When was the first network created? Tim Berners-Lee - creator of the World Wide Web

The Internet is the World Wide Web, a global information space. The history of the emergence and development of this world wide web is bright and unusual, because already 10 years after its appearance, it has conquered many organizations and countries that began to actively use the network for work. At first, the Internet served exclusively for groups of researchers and scientists, soon the military squeezed into this group, and after that, businessmen. After that, the popularity of the Internet grew rapidly. Users were seduced by the speed of information transfer, cheap global communication, many easy and affordable programs, a unique database, and so on.

Today, at a low cost of services, each user can access information services from all countries of the world. Also, the Internet today provides opportunities for global communication around the world. Naturally, this is convenient for companies that have branches in different parts of the world, for transnational corporations, as well as for management structures.

The famous abbreviation "WWW" stands for "World Wide Web" - World Wide Web

But what was the history of the Internet? How did the Internet appear? How did it all start, and what was the development of this fabulous network with information about everything? Read on in the article.

How and when did the Internet appear

It happened over 50 years ago. Back in 1961, on the instructions of the US Department of Defense, DARPA (Advanced Research Agensy) began work on an experimental project to create a network between computers to transmit data packets. In the first version of the theoretical development of the predecessor of the modern World Wide Web, which was released in 1964 thanks to Paul Baran, it was argued that all network nodes should have the same status. Each node has the authority to originate, transmit, and receive messages from other computers. In this case, messages are divided into standardized elements, called "package". Each package is assigned an address, which ensures the correct and complete delivery of documents.

Paul Baran - thanks to which in 1964 the network appeared - the progenitor of the modern Internet

This network was called ARPANET, and it was intended to explore various options for ensuring the reliability of communication between different computers. It became the immediate predecessor of the Internet.

For eight years, DARPA worked on the project, and in 1969, the Department of Defense approved ARPANET as the leading research organization in the field of computer networks. Since that time, the nodes of the new network began to be created. The first such node was the UCLA Network Test Center, after which they created the node of the Stanford Research Institute, the node of the University of Santa Barbara and the University of Utah, and developed the UNIX operating system.

As early as next year, ARPANET hosts were using NCP to exchange. A year later, the network already had 15 nodes. 1972 is the year in which the addressing design teams were created to harmonize different protocols. At the same time, TCP / IP data transfer protocols were developed.

In 1973, the first international connections were made. The countries that entered the ARPANET network were England and Norway. The ARPANET project turned out to be so successful that soon many organizations in the USA, England and Norway wished to join it. Already after 2 years, ARPANET outgrew the name of the "experimental" network, and became a full-fledged working network. Since that time, responsibility for administering the ARPANET has been taken over by the Defense Communications Agency, which today is called the Defense Information Systems Agency.

DISA - Defense Information Systems Agency - information systems defense agency

But the development of ARPANET didn't stop there; TCP / IP data transfer protocols have evolved and improved. After some time, this protocol was adapted to public standards, after which the term Internet became generally accepted and entered into everyday communication.

The history of the Internet is just beginning. In 1976, they developed the UUCP protocol, and three years later they launched USENET, which works on the basis of UUCP.

The US Department of Defense in 1983 declared TCP / IP as its standard. Also in the same year, an announcement was made that ARPANET had completed its research phase. At the same time, MILNET spun off from ARPANET.

1984 was the year the DNS system was introduced, and the total number of hosts exceeded 1,000. The following year, NFS was created, the goal of which was to build a network that would unite all the national computer centers. The formation of CSNET accelerated significantly in 1986, when they began to create supercomputer centers. The result of hard work was the NSFNET network, the data packet rate of which was 56 Kbps. The network was based on 5 supercomputing centers located in NCSA, Princeton, UCSD, Pittsburgh and Cornell University.

By 1987, the number of hosts had crossed over 10,000. And in 1988, NSFNET began using the T1 channel. At the same time, countries such as Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, France, Sweden and Finland joined NSFNET. The following year, the number of hosts increased to over 100,000. At the same time, the UK, Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy, Israel, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Mexico joined the network. In 1990, Russia joined the World Wide Web.

