What is the Internet? The Internet is defined as a vast computer network linking smaller computer networks worldwide.

The Internet includes commercial, educational, governmental, and other networks, all of which use the same set of communications protocols. The internet contains a broad spectrum of information that has evolved since its inception in the 1950s. This phenomenon has become very dependant upon in all aspects of life. The internet is necessary in todays society because it simplifies life for individuals. The internet allows its users to keep in contact with others users all across the globe.

History of the Internet The Internet first surfaced in the 1950s with the development of computers. The Internet began with a point-to-point communication between the mainframe computers and terminals, expanded to point-to-point communication between computers and then early research into packing switching. Packet switched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL in the UK, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular lead to the development of protocols for internetworking, where multiple individual networks could be joined together into a collection of networks. In, 1982 the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the concept of a global network of completely interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced. The ARPANET was expanded in 1981 and then again in 1986. By the 1990s, the ARPANET was decommissioned. During the decommission of ARPANET,

commercial internet service providers began to surface after which the Internet was commercialized in 1995.

Precursors to the Internet The Internet has precursors that dated back to the 19th century. The telegraph is noted as one of the earlier forms of the Internet. A telegraph is similar to the introduction of the Internet because it was a way of transmitting data between two different places that were connected via some kind of electromagnetic medium, such as a radio or an electric wire. This type of communication was generally between two devices that were typically point to point communication. Early computers used the telegraph type communication to allow contact between the central processing unit and remote terminals. With the evolution of the computer, new systems were created to allow communication over longer distances or with higher speed that were necessary for the mainframe computer model. Using these technologies it was made possible to exchange data between remote computers.

Networks that led to the Internet ARPANET The first ARPANET link was established between the University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute on October 29, 1969. This creation was a result of Robert Taylor intending to realize Lickliders ideas of an interconnected networking system. The creation was set up through a telephone connection between the

University of California and Stanford Research Institute. The first thing type was the letter L, then O and finally a G. By December of 1969, a 4-node network was connected by adding the University of Utah and the University of California, Santa Barbara. The ARPANET grew rapidly as a result of building on ideas developed in ALOHAnet. By 1981, the number of host had grown to 213, with a new host being added about every twenty days. ARPANET is the core of what we know as the Internet today.

NPL In 1965, Donald Davies of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) proposed a national data network based on packet-switching. The proposal was not adopted nationally, but by 1970 he designed and created the Mark I packet-switched network to meet the needs of the multidisciplinary laboratory and prove the technology under operational conditions. By 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached and more were added until the network was replaced in 1986 (wikipedia.com).

Merit Network The Merit Network was introduced in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad. This network was created to explore computer networking between three of Michigans public universities as a mean to help the states educational and economic development. The packet-switched network was first authenticated in December 1971 when an interactive host to host bond was made between the IBM mainframe computer systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne

State University in Detroit. In October 1972 connections to the Connected Device Configuration mainframe at Michigan State University in East Lansing completed the triad. Over the next several years, in addition to host to host interactive connections, the network was enhanced to support terminal to host connections, host to host batch connections (remote job submission, remote printing, batch file transfer), interactive file transfer, gateways to the Tymnet and Telenet public data networks, X.25 host attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks, Ethernet attached hosts, and eventually TCP/IP and additional public universities in Michigan join the network (wikipedia.com). All of this set the stage for Merit's role in the NSFNET project starting in the mid-1980s.

CYCLADES The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French research network designed and directed by Louis Pouzin (wikipedia.com). It was created to explore different options to the ARPANET design. The CYCLADES was the first network to make the hosts responsible for the reliable delivery of data, rather than the network itself.

