1957- The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response, the US would form the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense to help the US recapture the lead in science.

 1962- In the midst of the Cold War, the RAND Corporation was paid by the US military to do a study on how the government could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombs after a nuclear attack. Any central authority would be a target for enemy missiles.

 1964- Paul Baran, of the RAND corporation, publishes a paper called "On Distributed Communications Networks." This explained the idea of packet switching networks. First of all, the network would have no central authority and designed to operate even when parts of it are not in working order. Each computer on the network would be equal to each other computer. A central authority would not exist. Each computer would have the authority to originate, pass, and receive messages. The messages are divided into packets. Each of the packets have addresses that indicate where they are going and where they are coming from. The messages are then sent from computer to computer and wind their way through the network. If part of the message is lost, it can be resent by the originating computer. Even if parts of the network had been destroyed, messages could reach their destination by different routes.

 1968- The National Research Projects Agency in Great Britain first, tested packet switching on its WAN, wide area network.

 1969- The Advanced Research Projects Agency decides to build their own WAN wide area network, soon called ARPANET. The first node was installed in UCLA, University of California at Los Angeles. It is then connected to The Stanford Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah bringing the network to 4 hosts. The network linked the best computers available at the time. Scientists and researchers could share computer resources and information between universities despite being long distances apart. This was very useful considering computer time was limited in the late 60's and early 70's.

 1971- 15 hosts on ARPANET.

 1972- 37 hosts on ARPANET. By this time ARPANET users had turned the network into an electronic post office. The main traffic on ARPANET was not long distance computing, but instead personal messages and news. Users had their own personal accounts and e-mail addresses. It wasn't long before users invented mailing lists. This allowed an identical message to be sent to a large number of subscribers to the mailing list. One of the first mailing lists ever was "SF Lovers" for science fiction fans. Discussing science fiction on the network was not work-related and was frowned upon by many ARPANET computer administrators, but this didn't stop it from happening.

 1973- First international nodes set up in Norway and England.

 1974- Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish their paper, " A protocol for Packet Network Internetworking," which outlines the design of TCP/IP, Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. The paper also includes the first use of the term Internet. TCP/IP was a more advanced way of letting computers communicate. It let computers with different standards and platforms communicate. TCP converts messages into streams of packets at the source, then reassembles them back into messages at the destination. IP handles addressing and seeing to it that packets are routed across multiple networks and nodes, even though they may have multiple standards. During much of the 1970s, TCP/IP allowed many other networks to link up to each other and to ARPANET. It became fairly easy to link a computer to this growing network of networks. Since the software called TCP/IP was public-domain, and the basic technology was decentralized, it was difficult to stop people from barging in and linking up somewhere or other. Actually, nobody wanted to stop them from joining this branching complex of networks, which became what we know as the Internet. The Internet did not become more expensive to use because of the additional computers. The more computers linked up the better. An example of this logic is the fax machine or telephone. A fax machine or telephone are only valuable if everyone else has one.

 1979- Usenet is created. It is often referred to as newsgroups, netnews, news or discussion groups.

 1983- The University of Wisconsin creates the Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers because they no longer had to remember numbers

domain name- a name that identifies an IP (internet protocol address) For example, the domain name microsoft.com represents the IP address 198.105.232.4. Domain Names are used in URLs to identify particular web pages. For example, in the URL http://www.sandybay.com/pc-web.  The domain name is sandybay.com.

DNS- short for domain name system or service. An internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name a DNS service must translate the name into its corresponding IP address. Using either the IP address or domain name would work by entering it.

1990- Tim Berners-Lee develops begins developing the world wide web. He helps define standards such as url, html, http.

1992- World Wide Web is released.

1993- Internic is created to provide directory and database services, information services, and registration services.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1.     What did the Soviet Union launch in 1957?

2.     What is a modem?

3.     What does HTML stand for?

4.     Which corporation was paid by the U.S. military to find a way to control its missiles in the event of a nuclear war?

5.     Who came up with the idea of packet switching networks?

6.     Does the Internet have one central computer with more authority than other computers on the network?

7.     If one computer is not working on the Internet, will the other computers be able to work on the Internet?

8.     WAN stands for what?

9.     LAN stands for what?

10.  Is Belen's network a WAN or a LAN?

11.  The original network which led to what we know as the Internet was called what?

12.  TCP/IP stands for what?

13.  What was created in 1979, works like a bulletin board, and is often referred to as newsgroups, netnews,news, or discussion groups?

14.  Which university created the domain name system?

15.  What is the domain name in this address? http://www.sandybay.com/pc-web

16.  What is an IP address?

17.  Who developed the World Wide Web?

18.  What organization keeps track of and registers domain names?

19.  Is it true that the more computers on the Internet the better it is?

20.  One of the first mailing lists ever was?

21.  What is a host?

22.  What is a URL?

23.  What is a Server?

24.  What is a browser?

25.  What is Bandwidth?

26.  What is Netscape and Internet Explorer?

27.  What is a network?

28.  What was the name of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn's paper?

29.  ALOHAnet was the first time what happened?

30.  What is packet switching?

31.  The department of defense was instrumental in the formation of the Internet. True or False?

32.  You can reach Belen's web site by typing in Belen's IP address(199.227.27.100). True or False?

33.  What does ISP stand for?

34.  Is America Online an ISP?

35.  What is a node?

36.  What does ARPA stand for?

37.  The E in E-mail stands for what?

38.  What is Internic?

39.  What is FTP?

40.  What is a hyperlink?