Despite the fact that in 1991 the ARPANET company ceased to exist, the worldwide Internet network did not die along with its creator, but, on the contrary, became even larger, united many networks into one huge bundle of connections. Since that time, the NSFNET network began to use T3 links for operation, which provided a data transfer rate of 44.736 Mbps. At the initiative of the NSF, in 1993 they created InetNIC, in which domain names were registered. Since 1994, trading activities have begun via the Internet.

In the same year, the Internet celebrated its 25th anniversary. This year, Vladimir Levin (a Russian hacker) attacked the American Citibank. This showed the whole world that network security is not 100%, and new developments of various data security systems on the network began.

In addition, in 1994 there were two more important events that cannot be ignored. The first event is the development of access protection tools, the second is the licensing of the Mosaic browser, the Mosaic Communication Corporation, founded by James Clark. This year, traffic on the World Wide Web has exceeded 10 gigabytes / month.

The following year, NSFNET made domain name registrations free of charge. Since September 14, 1995, the registration fee has been $50. And in April of the same year, NSFNET ceased to exist. As a result of rapid growth in 1995, the network reached the level of six million connected servers. At the same time, the AltaVista search engine was launched and RealAudio technology appeared. The first variants of IP-telephony also began to appear.

In 1996, a tacit competition began between Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. And in the world this year there were already 12.8 million hosts and 500 thousand sites.

1997 was a serious test for the entire web system. An Internet bug at DNS Network Solutions resulted in the blocking of access to millions of commercial .

A few years later, namely in 1999, a new global network called Internet 2, or the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, came into operation. With the advent of the new company, they changed the 32-bit representation system to 128-bit.

In the same year, the first attempt to censor the Internet was made. The government agencies of some countries - China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the countries of the former USSR have made serious efforts to technically block user access to certain sites and servers with political, religious or pornographic content.

In 2001, the number of users of the World Wide Web exceeded 530 million. The following year, this number increased to 689 million people.

Today, almost all possible communication lines are used on the Internet, from low-speed telephone lines to high-speed digital satellite channels. The operating systems used on the Internet also differ.

Internet in Russia

The Internet entered Russia in the early 1990s. In those years, a number of universities began to build their own computer networks. On the basis of the Institute of Atomic Energy. Kurchatov, two commercial companies were formed that provided services for connecting to the Internet.

In 1993, a strong impetus for the development of the Internet in Russia was given by the "Telecommunications Program" from the International Science Foundation.

The following year, within the framework of the state program “Universities of Russia”, a direction was allocated for the creation of a federal university computer network. The network went into operation in 1995. In 1996-98, a backbone network was built for science and higher education.

At the same time, networks of commercial suppliers emerged and developed. Initially, they focused on connecting organizations.

In 1998, Rostelecom formed the Relcom-DS company together with Relcom. Today it is the largest provider of Internet services in Russia.

To date, the Internet already has a huge database of information in Russian. According to sociologists, at the end of 1998 in Russia about 1.5 million people were Internet users, more than half of these users lived outside of Moscow. In 1999, the number of users exceeded 5 million.

Online programs

To fully work with the Internet, there are a number of programs that are popular today. And successful use of the World Wide Web is possible only if you choose the right quality software. It is worth noting that it is impossible to give universal advice on this matter, since everything depends on the configuration of your computer, the specifics of your interests and the operating system you are working with. Also, another reason why it is impossible to assert with certainty about the full quality of a particular program is the constant development of the Internet. Almost every day there are new standards or new methods for their implementation.

But, in any case, all Internet software is divided (conditionally) into several groups:

  1. Browsers - Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, Google Chrome and others;
  2. Mail programs are special programs that work to send, receive, view and sort e-mail;
  3. Programs for communication - these programs provide the ability to conduct real-time negotiations on the Web. It can be text mode, audio or video exchange: ICQ, Odigo, Skype, IPhone, EasyTalk, etc.;
  4. Programs for working with files.

