The Internet started out as a small military experiment some 35 yearsago, the Internet is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. There is a present population of about 40 million usersworld wide, and it seems to have a very promising future. The Internetis uncensored and almost impossible to monitor, it is a breeding groundfor all sorts of offensive and derogatory information. On the other hand,it is probably the biggest single source of data in the world broughthome into your personal computer. Will this form of communicationsurvive in the future, or will it simply die out as many others have in thepast? The RAND CORPORATION built the first nodes of the Internet36 years ago, and they faced the problem of keeping communicationbetween U.S. authorities active in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Thecountry needed a command-and-control network. The biggest problemwas protecting the main server, which could be knocked out by a singleatomic warhead. RAND came up with the solution in 1964. The newnetwork would have no central authority, and it would be designed tooperate in shambles. The National Physical Laboratory in Great Britainset up the first test network on these principles in 1968. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency decidedto fund a larger, more ambitious project in the USA. The nodes of thenetwork were to be high-speed supercomputers (or what passed forsupercomputers at the time). The first was put in place during the fall of 1969. By December of the same year four nodes were installed.Dedicated high-speed transmission lines connected them. This allowedthe computers to communicate and be programmed from one of theother computers. In the year of 1971 there were 15 nodes, and by 72there were 37. This number kept increasing rapidly as the years passed.The network was also becoming more of a person-to-person way of communicating. Many military personnel began using it as a way
The Internet started out as a small military experiment some 35 yearsago, the Internet is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. There is a present population of about 40 million usersworld wide, and it seems to have a very promising future. The Internetis uncensored and almost impossible to monitor, it is a breeding groundfor all sorts of offensive and derogatory information. On the other hand,it is probably the biggest single source of data in the world broughthome into your personal computer. Will this form of communicationsurvive in the future, or will it simply die out as many others have in thepast? The RAND CORPORATION built the first nodes of the Internet36 years ago, and they faced the problem of keeping communicationbetween U.S. authorities active in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Thecountry needed a command-and-control network. The biggest problemwas protecting the main server, which could be knocked out by a singleatomic warhead. RAND came up with the solution in 1964. The newnetwork would have no central authority, and it would be designed tooperate in shambles. The National Physical Laboratory in Great Britainset up the first test network on these principles in 1968. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency decidedto fund a larger, more ambitious project in the USA. The nodes of thenetwork were to be high-speed supercomputers (or what passed forsupercomputers at the time). The first was put in place during the fall of 1969. By December of the same year four nodes were installed.Dedicated high-speed transmission lines connected them. This allowedthe computers to communicate and be programmed from one of theother computers. In the year of 1971 there were 15 nodes, and by 72there were 37. This number kept increasing rapidly as the years passed.The network was also becoming more of a person-to-person way of communicating. Many military personnel began using it as a way