The Internet Essay Research Paper The Internet 2

The Internet Essay, Research Paper

The Internet

The Internet is a worldwide connection of thousands of computer networks.

All of them speak the same language, TCP/IP, the standard protocol. The Internet

allows people with access to these networks to share information and knowledge.

Resources available on the Internet are chat groups, e-mail, newsgroups, file

transfers, and the World Wide Web. The Internet has no centralized authority and

it is uncensored. The Internet belongs to everyone and to no one.

The Internet is structured in a hierarchy. At the top, each country has

at least one public backbone network. Backbone networks are made of high speed

lines that connect to other backbones. There are thousands of service providers

and networks that connect home or college users to the backbone networks. Today,

there are more than fifty-thousand networks in more than one-hundred countries

worldwide. However, it all started with one network.

In the early 1960’s the Cold War was escalating and the United States

Government was faced with a problem. How could the country communicate after a

nuclear war. The Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, had a

solution. They would create a non-centralized network that linked from city to

city, and base to base. The network was designed to function when parts of it

were destroyed. The network could not have a center because it would be a

primary target for enemies. In 1969, ARPANET was created, named after its

original Pentagon sponsor. There were four supercomputer stations, called nodes,

on this high speed network.

ARPANET grew during the 1970’s as more and more supercomputer stations

were added. The users of ARPANET had changed the high speed network to an

electronic post office. Scientists and researchers used ARPANET to collaborate

on projects and to trade notes. Eventually, people used ARPANET for leisure

activities such as chatting. Soon after, the mailing list was developed. Mailing

lists were discussion groups of people who would send their messages via e-mail

to a group address, and also receive messages. This could be done twenty-four

hours a day.

As ARPANET became larger, a more sophisticated and standard protocol was

needed. The protocol would have to link users from other small networks to

ARPANET, the main network. The standard protocol invented in 1977 was called

TCP/IP. Because of TCP/IP, connecting to ARPANET by any other network was made

possible. In 1983, the military portion of ARPANET broke off and formed MILNET.

The same year, TCP/IP was made a standard and it was being used by everyone. It

linked all parts of the branching complex networks, which soon came to be called

the Internet.

In 1985, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began a program to

establish Internet access centered on its six powerful supercomputer stations

across the United States. They created a backbone called NSFNET to connect

college campuses via regional networks to its supercomputer centers. ARPANET

officially expired in 1989. Most of the networks were gained by NSFNET. The

others became parts of smaller networks. The Defense Communications Agency shut

down ARPANET because its functions had been taken over by NSFNET. Amazingly,

when ARPANET was turned off in June of 1990, no one except the network staff

noticed.

In the early 1990’s the Internet experienced explosive growth. It was

estimated that the number of computers connected to the Internet was doubling

every year. It was also estimated that at this rapid rate of growth, everyone

would have an e-mail address by the year 2020. The main cause of this growth was

the creation of the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web was created at CERN, a

physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. The Web’s development was based on

the transmission of web pages over the Internet, called Hyper Text Transmission

Protocol or HTTP. It is an interactive system for the dissemination and

retrieval of information through web pages. The pages may consist of text,

pictures, sound, music, voice, animations, and video. Web pages can link to

other web pages by hypertext links. When there is hypertext on a page, the user

can simply click on the link and be taken to the new page. Previously, the

Internet was black and white, text, and files. The web added color. Web pages

can provide entertainment, information, or commercial advertisement. The World

Wide Web is the fastest growing Internet resource.

The Internet has dramatically changed from its original purpose. It was

formed by the United States government for exclusive use of government officials

and the military to communicate after a nuclear war. Today, the Internet is used

globally for a variety of purposes. People can send their friends an electronic

“hello.” They can download a recipe for a new type of lasagna. They

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