Naturally, this list of Internet software is not limited, it is constantly updated and expanded.

What you need to network

In order to work on the World Wide Web, you need to connect to it. Today there are several ways to connect to the Internet. These are different types of connections with different connection speeds and prices.

Modem. A modem connects to the Internet via a standard telephone line. This connection is quite unreliable, although relatively cheap. Modem communication requires a telephone line and an internal or external modem.

ISDN. This is a communication line that is very similar to a regular telephone line, with only one difference - it is completely digital and can provide much higher speed, unlike a modem. To work, you need either an ISDN modem or an ISDN adapter and an NT-1 connector.

frame relay- Frame relaying. This is a permanent line of communication, a reliable connection to the Internet. To establish such a connection, you must have an appropriate computer board and a frame relay line.

Dedicated line. This is a technology similar to frame relay, but in this case, the connection is established between two points. For a permanent connection to the Internet, a leased line is the best choice.

Tasks of the World Wide Web

The Internet, as a worldwide network, has several main objectives to satisfy its consumers. The Internet implements its main functions:

  1. Email. This is the simplest and most useful feature. Many Internet users use only e-mail. You can exchange messages, send files, .
  2. File transfer. Another indispensable and indeed one of the best features of the Internet is the ability to transfer files from one computer to another.
  3. Remote access.

What is the importance of the Internet for modern users

It is difficult to imagine a PC user who would not use the Internet. But what is the purpose of this? The main idea of ​​the Internet is the free distribution of information. Thanks to the Internet, racial, religious, and ideological barriers between people or countries are overcome.

The Internet can easily be called one of the most impressive democratic achievements of the technological process.

Today, the Internet actively serves as:

  1. Decision making tool. All the information the Internet brings together in an organization. Now there is no need to collect disparate data, to filter them out.
  2. Learning organization tool. Thanks to the Internet, information is exchanged almost instantly, so it is now possible to analyze information and make decisions much faster.
  3. The Internet is also a perfect communication tool. It ensures the integration of all divisions of the corporation.
  4. Collaboration tool.
  5. Expert tool.
  6. A single tool for inventions.
  7. Phone of the 21st century.
  8. A tool to control and improve the production cycle.
  9. Partner tool. There is no longer a company that does not have its own page on the World Wide Web. Thanks to the Internet, you can exchange information with your people, as well as control the conduct of services, communicate with customers.
  10. Marketing tool.
  11. Human resource tool.

A look into the future of the Internet

During these half a century from the beginning of its creation to the present day, the Internet has appeared, grown and changed a lot. And it continues to change even today. The Internet was conceived in an era of another time, and was able to survive in the era of personal computers, client-server and computer networks. Moreover, it not only survived, but also became an integral part of any PC. The Internet was developed, even before local networks began to exist, it became their prototype and hit not only the local network but also the global one.

It is not difficult to give at least a short-term forecast for the development of the Internet now, as well as to name the technologies that will become popular in the near future. It is much more difficult to know what fundamentally new technology will replace the Internet, and whether it will come. The future of technology is now unpredictable, but it may well happen that this technology will fundamentally change the entire face of the computer world.

This refers to the end of the era of the Internet in its modern form. It can be replaced by the World Wide Web - a giant supercomputer that offers not data transfer services, but a slightly different principle of operation. Instead of the usual personal computer, the user will be offered a remote access adapter that connects to a monitor, mouse, phone or other peripheral devices. At the same time, providers will turn from service providers into holders of multiprocessor mainframes.

But, it is worth noting that the technology of a new generation of a single computing network with terminal access has a number of undeniable advantages:

  • the average user has no problems associated with the purchase, installation, operation, configuration, etc. hardware;
  • the presence of payment only for the actual use of the software, and not an advance payment for services and resources may be unclaimed;
  • professional solution to the problem of information security, as well as ensuring privacy;
  • software availability;
  • transition to a new level of resource utilization.

