History and Development of the Internet:
– ‘Internetted’ terminology in 1849, ‘Internet’ term coined in 1945 by the US War Department.
– Development of time-sharing systems in the 1960s.
– ARPANET’s initial nodes connected in 1969, leading to future growth.
– Development of protocols and standards for internetworking.
– Incorporation of packet switching into ARPANET design after 1967.
– Evolution of ARPANET into a decentralized communications network.
– Development of user networks like Merit Network and CYCLADES.
– Early international collaborations for ARPANET in the 1970s.
– Proposal for Packet Network Intercommunication in 1974.
– X.25 standard, TCP/IP standardization, and commercial ISPs emerging in the 1980s.
– Development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.
Impact and Global Reach of the Internet:
– Internet’s influence on traditional communication media.
– Emergence of new services like email, online shopping, and social networking.
– Commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s.
– Internet’s role in reshaping industries and supply chains.
– Internet’s role in enabling new forms of personal interaction.
– Internet growth attributed to lack of central administration and non-proprietary protocols.
– Estimated 2.095 billion Internet users worldwide in 2011.
– Internet carried 97% of telecommunicated information by 2007.
– Internet Society (ISOC) founded in 1992 to ensure open development and use of the Internet.
Governance and Infrastructure of the Internet:
– Internet operates without a central governing body.
– Core protocols maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
– Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) administers principal name spaces.
– Regional Internet registries (RIRs) established for five regions.
– Internet infrastructure consists of hardware components and software layers controlling architecture.
– Components include routers, media, repeaters, and modems.
– Submarine fiberoptic telecommunication cables span the globe.
– DNS resolves domain names to IPv4 addresses.
– IP addresses direct internet packets to destinations.
– Internet service providers establish worldwide connectivity.
Technological Advancements and Protocols:
– Semiconductor and optical networking advancements driving commercial involvement.
– Internet traffic growth doubling every 18 months.
– Edholm’s law formalized growth catalyzed by technology advancements.
– Internet Protocol Suite organized into four layers.
– IPv4 and IPv6 differences and functionalities.
– Subnetting and routing for efficient data transfer.
– Various protocols like TCP, UDP, ICMP, and ARP operate at different layers.
– IP enables computers to identify and locate each other by IP address.
– Encapsulation and transmission of data over networks.
Access and Communication Services:
– Internet access methods include dial-up, broadband, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cellular tech.
– Mobile devices exceed desktops in Internet usage globally.
– Zero-rating and equal rating initiatives for global Internet access.
– Different tiers of Internet service providers and networks.
– Email, VoIP, file sharing, and streaming media services.
– World Wide Web, social media, and online gaming platforms.
– Servers hosted in data centers for content delivery.
– End-users at the bottom of the routing hierarchy.
– Public Internet kiosks and Wi-Fi services in various locations.
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to research to enable time-sharing of computer resources and the development of packet switching in the 1960s. The set of rules (communication protocols) to enable internetworking on the Internet arose from research and development commissioned in the 1970s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense in collaboration with universities and researchers across the United States and in the United Kingdom and France. The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, encouraged worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and the merger of many networks using DARPA's Internet protocol suite. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of the World Wide Web, marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, the subsequent commercialization in the 1990s and beyond incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life.
Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail, and newspapers, are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephone, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and other print publishing have adapted to website technology or have been reshaped into blogging, web feeds, and online news aggregators. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping has grown exponentially for major retailers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.
The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. The overarching definitions of the two principal name spaces on the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise. In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of the New Seven Wonders.