The Creation of the Internet Without the precursors to the Internet, the internet would not be as advanced as we know it today. All of the previous testing of networks such as ARPANET and CYCLADES assisted with the development of a common internetworking protocol. The protocol eliminated the differences in the networks by creating a common internetwork protocol. The new network was now dependant upon a host that instead of the network

itself. This type of organization is accredited to the creators of the CYCLADES network since they were already using this type of technology. The specification of the resulting protocol, RFC 675 Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine, Network Working Group, December 1974, contains the first attested use of the term internet, as a shorthand for internetworking: later RFCs repeat this use, so the word started out as an adjective rather than the noun as it is known today (wikipedia.com) Since the role of the network was reduce to a nominal amount it allotted almost any network to communicate no matter the characteristics. On November 22, 1977 a three network demonstration was conducted including the ARPANET, the Packet Radio Network and the Atlantic Packet Satellite networkall sponsored by DARPA. Stemming from the first specifications of TCP in 1974, TCP/IP emerged in mid-late 1978 in nearly final form. By 1981, the associated standards were published as RFCs 791, 792 and 793 and adopted for use (wikipedia.com).

Transition over to the Internet The term internet was adopted in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol as an abbreviation of the term internetworking and the two terms were used interchangeably. The network was any network using TCP/IP. The interest in networking grew to a global phenomenon with the introduction of new applications. Many sites that were unable to link directly to the Internet started to create gateways to allow the transmission of emails. Sites which only had intermittent connections used UUCP or FidoNet and relied on the gateways between these networks and the Internet.

With the introduction of different gateways, the centralized routing portions were removed. The existing routing was changed from EGP to the Border Gateway Protocol.

E-mail and Usenet E-mail is often called the killer application of the Internet. What some are unaware of is that e-mails were established before the introduction of the internet and was an important factor in attempting to improve it. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users on a single network to communicate. ARPANET was a key instrument in the evolution of e-mail. In 1971 Ray Tomlinson created what was to become the standard Internet e-mail address format, using the @ sign to separate user names from host names (wikipedia.com). During the early years of the Internet, e-mails were essential to allow people to access resources that were unavailable, since there was no online connectivity.

Search Engines Before the World Wide Web, there were search engines that tried to organize the Internet. The first of these was the Archie search engine from McGill University in 1990, followed in 1991 by WAIS and Gopher. All three of those systems predated the invention of the World Wide Web but all continued to index the Web and the rest of the Internet for several years after the Web appeared. As the web expanded, search engine were created as a way to assist people with locating common information. The first full-text search engine was WebCrawler in 1994 (wikipedia.com). Prior to WebCrawler, only web page titles were searched. Among the

first search engines that were created, Lycos was the first to achieve commercial status. Yahoo was invented in 1994 and AltaVista was introduced in 1995. In the mid 90s, Yahoo and AltaVista were the two most popular search engines but that would soon changes as Google was introduced in 1998. Google is now known as the top search engine in the world. Other search engines have been developed afterwards but they have yet to surpass Google.

Affect of the Internet The internet has become an important part of the society. It is hard to remember a time without. The internet has been embedded in the minds of individuals as a necessity to keep in contact with others. People that are not familiar with how to use the internet are deemed to be less intelligent than those who are. Internet usage affords its user to gain a wealth of knowledge that keeps them abreast of current events and technology. Internet usage has increased over the years respectively to the information that it harvest for its users. The difficulty with the internet is that it houses an abundance of information that if not trained properly, individuals will become overwhelmed. Since the 1990s the Internet has had a drastic impact on culture and commerce, including the implementation of almost instant communication by electronic mail, text based messages, and the World Wide Web. There is a constant need to expand the internet to higher and higher speeds. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted over fiber optic networks operating at 1 Gbps, 10Gbps, or more. The Internet is constantly growing, driven by even greater amounts of

online information and knowledge, by commerce and entertainment, and by social networking.

How the Internet is Changing Society There is an abundance of information that is accessible online. The Internet affords people the opportunity to locate information about any subject matter. Some of the information is positive and some negative. Information on the Internet is easy to obtain but it clouds the knowledge that individuals think they have. The internet is an ever changing environment which is consistently updating. Before the invention of the Internet there was a lot of information to absorb. Since the creation of the Internet, it has produced even more information to absorb. The Internet is making and old and difficult problem even worse. There has been some studies that showed that there a approximately over 1.2 billion people online with access to over 100 million websites of which about half of them are active. We know that knowledge is power but with the abundance of information, your brain would have to replace some of the information that it previous encountered with new information.