Naturally, the deployment of such technology requires the solution of a huge number of technical problems.

The Internet can be compared to the global information space, it is like a unified system of computer networks. An incredible number of computers all over the world are connected to the Internet. And who could create such a basis for a certain "information society"? Who Invented the Internet?

Who Invented the Internet

It all started with the fact that the Soviet Union launched an artificial Earth satellite in 1957. As a result, America decided to secure itself in case of war and find a reliable system for transmitting information. There was a proposal to develop a computer network. Its development was entrusted immediately to the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Utah, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the Stanford Research Center. That's who invented the Internet, it turns out. The created computer network was named ARPANET. This abbreviation in English means Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. And already in 1969, these 4 scientific institutions united in the network. Funding for the project came from the US Department of Defense. The first communication session was held between the University of California Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute, which were located at a distance of 640 km from each other. The first attempt was not completely successful, but after the connection was restored on the same day, the second attempt was successful! If you're ever asked what year the internet was invented. You can safely name the date of his birth: October 29, 1969. The time of the first attempt was at 21:00, and the second - at 22:30.

The development of the ARPANET computer network has already extended to scientists in various fields of science. And in 1971, the first program for sending e-mail over the network was created. The popularity of such a program immediately increased. In 1973 ARPANET became international. 1983 was a significant year. The ARPANET transitioned from NCP to TCP/IP. This protocol is still used today to connect networks. And it was in 1983 that the Internet was invented as the name of the ARPANT network. Domain names were introduced in 1984. Real-time chatting on the Internet became possible in 1988 with the invention of the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol.

It was only in 1989 that the idea of ​​creating the World Wide Web appeared in Europe. We should be grateful to the scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who later created the HTTP protocol, developed the HTML language and URI. The researcher Robert Kaillialu worked with this scientist, the World Wide Web project was in development. The Internet became public in 1991. The famous NCSA Mosaic browser appeared in 1993. The open technical standards of the Internet made it independent of commercial companies and businesses. In 1997, there were about 10 million computers connected to the Internet. The exchange of information via the Internet has become very polarized.

Did those who invented the Internet think that by now it will be possible to connect to the network through communication satellites, cell phones, TVs, radio channels, electrical wires. Now many simply cannot imagine life without the Internet. At the moment, you can hear the term Runet, which is the Russian-speaking part of the World Wide Web. That is, there are national domains su, ru and rf. Modern Russian networks were born by programmers and physicists in 1990. The first Russian domain ru was registered on April 7, 1994. Cyrillic, namely the rf domain, first appeared quite recently on May 12, 2010. To date, there are many browsers, that is, web programs with which we access the Internet. Today's web is certainly not comparable to what it was before, but many of us are grateful to those who invented the Internet.

So who invented the internet?

Well, the very first answer is obvious: one name is not here and cannot be. And here is a list of the names of those people who invented the Internet, I will give.

Who Invented the Internet? Creation idea.

The initial idea of ​​creating a network in which it will be possible to communicate not by telephone or by means of television belongs to Leonard Kleinrock(Leonard Kleinrock). So, at the end of May 1961, his first work appeared under the title "Information flow in large communication networks." A year later, Joseph (J. C. R.) Carl Licklider becomes the first director of the first-ever Information Technology Division of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Having taken office, he submits his vision of the galactic network for discussion to the first persons of the Pentagon.

Soon these two are joined by (Robert Taylor), later founder of Xerox PARC and DEC centers and companies. The three of them almost completely formed the basic principles of the idea of ​​a global network. A little later, this network acquired the name APRANET.

APRANET- the network of the Office for Advanced Research Programs (a packet-switched network that appeared on paper in 1966 and organized at the very beginning of the 1970s). This network is the prototype of the Internet as we know it. Now the network does not exist - it was disbanded in February 1990. And then the emergence of a network that was designed to connect to a single global network of university and research computers was marked by the inclusion of two points of attachment to the network (nodes) of computers at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute.

