The Internet1 essays

The Internet1 essays In the early 1960's, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) became very concerned about the possible effects of nuclear attack on its computing facilities. As a result, it began to examine ways to connect their computers to each other and to weapons installations that were distributed all over the world. The DOD charged the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (now known as DARPA) to fund research that would lead to the creation of a worldwide network. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was an experimental wide area network (WAN) that consisted of the four computers networked by DARPA researchers in 1969. These first four computers were located at the University of California at Los Angeles, SRI International, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. By 1990, a network of networks, now known as the Internet, had grown from the four computers on the ARPANET to over 300,000 computers on many interconnected networks. As ARPANET grew to include more computers, researchers realized the need for each connected computer to conform the same set of rules. The Network Control Protocol (NCP) was developed as the first collection of rules for formatting, ordering, and error-checking data sent across a network. Vincent Cerf, who is often referred to as the Father of the Internet, along with his colleague Robert Kahn, developed the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol (referred to by their combined acronym TCP/IP), which are still used today. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) includes rules that computers on a network use to establish and break connections. The Internet Protocol (IP) includes rules for routing individual data packets. The term Internet was first used in 1974 in an article written by Cerf and Kahn about the TCP protocol. The open architecture philosophy ensured that each network connected to the ARPANET could continue using its own protocols ...