History of the Internet

By EnterSchoolUsernameHere

  • ARPANET

    ARPANET
    ARPANET was a great success but membership was limited to certain academic and research organizations who had contracts with the Defense Department. In response to this, other networks were created to provide information sharing.

  • FTP

    FTP
    This was one of the first Internet services developed and it allows users to move files from one computer to another. Using the FTP program, a user can logon to a remote computer, browse through its files, and either download or upload files. These can be any type of file, but the user is only allowed to see the file name; no description of the file content is included.

  • Telnet

    Telnet
    You can connect to and use a remote computer program by using the telnet protocol. Generally you would telnet into a specific application housed on a serving computer that would allow you to use that application as if it were on your own computer. Again, using this protocol requires special software.

  • Email

    Email
    This method of Internet communication has become the standard. A main computer acts as a "post office" by sending and receiving mail for those who have accounts. This mail can be retrieved through any number of email software applications (MS Outlook, Eudora, etc.) or from Web based email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail). Email is an example of asynchronous Internet communication.

  • Usernet

    Usernet
    Usenet is something like a bulletin board or an email list without the subscription. Anyone can post a message to or browse through a Usenet newsgroup. Usenet messages are retained on the serving computer only for a predetermined length of time and then are automatically deleted, whereas email list messages are retained on the serving computer until the account holder downloads them. Many email applications, as well as Web browsers, allow you to set up Usenet newsgroup accounts.

  • TCP

    TCP
    A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.

  • DNS

    DNS
    Paul Mockapetris expanded the Internet beyond its academic origins by inventing the Domain Name System (DNS) in 1983. At USC’s Information Sciences Institute, Mockapetris recognized the problems with the early Internet (then ARPAnet)’s system of holding name to address translations in a single table on a single host (HOSTS.TXT). Instead, he proposed a distributed and dynamic naming system, essentially the DNS of today.

  • HTML

    HTML
    The World Wide Web is the new kid on the block having only been developed in the late 1980s by the European Lab for Particle Physics in Switzerland. This Internet protocol was quickly embraced by the public and has become the most popular way to provide and obtain information from the Internet. The Web offers not only access to files to download, but offers a way to jump from site to site through a series of connecting hyperlinks.

  • CERN

    CERN
    Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, while working at CERN. The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world. They were founded in 1954.

  • Gopher

    Gopher
    Gopher offers downloadable files with some content description to make it easier to find the file you need. The files are arranged on the remote computer in a hierarchical manner, much like the files on your computer's hard drive are arranged. This protocol isn't widely used anymore, but you can still find some operational gopher sites.

  • Uniform Resource Locator

    Uniform Resource Locator
    The Uniform Resource Locator or URL is the "address" of a computer connected to the Internet. While surfing the Web, you'll notice that there is an address or location box at the top of your browser. It's here that you'll see an individual site's address displayed. This address allows you to find the site again, should you forget to bookmark it.

  • HTML

    HTML
    The most distinguishing feature of the Web is the way that text is formatted. A series of "tags" is used to encode and format text, graphics, animation, sound, and other types of files. These tags are called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). These HTML files appear on your computer screen as determined by the tags used in its coding. You can see the "source" HTML coding for any Web page by choosing to "View Source" from your browser's menu bar.

  • IRC

    IRC
    This protocol allows for synchronous communication: users on different computers anywhere in the world can communicate in "real time" or simultaneously. You can instantly see a response to a typed message by several people at the same time. This protocol requires a special software application that can be downloaded from the Web, generally for free.

  • Netscape

    Netscape
    Netscape was one of the first commercial browsers on the scene and dominated the browser market until Microsoft got serious about Internet Explorer. There are some Internet users who are fiercely loyal to Netscape and there are sites on the Web that are best viewed using Netscape.