The Internet itself, in the form in which it exists now, began to be developed in the late 1960s in the same United States. In 1968, at the Stanford Research Institute, Elmer Shapiro chaired the first meeting of the NWG Network Working Group. Its members were just beginning to discuss issues related to how computers would communicate with each other. And at the end of the year, Shapiro publishes a Study on the Design Parameters of Computer Networks. Building on this and other work, Thomas Merrill, Lawrence Roberts, Barry Wessler, and others are working together to create an integrated multiprotocol processor to adapt existing protocols to network requirements.

The work is in full swing, and, finally, on July 3, 1969, the University of California publishes a news release in the press, where the Internet is officially mentioned for the first time. Almost two months later, at the end of August, the first network switch and a piece of equipment for the integrated processor arrive at the University. And just a few days later, on September 2, the first data of information ran along the network wires from the university computer to the switch.

Who Invented the Internet? Work begins...

On the morning of October 29, 1969, the first Internet message was sent from a computer in Leonard Kleinrocker's laboratory. Clainrocker was trying to log in to the Stanford Institute computer from his own in California. The LOGIN command, however, failed. After entering two LO characters, the network from the Stanford side collapsed. The reason was soon found out, the network was corrected. Another authentication attempt was successful.

Two years later, in 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first email.

Working in 1973 and publishing the results in 1974, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn's RFC (the famous "up for discussion" series is from the IETF series of documents (standards, guidelines, working group reports, and etc.), defining the principles of the Internet), which is assigned the number 675. This is how the TCP protocol appeared. Thanks to this, the aforementioned deuce is considered by many users to be the fathers of the Internet. For many, the question of who invented the Internet is closed at this point ... In 1978, the protocol was finally formed in TCP / IP to support online traffic. It is still a priority in the network.

Who Invented the Internet? First commercial network.

The commercial network, or rather the commercial version of the ARPANET known as TELNET, was introduced to the general public in 1974 and is still considered the very first ISP.

Shortly before that, Robert Metcalfe was finishing work on his own brainchild - the Alto Aloha Network - a network where data was transmitted at the then inconceivable speed of 3M / s. Soon the founder of the network renames it to Ethernet.

Who Invented the Internet? First modem.

It came even later: Dennis Hayes introduced the 80-103A in 1977. These devices immediately became popular and indispensable devices for network users. And in 1984, the domain name system was introduced to the public. First domain name symbolics.com registered to a computer company in Massachusetts in March 1985.

Who Invented the Internet? Almost everything is ready...

1990 Tim Berners-Lee develops a hypertext scanning language. HTML still carries the lion's share of web information to this day. A year later, he introduces users to WWW - the famous worldwide network. It is she who is considered the Internet by the vast majority of people. Yes, the Internet has at its origins hundreds of names of very, very literate people, but without the WWW, the Internet, as we all know it, would definitely not exist.

Who Invented the Internet? The first graphical browser.

Mosaic - aka Mosaic - the first popular browser on the World Wide Web. Designed and released on April 22, 1993. Gradually merging into work, a competitor called Netscape joined him a year later. However, Mosaic is considered to be the prototype of all modern and popular "brands" of Internet browsers (IE, Chrome, Mozilla).

Pages rendered on bare HTML are very boring and unproductive. So it's time for the JAVA programming language (Java or Java) to come into play. James Gosling from the now living company supervised the work on its creation. Sun Microsystems. Java was first introduced to users in 1995 and today continues to occupy a leading position among the programming languages ​​involved in the development of website pages.

In the same 1995, Brendan Eich developed Javascript - a system for executing scripts on a user's computer in a browser installed on this computer. Now the creator of the web page has the opportunity to make changes to the structure of the site or page using code. It was originally called Livescript, but it was decided to work in the two named environments in parallel. The names were combined under a common root.

Now the global network is finally formed.

