Small Packets Through Our Phone Lines example essay topic

561 words
Just about four years ago, only a million people had the internet. Today, there's over a 100 million people with the internet. And over 70% of schools today have access to the internet as well. Six years ago, six straight out of college kids created Architect, what is now known as Excite.

Each of them is worth at least 10 million dollars each today! No one actually thought they would make it in the first place, but now look at them. The world wide web has become almost a virtual mall sort to say. Some of the first were bookstores, in example, Amazon.

Com, which is worth over a billion dollars. But not every site makes it out there on the internet. Email now replaces the phone and the postal service, that was like's ten seconds ago! Over 100 million pieces of email are sent in one day. The web also offers small communities where people with similar interests can interact, hundreds of miles apart. The revolution the internet is creating for us is much different than any other one we " ve ever experienced.

It all began during the space race when we were trying to beat the Russians in the technological world. So we actually owe it to the Russians who sent the first satellite, Sputnik, to space. It was the 1960's so at that time computers were the size of a small apartment and were mainly used for large number computations. Bob Taylor, an employee of the pentagon is who we need to thank for the internet. He thought why not just network together a larger number of computers. After developing the theory, he needed hosts, most of which weren't too enthusiastic.

Later on BBN, (Richard Bolt, Leo Ber anek, Robert Newman) developed "packet switching", and a system of using phone lines to transfer packets of information from computer to computer. At first both IBM and AT&T refused when they wanted to use their lines to try out their new system. So meanwhile NASA was in space, BBN was sending small packets through our phone lines. The large refrigerator looking machine they used was called IMP, Interface Message Processor. It received, sorted, corrected and sent the packets. Seven weeks before Arbinet was born, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Arbinet was a new internet created shortly after IMP was finished. The first message or email on the internet was LOGIN, each letter sent separately and the system actually crashed on the I. Meanwhile, in Hawaii, they were also testing out their own internet. Instead of using phone lines though, they used the radio. It was named Aloha-net. Finally in 1972, Arbinet expanded to 20 new locations across the country, but still the majority of the public didn't know about it. Throughout the 70's the Arbinet grew and new networks were created.

But each network had its own connection, so you couldn't communicate network to network. So TCP / IP was created, allowing them to communicate to each other. TCP- transmission control protocol. IP- internet protocol. Technically in the 1960's we hit two home runs, a man on the moon and the internet.