The Origin of the Internet

Status
Not open for further replies.
A

Ayodhya

Registered Senior Member
Where exactly is "The Internet"?
Obviously, it isn't some super computer in the Appalachian Mountains labeled, "The Internet", but as we are talking, we are not connected to each others computers.

What is the middle ground on which we communicate? As in, where is Sciforums.com in relation to everyone else?
 
On a server somewhere. Which is just another (BIG)computer. Which ever site you connect to you are just connecting to another computer somewhere(unless all the sites you visit ae on the same server). What I've typed is sent through my ISP to sciforums server and saved in its memory then you computer communicates the same with the server and you read it.
 
There are varying types of network with different protocols, which universally connect together creating countrywide networks, which in turn connect with one another creating the Internet. (International Network)

All computers on the internet have the potential to connect to one another, however they have to use computers and servers as proxies when dealing with communication across the internet. All information sent between two computers over a large distance can have many "proxy" connections creating a "route" where the information is relayed.

In regards to gaming having high latency is usually occurant when the distance and number of "Hops" in the route are too great, which in turn can cause game performance to lower. For instance an American playing Battlefield 2 on an American server is more likely to get a kill if they have a face off with a European using the same server. Although the delay is Milliseconds it's enough to upset the servers calculations of whom got the drop on who.

If you want to know the internet history you might like to try a search, there is alot of information on how the internet started and why.
 
The concept of the Internet originated in ARPA (now DARPA - Defense advance research projects agency). It was first implemented as ARPANET and connected most of the major research computers (mostly major universities) doing unclassified research in the country. It then evolved into what it is today when ARPA left it in the hands of the Universities.
 
If I had to pin down the quintessential internet, it would have to be the backbone and the routers shuttling traffic about.

"What is the middle ground on which we communicate? As in, where is Sciforums.com in relation to everyone else?"

A server. Somewhere in Canada, I believe.
 
Ah what the hell, since you guys are stupid and lazy:

Influence on the internet

Al Gore at the Ansari X Prize Executive Summit October 19, 2006
Main article: Al Gore#The Internet and the Webbys

Both as a Senator and Vice-President, Al Gore has been involved in the mainstreaming of the Internet since the 1970s (see Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 1996:298). This involvement led to legislation during the late 1980s known informally as the 'Gore Bill'.[3] It was passed, however, as the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 [4] on December 9 1991 and led to the NII or National Information Infrastructure [5] which Gore referred to as the Information superhighway.

On 9 March 1999, during an interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Gore made the statement, "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet."[6] As a result of the publication of three articles in Wired News[7] (which focused upon the above interview), Gore's statement, "I took the initiative in creating the internet" became the subject of heavy satire.[8] Media reports surrounding this statement sometimes misrepresented Gore's words to claim that he "invented the internet".[9]

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#The_Internet_and_the_Webbys
 
Syzygys, thanks for bringing that to my attention. I must say I was unaware of this.
 
Internet History -- One Page Summary
The conceptual foundation for creation of the Internet was significantly developed by three individuals and a research conference, each of which changed the way we thought about technology by accurately predicting its future:

Vannevar Bush wrote the first visionary description of the potential uses for information technology with his description of the "memex" automated library system.
Norbert Wiener invented the field of Cybernetics, inspiring future researchers to focus on the use of technology to extend human capabilities.
The 1956 Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence conference crystallized the concept that technology was improving at an exponential rate, and provided the first serious consideration of the consequences.
Marshall McLuhan made the idea of a global village interconnected by an electronic nervous system part of our popular culture.
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, triggering US President Dwight Eisenhower to create the ARPA agency to regain the technological lead in the arms race. ARPA appointed J.C.R. Licklider to head the new IPTO organization with a mandate to further the research of the SAGE program and help protect the US against a space-based nuclear attack. Licklider evangelized within the IPTO about the potential benefits of a country-wide communications network, influencing his successors to hire Lawrence Roberts to implement his vision.

Roberts led development of the network, based on the new idea of packet switching discovered by Paul Baran at RAND, and a few years later by Donald Davies at the UK National Physical Laboratory. A special computer called an Interface Message Processor was developed to realize the design, and the ARPANET went live in early October, 1969. The first communications were between Leonard Kleinrock's research center at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Douglas Engelbart's center at the Stanford Research Institute.

The first networking protocol used on the ARPANET was the Network Control Program. In 1983, it was replaced with the TCP/IP protocol developed by Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and others, which quickly became the most widely used network protocol in the world.

In 1990, the ARPANET was retired and transferred to the NSFNET. The NSFNET was soon connected to the CSNET, which linked Universities around North America, and then to the EUnet, which connected research facilities in Europe. Thanks in part to the NSF's enlightened management, and fueled by the popularity of the web, the use of the Internet exploded after 1990, causing the US Government to transfer management to independent organizations starting in 1995.

And here we are.

http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_summary.htm
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top