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Apart from one to one communication, it has led people, organisations, government bodies, etc. to flash
information about themselves through their websites which can be viewed by any person across the
world.
HISTORY OF INTERNET
Internet maps its derivation back to 1969 when it evolved out of an experiment carried out by the defence
agency of the United States. The Department of US Defence was in the process of doing research and
technical development in the areas where few services of defence (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps)
had clear jurisdiction of operations.
This agency i.e, ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), which was later known as DARPA (Defence
Advanced Research Project Agency), planned to create a computer network that would continue to
operate even during emergency or disastrous situations like war.
This led to the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) which worked to
link US Scientific and Academic Researchers for exchanging data and messages between one computer
to another. ARPANET started as a four-node network in December 1969.
By the 1970’s, ARPA helped in the development of a new protocol known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol / Internet Protocol) for transferring and tracking data between the networks so that they can
reach the destination safely.
By the 1980’s, another federal agency of US named the National Science Foundation (NSF) used ARPANET
to connect its five regional supercomputer centres located at different universities so that their multiple
users could share the resources among themselves. Later, NSF created a more sophisticated network
called NSFNET (the National Science Foundation Network) which was a series of networks that was utilised
for research and development.
The Internet was formed by connecting networks like ARPANET and NSFNET. This process of linking
different networks is called internetworking. The term ‘Internet’ comes from the idea of many networks
being connected together.
Initially NSFNET was meant only for the purpose of academic research and was not in use for any
private organisation. As NSFNET did not permit its use to private organisation, several private
telecommunication companies built their own network backbones that used the same set of
networking protocols as NSFNET.
The original ARPANET lost its existence in 1990 and the government discontinued funding NSFNET in
1995 and the commercial Internet services replaced them. By the early 1990’s, the Internet expanded
dramatically and the tool that was made for communication in wars found its way into general and
commercial use (i.e., business, home, education, etc.).
INTERNET TERMINOLOGY
Let us now learn about some basic terms related to the Internet we come across in our daily lives.
World Wide Web (WWW)
The ‘World Wide Web’ is a framework for accessing linked documents spread over millions of computing
devices over the Internet.
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