the history and development of the internet

the internet originated from ARPAnet established by ARPA, the predecessor of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) of the US Department of Defense, and it was put into use in 1969. Since 196s, ARPA has been providing funds to computer departments of American universities and some private limited companies to promote the research of computer networks based on packet switching technology. In 1968, ARPA established the ARPAnet network project, which is based on the leading idea that the network must be able to withstand the test of faults and maintain normal work. In case of war, when one part of the network loses its working ability due to attack, other parts of the network should be able to maintain normal communication. At first, ARPAnet was mainly used for military research purposes, and it has five characteristics:

(1) supporting the enjoyment of resources;

(2) adopting distributed control technology;

(3) adopting packet switching technology;

(4) using communication control processor;

(5) adopt a layered network communication protocol.

in p>1972, ARPAnet first met with the public at the first international conference on computer background communication, and verified the feasibility of packet switching technology. As a result, ARPAnet became the symbol of the birth of modern computer networks.

another important contribution of p>ARPAnet in technology is the development and use of TCP/IP protocol suite. In 198, ARPA invested in adding TCP/IP to the kernel of UNIX(BSD4.1 version 4.1). After BSD version 4.2, TCP/IP protocol became the standard communication module of UNIX operating system. In 1982, the Internet was merged by several computer networks, such as ARPAnet and MILNET. As the early backbone of the Internet, ARPAnet experimented and laid the foundation for the existence and development of the Internet, and solved a series of theoretical and technical problems in the interconnection of heterogeneous computer networks.

in p>1983, ARPAnet was split into two parts: ARPAnet and MILNET for purely military use. In January of that year, ARPA took TCP/IP protocol as the standard protocol of ARPAnet. Later, people called the Internet with ARPAnet as the backbone network as the Internet, and the TCP/IP protocol suite was studied, tested and improved into a convenient and efficient protocol suite.

at the same time, the emergence and vigorous development of local area network and other wide area networks have played an important role in the further development of the Internet. Among them, the most striking is the national science foundation network NSFnet established by the National Science Foundation. In 1986, NSF established six supercomputer centers. In order to enable scientists and engineers all over the country to enjoy these supercomputer facilities, NSF established its own computer network NSFnet based on TCP/IP protocol suite. NSF has established computer wide area networks divided by regions in China, and connected these regional networks with supercomputing centers, and finally interconnected the supercomputing centers. The composition of local area network is generally composed of a group of computers that are geographically confined to a certain area, belong to a certain organization in management or have the same interests in economy. The high-speed data line connecting the computers of the main communication nodes on the local network constitutes the backbone network of NSFnet. In this way, when a user's computer is connected with a certain area, it can not only use the facilities of any supercomputer center, but also communicate with any user on the network and obtain the network. This success enabled NSFnet to completely replace ARPAnet and become the backbone of the Internet in June 199.

NSFnet's greatest contribution to the Internet is to make the Internet open to the whole society, instead of just being used by computer researchers, government employees and government contractors as before. However, with the rapid growth of online traffic, NSF has to adopt newer network technology to meet the needs of development. In September 199, Merit, IBM and MCI jointly established a non-profit organization-Advanced Network and Science Company ANS (Advanced Network &; Science,Inc)。 The purpose of ANS is to build a T3-level backbone network in the United States, which can transmit data at a rate of 45Mb/s, equivalent to transmitting 1,4 pages of text information per second. By the end of 1991, all the backbone networks of NSFnet had been connected with T3 backbone networks provided by ANS.

in December p>1969, when ARPAnet was first built, there were only four nodes. By March 1972, there were only 23 nodes. Until March 1977, there were only 111 nodes. However, in the past decade, with the development of social science, technology, culture and economy, especially the great development of computer network technology and communication technology, the trend of human society's transition from industrial society to information society has become more and more obvious, and people's awareness of information and attention to the development and use of information resources have been strengthened, which has strongly stimulated the development of ARPAnet and NSFnet. The number of hosts and users connected to these two networks increased sharply. In 1988, the number of computers connected by NSFnet soared to 56,, and then it developed at an alarming rate of 2 to 3 times every year. In 1994, the number of hosts on the Internet reached 3.2 million, connecting 35, computer networks in the world. Now, there are more than 5 million users on the Internet, and the number is still increasing by 1-15% every month. Experts predict that by 1998, the number of users on the Internet will exceed 1 million, and by 2, there will be more than 1 million networks, 1 million hosts and more than 1 billion users in the world. Today's Internet is no longer a field for computer personnel and military departments to conduct scientific research, but has become a global information ocean for developing and using information resources. On the Internet, there are more than 1 kinds of businesses, including advertising companies, airlines, agricultural production companies, arts, navigation equipment, bookstores, chemicals, communications, computers, consulting, entertainment, finance and trade, various shops, hotels and so on, covering all aspects of social life and forming the epitome of an information society.

in p>1995, the Internet began to be widely used in the commercial field. In that year, the total revenue of Internet business in the United States was $1 billion, and it is expected to reach $1.8 billion in 1996. Online service providers have also developed from computer companies like America Online and ProdigyService to computer companies like AT&; Communication operators such as T, MCI and Pacific Bell also joined in.

due to the huge demand for commercial applications, the market for Internet applications, from modems to Web servers and browsers, is booming.

with the rapid development of the Internet, the product structure itself has also changed with the shift of users' needs. In 1994, almost all Internet software was guaranteed by TCP/IP protocol. At that time, people needed a network architecture compatible with TCP/IP protocol. Nowadays, the focus of Internet has turned to specific applications, such as using WWW to advertise or conduct online trade. Web is the fastest growing application on the Internet, and its users have surged from less than 4 million in 1994 to 1 million in 1995. The number of Web sites ranged from 1995 to 3,.

● the scale of the internet

the internet has become the largest international computer network at present. Today, the Internet has connected more than 6, networks and officially connected to 86 countries. E-mail can reach more than 15 countries, and more than 4.8 million hosts are connected through it, with more than 25 million users. The daily information flow reaches more than one trillion bytes, and the monthly e-mail exceeds one billion.

At the same time, the application of Internet has penetrated into various fields, from academic research to stock trading, from school education to entertainment games, from online information retrieval to online home shopping, and has made great progress. According to statistics, at present, in the domain name distribution of the Internet,. com-- that is, business accounts for the largest proportion, accounting for 41%; . edu-- (science and education) has retired to the second line, accounting for 3% of the share. In the growth of the Internet last year, the growth of the business sector accounted for 75%.

● the future of the Internet

from the current situation, the internet market still has great development potential, and its future application will cover a wide range of fields, from office information enjoyment to marketing and services. In addition, the electronic commerce brought by the Internet is changing the traditional mode of business activities today, and the convenient and extensive interconnection it provides will certainly have an impact on all aspects of future social life.

however, the Internet also has its inherent shortcomings, such as no overall planning and design, unclear network extension structure and lack of fault tolerance and reliability, which are very important for many applications in the commercial field. Security is another major factor that puzzles the development of Internet users. Although there are many schemes and protocols to ensure the reliable online business transactions on the Internet, the technologies and products that are truly applicable and will dominate the market are still unclear. In addition, the Internet is a non-central network. All these problems have hindered the development of the Internet to a certain extent. Only by solving these problems can the Internet develop better.