Since its introduction to the mainstream in the early 1990’s, the Internet has grown at an astronomical pace. A few years ago, it was a relatively small network used mainly by computer engineers, the government, and the educational community. Since then, it has blossomed into a global communications infrastructure which anyone from a housewife in the U.S. to a 7-year old in Africa uses on a regular basis. In parallel with it, media and culture surrounding the Internet has experienced rmous expansion to the state of ubiquity.

With this permeation into our society and the corresponding media coverage, one would expect to find that people have at least basic knowledge of its history and the workings behind it. However, as with other modern utilities, most individuals are content to merely use it without an understanding of its background. This is acceptable for the common person, but those who are involved with computers to a considerable extent should consider it important to be familiar with the Internet’s structure and origins.

Beginnings: Packet Switching and ARPANET

After the end of World War II, tensions over territorial rights, the disintegration of wartime a

one computer to another computer until the information arrives

The most important aspect of the NSF's networking effort is that it allowed anyone to access the network. Up to that point, Internet access had been available only to researchers in computer science, government employees, and government contractors. The NSF promoted universal educational access by fund

This paper discussed how the U.S. military could protect its communications systems from serious attack. Baran outlined the principle of "redundancy of connectivity" and explored various models of forming communications systems and evaluating their vulnerability. His final proposal was a packet switched network. Baran described the fundamentals of this new system:

In 1979, a meeting was held among the University of Wisconsin, DARPA, National Science Foundation (NSF), and computer scientists from many universities to establish a Computer Science Department research computer network. The meeting led to the development of the Computer Science Research Network (CSNET). Its purpose was to provide organizations not connected to ARPANET access to linked computer systems, so those that did wouldn’t gain an advantage in research and recruitment (Hardy, 1993).

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