History of the Internet

The Internet is a worldwide computer network, the many nodes of which are computers and computer devices that interact according to the same rules, operating as part of independent packet networks with different architectures, technical characteristics and territorial location. The rules for exchanging messages between Internet hosts are defined by a family of protocols. The Internet serves as a communication infrastructure for e-mail, the World Wide Web (a service on the Internet that allows you to access information on any servers connected to the network), search engines, Internet telephony and other services widely used in the informatization of education, science, economics, public administration and other activities.

The idea of building an information network was proposed in 1962 by the American scientist Joseph Licklider in his notes on the concept of building a "galactic network" (Galactic Network). The theoretical justification of packet switching in the transmission of messages in computer networks was given in an article by the American scientist Leonard Kleinrock, published in 1961.

The first practical step towards the creation of the Internet was made by the Defense Advanced Research Projects (ARPA) (USA), which in 1967 introduced ARPANET Packet Network Plan. Qua of the first node of the network ARPANET was selected by the Kleinrock-led Network Measurements Center at the University of California (UCLA, Los Angeles).

On September 2, 1969, a group of scientists was able to establish A data link from one computer to another via a cable. This moment is considered to be the beginning of the Internet era.

In October 1969, a second node was installed at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and for the first time the transfer of information between remote computers was organized. In the next two months, nodes at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Utah were connected to the ARPANET.

By 1971, the ARPANET had become part of the consisted of 15 knots. The main reason for this slow growth was that most computers did not have a single piece of software.

In 1972, after opening access to universities and research organizations, ARPANET brought together 50 universities and research organizations that had contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1973, the ARPANET Grew to an international scale, combining networks located in the UK and Norway.

In addition to the ARPANET, Other Experimental Networks using radio and satellite communications. At that time, there was no easy way to connect such different networks.

In 1971, American engineer Ray Tomlinson invented e-mail, and the following year it was the first of the Internet's most popular applications.

A key event in the development of the Internet is the invention of the network protocol by Robert Kahn (USA), on the basis of which, together with the scientist Vinton Cerf, in 1973 the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) protocols were developed, which made it possible to exchange data between networks of different types.

In January 1983, the ARPANET switched to TCP/IP. The ARPANET and its other networks that use TCP/IP protocols have come to be known collectively as the "Internet." ARPA has made these protocols available to other groups wishing to build networks, and the standard has been widely accepted.

In the early 1980s Under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (NSF), several networks based on ARPANET technology operated. In 1985 they were replaced by one NSFNET (National Science Foundation NETwork), which brings together regional university networks and five supercomputing centers located in different regions of the United States. The new network soon replaced the ARPAnet as the backbone of the Internet. By 1988, various regional research and education networks, supported in part by the NSF, were connected to the NSFNET backbone network, which expanded the reach of the Internet throughout the United States. Then other countries began to join the Internet.

March 12, 1989 British physicist Tim Berners-Lee, who worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (European Organization for Nuclear Researchnbsp), proposed a project for an information management system that would use hypertext to link documents on different computers connected to the Internet (World Wide Web, WWW). By the end of 1990, he and assistant Belgian engineer Robert Caillaux had developed key technologies that underpin the Internet, including Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for creating web pages, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a set of rules for transmitting data over the Internet, and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or web addresses for finding a document or page. He also developed a basic browser that allows you to view hyperlinked text files online, and web server software.

The history of the Internet as a public service began on August 6, 1991, when Berners-Lee published The first-ever website – (owned by CERN). The site was dedicated to the project World Wide Web, described the Internet and how to use it.

Access to the browser was made available to the general public, but its spread outside of academia was slow.

A new stage in the development of the Internet is associated with the release in 1993 of the first Unix version of the Mosaic graphical browser, developed by Marc Andreessen, an intern at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), USA. Since 1994, with the release of Mosaic for Windows and Macintosh operating systems, followed shortly thereafter by Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Internet has gained popularity among the general public, first in the United States and then around the world.

In 1995, NSF transferred responsibility for the Internet to the private sector. This contributed to the expansion of the circle of commercial providers and consumers of Internet services, which soon connected millions of computers and hundreds of millions of people around the world.

 

The number of Internet users around the world is constantly growing. As of January 2024, the Internet Enjoy about 5.35 billion people, which is 66.2% of the world's population. Number of users Grew by 1.8% over the past 12 months. Among young people aged 15 to 24, the figure was 75 per cent.

 

The rapid development of the Internet is facilitated by the fact that, since its inception, professionals involved in the scientific and technical tasks of building the Internet have been exchanging ideas and solutions without delay, using the capabilities of the Internet. Virtual research laboratories, corporate and state information portals and other applied add-ons created on the basis of it have become recognized means of supporting the competitiveness of scientific institutions, corporations, government organizations, etc.

Today, the Internet has become an integral part of modern civilization. It is the basis for the development of e-commerce, which is an ever-growing segment of the world and domestic economy, the most important tool for the development of modern national and international financial systems, including payment systems. Rapidly breaking into the spheres of education, trade, communications, services, the Internet Generates new forms of communication and learning, commerce and entertainment.

With the growth of the number of Internet nodes and application services, the relevance of interrelated problems increases: channel bandwidth, suppression of the spread of spam, viruses and other harmful effects on the Internet. The growing popularity of services based on high-definition video messaging technologies in real time contributes to the exacerbation of the bandwidth problem; Attempts to radically solve these and a number of other problems are being made within the framework of the Internet2 (1996) and Next Generation Internet (NGI) (1997) projects launched in the United States.