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Definition

After analyzing many existing definitions, I tried to give my own (fundamentally not different from the others, but incorporating all the main points of other definitions)

Internet(pronounced [internet]; Internet, short for INTERconnected NETworks - interconnected networks; slang Internet, no) - a global worldwide telecommunications network that provides communication for sending e-mail messages, transferring files, connecting with other computers and gaining access to information that exists in various forms

History of creation

In 1957, after the USSR launched the first artificial earth satellite, the US government decided that in case of war it would be nice to have a reliable data transmission system. The development of such a system was entrusted to several major universities in America. The computer network in the project was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and already in 1969 the network connected four universities: California, Stanford, as well as the Universities of California and Santa Barbara. All work received funding from the US Department of Defense. Later, the ARPANET network was used by scientists from different fields of science - the network grew.

First step

In 1969, on October 29 at 9 pm, between the first nodes of this network, located at a distance of 640 kilometers from each other - at the University of California in Los Angeles and at the Stanford Research Institute - they conducted the first communication session. Operator Charlie Kline tried to connect remotely to a computer at Stanford. The successful transfer of each entered character was confirmed by his colleague Bill Duvall by phone. At first, only three "LOG" characters were sent, after which the network stopped working. The characters "LOG" were supposed to be the word LOGON (login command). The system was returned to working condition by half past ten in the evening and the next attempt was successful. This date is considered to be the day of the appearance of the Internet.

Historical document ARPANET IMP journal: The first message sent over the ARPANET. 10:30 p.m. October 29, 1969 This passage is kept in Los Angeles.

Stages of development

After the first successful transmission of data on the ARPANET, the next significant step was the development in 1971 of the first program for sending e-mail over the network. This program quickly became popular.

By 1973, the first overseas organizations from Great Britain and Norway were included in the network via a transatlantic telephone cable. From that moment on, the network began to be considered international.

In the 70s of the last century, the main purpose of the network was to send e-mail. At the same time, the first mailing lists, various bulletin boards and newsgroups appear. However, in interaction with other networks built on other standards, there were big problems. The rapid development of various data transfer protocols, as well as their subsequent standardization in 82-83 and the transition to a "common", unifying TCP / IP protocol, solved this problem. This transition took place on January 1, 1983. It was in this year that the ARPANET established the term "Internet".

The next stage of development was the development domain name systems(English Domain Name System, DNS), which took place in 1984.

Also this year, a serious competitor to the ARPANET network appears - the inter-university network NSFNet (Eng. National Science Foundation Network). This network was an association of many small networks, had a bandwidth much greater than that of the ARPANET, as well as a high dynamics of connecting new users (about 10 thousand machines a year). The proud title of "Internet" passed to NSFNet.

In 1988, the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) instant messaging protocol was announced, making real-time "live" chatting possible on the Internet.

In 1989, the famous British scientist Tim Berners-Lee proposed the concept of the World Wide Web. He also developed the HTTP protocol, the HTML hypertext markup language, and URIs over the next two years.

In 1990, the ARPANET network, having lost in the competition with NSFNet, ceases to exist. Also this year, the first connection to the Internet via a telephone line took place (Dialup access).

1991 was marked by the public accessibility of the World Wide Web on the Internet.

1993 - the introduction of the famous NCSA Mosaic web browser. Rapid growth in the popularity of the Internet.

In 1995, network providers assumed the role of routing all Internet network traffic, and NSFNet supercomputers returned to the role of a research network.

In the same year was formed World Wide Web Consortium(W3C), designed to streamline web standards.

Since 1996, the World Wide Web (WWW) has almost completely replaced the concept of the Internet, and overtakes the FTP file transfer protocol in terms of traffic.

The 1990s witnessed a mass unification of most existing networks under the flag of the Internet (although networks such as Fidonet remained separate). The openness of technical standards contributed greatly to the rapid growth of the network. By 1997, there were about 10 million computers and over 1 million domain names on the Internet. The Internet is the most popular medium for information exchange.

