation opens top level domain registration to the private sector as the contract with NSI concludes stating that they wish to work with the Department of Commerce and the private sector to facilitate a stable global communications network in the 21st Century, free of overly intrusive federal regulation or oversight.

The 21st Century

The new information age began with a serious hangover as the DOT.COM bubble burst. In the space of about 9 months trillions of dollars were lost as stock valuations corrected and internet companies saw their net worth and business viability disappear almost overnight. With a shortage of IPO dollars to be had, the new internet age

Highlights:

• Pier to Pier file sharing networks emerge and allow users to share music, movies and files.
• SPAM & VIRUSES invade the internet and reek havoc on bandwidth and users.
• XML (Extensible Markup Language) emerges as a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand.
• Voice over IP emerges to compete against traditional telephone networks.
• Domain registrations exceed 80,000,000 in November 2006
• More and more products are internet connected and enabled. Cell phones surf the web. Cars use the internet and GPS systems to navigate. Embedded systems technology emerges as a glimpse to what the future might hold - the internet reaching into and affecting all aspects of life.

To understand the internet's future, it makes some sense to take a look at it's past. In response to the question "What did you have in mind when you first developed the web" Al Gore Tim Berner-Lee responds:

"The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together."

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