The History of the Internet - Research Paper Example

HISTORY OF INTERNET INTRODUCTION Internet could rightly be called the most revolutionary invention of today’s world after computer. It has changed the conventional concept of computing, mailing, communication and global businesses. The internet we use today is one of the few positive outcomes of Cold War. It has turned out to be highly efficient and inexpensive rout of communication among people around the globe. By turning the pages of internet history we can understand the motives, technologies and efforts that contributed to making Internet a common platform for globalization (Ruthfield 1995).

HISTORY OF INTERNETAt the height of Cold War, in 1962, the American Government was devising a plan that would enable the military to maintain its command and control system in an event of nuclear attack on the US. The RAND Corporation was given the task to conduct research and studies to find how the US army could maintain its command and control system if any of US cities come under nuclear attack. After due deliberation and diversified studies, Rand Paul Baran from RAND Corporation submitted his final proposal for a Packet Switched Network (Ruthfield 1995).

ARPANETARPA, a branch of US department of defense ARPANET awarded a contract to BBN to develop a decentralized architecture network. BBN constructed physical network linking four locations University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. According to the record, the network was connected through a 50 Kbps circuits on wire (Ruthfield 1995).OTHER GLOBAL NETWORKSBy 1973, it was established that besides ARPANET other networks have come into a successful existence like National Physical Laboratory in England and the scientific network CYCLADES in France.

Undoubtedly, these different networks with different approaches are the foundation of our modern internet. CYCLADES, being a commercial network, had many commercial users who began transferring data from one user to the other. Here Packet switching was born (Dave n.d). ETHERNETIn 1976, Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe developed Ethernet, which was a crucial invention to moving data faster through a coaxial cable. Following, Package Satellite Project, SATNET came into existence which connected United States with Europe thus bringing about the first intercontinental Internet in the history (Dave n.d).DEVELOPMENT ON TCP/IP PROTOCOLThe same year ARPANET started working on a protocol, later to be called, TCP/IP to bring together different networks without interfering their basic structure.

With the invention of TCP/IP protocol it became possible to connect virtually any network to other network. Later operating system adapted their structures to TCP/IP protocol and finally in 1983, TCP/IP replaced NCP protocol (Dave n.d.).CSnet and BITNET came out as the two largest running networks in 1980s. Finally, in 1983 CSnet and ARPANET entered an agreement to establish synchronization between their networks. With this the members of the two networks began exchanging e-mails (Dave n.d).Moving forward, more and more networks joined the joint network of ARPANET and CSNET and the basic structure of today’s internet came out.

By February, 1990 the ARPANET was dismantled but the Internet was up and running (Ruthfield 1995).GRACE HOPPER AND HER INVOLVEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNETGrace Hopper was the most senior of computer programmers. She was a Vassar mathematician, social scientist, computer scientist, corporate politician, programmer and, above all a visionary. For the development of COBOL which is a business language, she worked on compliers and upgrading machines to comprehend ordinary language instructions (Winston 1998).

Her work also brought about massive numbers of developments which are still the basis of digital computing works: formula translation, the linking leader, relative addressing, symbolic manipulation, subroutines and symbolic manipulation. She was one of an active Digital consultant at the time of her death (Merry n.d).Works CitedKristula, Dave. “The History of Internet” n.d. 26 Apr. 2010. http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtmlMaisel, Merry. “About Grace Hopper” n.d. 27 Apr. 2010. http://gracehopper.

org/2010/about/about-grace-hopper/Ruthfield, Scott. “The Internets History and Development” 01 Sep. 1995. 27 Apr. 2010. http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds2-1/inet-history.htmlWinston, Brain. Media technology and society: a history: from the telegraph to the Internet. Routledge, U.K. 1998.