Internet is the “network of networks”, it is composed of different computers connected through a link which forms the worldwide network. The World Wide Web (WWW) and internet are not the same, WWW is the web pages which are shared and accessed using HTTP (Hyper text transfer Protocol) whereas internet is the network of different connecting devices through which one can access remote files, emails and Telnet services.
Internet is made up of networks and web is made up of websites accessed over internet using HTTP. Internet and web both have different histories as web came in existence after internet became popular in 80s.
History of Internet
Before the birth of Internet, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was in the market and it was funded by the United States Department of Defense. It was one of the most successful research projects and this led to the discovery of internetworking protocols for efficient communication between different hosts in two or more networks.
Here, I have discussed the timeline based on history of evolution of internet:
1965: Using packet-switching technology, two computers communicated with one another at MIT Lincoln Lab.
1968: The final version of Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) interface Message Processor (IMP) specifications was revealed. ARPANET contract was won by BBN.
1969: UCLA’s Network Measurement Center, Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of California-Santa Barbara and University of Utah on August 29, installed nodes (electronic connecting devices). The first message was “LO,” sent by an student Charles Kline to “LOGIN” to the SRI computer from the university. However, the student’s attempt of sending message was not success because of the crash of SRI system.
1972: BBN’s Ray Tomlinson introduced network email. The Internet working Working Group (INWG) formed to address need for establishing standard protocols, back then TCP/IP suite was not even introduced.
1973: World-wide networking came into the world when the University College of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway) connected to ARPANET. This is when the term Internet was born.
1974: The first Internet Service Provider (ISP) become a reality with the introduction of a commercial version of ARPANET, which was known as Telenet.
1974: Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn (the duo called by many as the Fathers of the Internet) published “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection,” that details the design of TCP.
1976: Queen Elizabeth II clicks the “send button” on her first email.
1979: USENET formation to host news and discussion groups.
1981: The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a grant for the establishment of the Computer Science Network (CSNET) for providing networking services to university computer scientists.
1982: Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was introduced. It enabled the worldwide communication using a single protocol.
1983: The Domain Name System (DNS) was introduced that maps the domain name to IP address at application level. DNS introduced the domain names with .com, .in, .gov, .org etc.
1984: William Gibson, author of “Neuromancer,” became the first person to use the term “cyberspace.”
1985: Symbolics.com, the website for Symbolics Computer Corp. in Massachusetts, was the first registered domain.
1986: The National Science Foundation’s NSFNET went online to connected supercomputer centers at 56,000 bits per second — the speed of a typical dial-up computer modem. Over time the network speeds up and regional research and education networks, supported in part by NSF, were connected to the NSFNET backbone — effectively expanding the Internet throughout the United States. The NSFNET was a network of networks that connected academic users along with the ARPANET.
1987: The number of hosts on the Internet exceeded 20,000. It was the year when Cisco ships its first router.
1989: World.std.com becomes the first commercial provider of dial-up access to the Internet.
1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, developed HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Since than it has had many versions introduced with the advancement of technology and has no going back.
1991: The World Wide Web was introduced by CERN to the public.
1992: The first audio and video were distributed over the Internet. This was the time when the phrase “surfing the Internet” was popularized.
1993: The number of websites reached 600 and the White House and United Nations were online since than. Marc Andreesen developed the Mosaic Web browser at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. The number of computers connected to NSFNET increased from 2,000 in 1985 to over 2 million in 1993. The National Science Foundation leads an effort to outline a new Internet architecture that would support the burgeoning commercial use of the network.
1994: Netscape Communications was born. Microsoft created a Web browser for Windows 95.
1994: Yahoo! is created by two electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University, Jerry Yang and David Filo. The site was originally known as “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” The company was later incorporated in March 1995.
1995: Compuserve, America Online and Prodigy started to provide Internet access. Amazon.com, Craigslist and eBay went live. The original NSFNET backbone was decommissioned with the transformation of Internet to a commercial enterprise was completed.
1995: The first online dating site, Match.com, was launched.
1996: The browser war heated up between the two major players Microsoft and Netscape. CNET buys tv.com for a total of $15,000.
1996: A 3D animation dubbed “The Dancing Baby” became the the first viral videos.
1997: Netflix was founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as a company that sends DVDs to users by mail.
1997: PC makers can remove or hide Microsoft’s Internet software on new versions of Windows 95, thanks to a settlement with the Justice Department. Netscape announces that its browser will be free.
1998: The Google search engine was born, which changed the way users engage with the Internet.
1998: The Internet Protocol version 6 was launched, opening the gateways for future growth of Internet Addresses. The most widely used protocol is version 4. IPv4 that uses 32-bit addresses allowing for 4.3 billion unique addresses; IPv6, with 128-bit addresses, allows 3.4 x 1038 unique addresses, or 340 trillion trillion trillion.
1999: AOL acquired Netscape. Peer-to-peer file sharing was possible with the arrival of Napster on the Internet, much to the displeasure of the music industry.
2000: The dot-com bubble bursts. Web sites such as Yahoo! and eBay are hit by a large-scale denial of service attack, highlighting the vulnerability of the Internet. It was the time when AOL mergeed with Time Warner
2001: A federal judge shuts down Napster, ruling that it must find a way that stops users from sharing copyrighted material before it can go back online.
2003: The SQL Slammer worm spread global in just 10 minutes. It was also the time when Skype, Myspace, and the Safari Web browser came into the world.
2003: WordPress, a blog publishing platform, was launched.
2004: Facebook went online and the era of social networking started. It was the same time when Mozilla launched the Mozilla Firefox browser.
2005: YouTube.com was introduced. This was also the time when social news site Reddit was founded.
2006: AOL changes its business model, offering most services for free and relying on advertising to generate revenue. The Internet Governance Forum meets for the first time.
2006: Twitter launches. The company’s founder, Jack Dorsey, sends out the very first tweet: “just setting up my twttr.”
2009: The Internet marks its 40th anniversary.
2010: Facebook reaches 400 million active users.
2010: The social media sites Pinterest and Instagram are launched.
2011: Twitter and Facebook play a large role in the Middle East revolts.
2012: President Barack Obama’s administration announces its opposition to major parts of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, which would have enacted broad new rules requiring internet service providers to police copyrighted content. The successful push to stop the bill, involving technology companies such as Google and nonprofit organizations including Wikipedia and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is considered a victory for sites such as YouTube that depend on user-generated content, as well as “fair use” on the Internet.
2013: Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, reveals that the NSA had in place a monitoring program capable of tapping the communications of thousands of people, including U.S. citizens.
2013: Fifty-one percent of U.S. adults report that they bank online, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
2015: Instagram, the photo-sharing site, reaches 400 million users, outpacing Twitter, which would go on to reach 316 million users by the middle of the same year.
2016: Google unveils Google Assistant, a voice-activated personal assistant program, marking the entry of the Internet giant into the “smart” computerized assistant marketplace. Google joins Amazon’s Alexa, Siri from Apple, and Cortana from Microsoft.
Now the technology has moved to a next level, with the artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics automation changing the way we live will change the future too.