Now you can access the Internet through the telephone, radio channels, cellular communications, communication satellites, cable television, special fiber optic lines and even electrical wires. And since January 22, 2010, direct access to the Internet has appeared on the International Space Station.

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The Internet is, without exaggeration, the main technological breakthrough of the last decades. But by whom and when was it invented? In fact, the invention of the Internet is a rather complicated story, and we will deal with it in this post.

The first projects of the Internet

For the first time, ideas and projects for a global computer network appeared in the early 1960s. In 1962 in the USA, Joseph Licklider, who was then working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a series of notes in which he described the concept of the "Galactic Network". The name was a joke, and Licklider saw the main purpose of this network in the convenient exchange of data and program code, but his concept did describe some of the principles of a global computer network that resembled the modern Internet. Soon Likladyer became the head of the information technology department of DARPA, and largely thanks to his efforts, after some time, this agency begins to implement the project of one of the first computer networks ARPANET.

V. M. Glushkov

In the same 1962, an article by academician Kharkevich was published in the Soviet Union, in which he wrote about the need to create a nationwide computer network that would allow all institutions to exchange information and become the basis for planning and management in various industries. Soon, Academician Glushkov came up with an even more detailed project, called OGAS (National State Automated System for Accounting and Processing Information). The project envisaged the creation of a single computer network in the USSR, within the framework of the project it was planned to create 6,000 computer centers and train 300 thousand IT specialists. Khrushchev approved the plan and its implementation began, but after Brezhnev came to power, the Soviet bureaucracy began to openly sabotage the project. Instead of a single network, the Soviet ministries began to build their own computer centers, not connected to each other, and attempts to integrate them into a network did not go beyond experiments. So the USSR missed the opportunity to overtake the West in the field of information technology.

OGAS Glushkova

ARPANET

In 1964, two years later than in the USSR, the implementation of the ARPANET network project was launched in the USA. But, unlike the USSR, this project was brought to an end there. In 1969, this network began to work, although at first there were only 4 nodes in it.

ARPANET in 1969

Later, many began to consider this year the year of the Internet. But in fact, the ARPANET network was quite far from the modern Internet. The main problem that they tried to solve with the help of this network was the problem of optimal use of computer power. Computers were still quite expensive, and if someone could remotely connect from another computer and use its power during idle time, it would turn out to be a big savings. Due to various difficulties, this task was never realized, but ARPANET continued to develop.

Larry Roberts

In 1972, Larry Roberts, one of the developers of ARPANET, who by that time had succeeded Licklider as director of the DARPA IT department, organized an international conference on computer communications in Washington. At this conference, a demonstration of ARPANET was held, during which those who wished could connect to 20 computers from different US cities and execute various commands on them. At the time, the demonstration made a big impression on skeptics who did not believe in the reality of computer networks.

In 1972, e-mail appeared on the ARPANET. E-mail messaging soon became one of the most popular features of ARPANET. Some even believe that e-mail "saved" ARPANET, making this network really useful and in demand. Then other ways to use the network began to appear - file transfer, instant messaging, bulletin boards, etc. However, ARPANET was not yet the Internet. And the first obstacle to the further development of the network was the lack of a universal protocol that would allow computers of different types and with different software to exchange information.

TCP/IP protocol

The variety of hardware and software made it difficult to network computers. To overcome them, in 1973 Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn decided to create a universal information exchange protocol that would allow connecting a variety of computers and local networks.

Vinton ("Vint") Cerf

Robert ("Bob") Kahn

The protocol was named TCP (Transmission-Control Protocol, or Transmission Control Protocol). Later, the protocol was divided into two parts and was called TCP / IP (IP - Internet Protocol). By the way, at the same time, around the mid-70s, the word “Internet” itself appeared.

The development of the protocol took quite a long time. Initially, many doubted that small computers were even capable of supporting such a complex protocol. Only in 1977 was the first data transmission using this protocol demonstrated. And ARPANET switched to the new protocol only in 1983.

And in 1984, the first DNS server was launched, which allowed using domain names instead of poorly remembered IP addresses.

Development of computer networks and the end of ARPANET

In the late 70s, the first personal computers designed for home use appeared. In the 80s, more and more such computers began to appear, and computer networks also developed at the same time. Along with state and scientific networks, commercial and amateur networks appeared, to which it was possible to connect via a modem through a telephone line. However, the functions of computer networks were still rather limited and were limited mainly to sending e-mail and exchanging messages and files via bulletin boards (BBS). It was still not the internet we were used to.

ARPANET, which at one time served as an impetus for the development of computer networks, fell into decay, and in 1989 this network was closed. The Pentagon, which financed DARPA, did not really need it, and the military segment of this network was separated from the civilian one in the early 80s. At the same time, the alternative global network NSFNET, created in 1984 by the US National Science Foundation, was actively developing. This network originally united American universities. In the mid-80s, this network began to use high-speed data lines for the first time with a data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps instead of 56 Kbps, which was the standard for modems and telephone lines. In the late 80s, the remnants of ARPANET became part of NSFNET, and NSFNET itself in the early 90s will become the core of the global Internet. This will happen, however, not immediately, since the network was originally focused on use only for scientific and educational purposes, but then these restrictions were nevertheless removed. In 1994, NSFNET was effectively privatized and fully open to commercial use.

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But in order for the Internet to become the way we know it, in addition to computer networks and a universal protocol, something else had to be invented. That something was site organization technology. It was she who made the Internet truly popular and massive.

Tim Berners-Lee

In 1989, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee was working on a document viewing system at CERN (the famous international center for nuclear research in Switzerland). And then it occurred to him to implement a large-scale project based on the hypertext markup that he used in documents. The project was given the name World Wide Web ("World Wide Web").

For 2 years, Tim Berners-Lee worked hard on the project. During this time, he developed the HTML language for creating web pages, a way to set page addresses as URLs, the HTTP protocol, and the first browser.

August 6, 1991 Tim Berners-Lee posted the first website on the Internet. It contained basic information about WWW technology, how to view documents, how to download a browser.

So the first users saw the world's first website

In 1993, the first browser with a graphical interface appeared. In the same year, CERN issued a statement announcing that WWW technology would not be protected by any copyright and its free use was allowed to anyone. This wise decision led to an explosion in the number of sites on the web and the emergence of the Internet as we know it today. As early as 1995, the WWW became the most used service of all (e-mail, file transfer, etc.), and for today's users it is almost synonymous with the Internet.

So who invented the internet? The Internet was not invented by one person. But of those who made the greatest personal contribution to its appearance, the following people can be distinguished.

  1. The initiators and developers of ARPANET. Among them are such people as Joseph Licklider, Larry Roberts, and Paul Baran And Bob Taylor.
  2. Creators of the TCP/IP protocol: Screw Surf And Bob Kahn.
  3. WWW Creator Tim Berners-Lee.

The emergence of Runet

The first computer networks in the USSR appeared long ago, even earlier than in the West. The first experiments in this area date back to 1952, and in 1960 a network was already deployed in the USSR that united computers within the framework of an anti-missile defense system. Later, specialized civil networks appeared, designed, for example, to account for railway and air tickets. Unfortunately, there were big problems with the development of general purpose networks due to pervasive bureaucracy.

In the 1980s, Soviet scientists for the first time began to connect to foreign networks, at first only occasionally, for example, to hold some kind of conferences on scientific topics. In 1990, the first Soviet computer network "Relcom" appeared, uniting scientific institutions from different cities of the USSR. Its creation was carried out by employees of the Institute of Atomic Energy. Kurchatov. In the same year, the su zone was registered - the domain zone of the Soviet Union (the ru zone appeared only in 1994). In autumn 1990 Relcom establishes the first connections with foreign countries. In 1992, Relcom implements the TCP/IP protocol and establishes a connection to the European EUnet network. Runet becomes a full-fledged part of the Internet.