A Bit History of Internet/Chapter 9 : Conclusions

Contributors: Ahmad Luqman, Airil Hafiiz Bin Hasri, Amir Hanifi Bin Maddiah, Abdul Rahim Bin Abdul Halim, Mohammed Ali Alqahtani.

Origins of the Internet

J.C.R. Licklider of MIT was the first to write and record the social interaction which can enabled through networking in 1962. The intention was to make sure everyone could access and programs data from many sites. He was the ones that emphasized the importance of networking concept.

Then came along, Leonard Kleinrock which published paper on packet switching theory in 1961 and made a book on in 1964. His theory towards computer networking was using packets rather than circuits. In addition, he wanted to make the computer communicate towards each other. So in 1965, a low speed dial-up telephone line was develop the first time for wide area computer network from TX-2 computer in Mass. To Q-32 computer in California. As a result, it work well in time-shared computers, retrieving data and running programs but the circuit switched phone was not enough. The need of packet switching from Kleinrock was confirmed. In 1966, the computer network concept and plans for “ARPANET” was developed in DARPA and published in 1967. These projects were done in MIT, RAND and NPL without any of the researcher knowing the other work until it was shown in a conference. At that moment the line speed proposed was from 2.4kbps to 50kbps in ARPANET design.

In 1968,the packet switches called Interface Message Processors (IMP) which was one of key components was develop by DARPA. It was released after community had refined the specification and structure for the ARPANET. IMP is the installed at UCLA as the first host computer connected in 1969. By the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground. Even at this early stage, it should be noted that the networking research incorporated both work on the underlying network and work on how to utilize the network.

In 1970, S. Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol called Network Control Protocol (NCP) under Network Working Group (NWG). It then finally develop applications after implementing NCP through 1971-1971.

In 1972 Kahn organized a very successful demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). In addition the application of electronic mail was also introduced at the moment. The basic email message send and read software, motivated by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination mechanism was wrote by Ray Tomlinson. For improvement, Roberts then expanded its utility by writing the first email utility program to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages. From here email took a big step as the largest network application used until now.

The Initial Internet

In 1972, Kahn was to introduced the idea of open-architecture networking at DARPA. It was originally part of packet radio program but the separated in its own. The idea was to make the packet radio works as a reliable end-end protocol that could maintain effective communication in the face of jamming and other radio interference, or withstand intermittent blackout such as caused by being in a tunnel or blocked by the local terrain. Since it could avoid dealing with multitude of different operating systems, and continuing to use NCP, his first contemplated developing a protocol local only to the packet radio network.

However, NCP cannot address networks, further downstream and so changes were required to NCP. It relied on ARPANET to provide end-to-end reliability. The protocol would be grinding halt, if the packets were lost. In this case, NCP had no end-end host error control and so the ARPANET was to be the only network in existence. It would be so reliable that no error control required on the part of the hosts. Thus, Kahn decided to develop protocol would eventually be called the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) where the protocol would act as communications protocol.

So in 1973, Vint Cerf was asked to work with him on the detailed design of the protocol. As a result, the first version to approach on the Internet described one protocol, called TCP, which provided all the transport and forwarding services in the Internet. Kahn had intended that the TCP protocol support a range of transport services, from the totally reliable sequenced delivery of data (virtual circuit model) to a datagram service in which the application made direct use of the underlying network service, which might imply occasional lost, corrupted or reordered packets.

However, the initial effort to implement TCP resulted in a version that only allowed for virtual circuits. This model worked fine for file transfer and remote login applications, but some of the early work on advanced network applications, in particular packet voice in the 1970s, made clear that in some cases packet losses should not be corrected by TCP, but should be left to the application to deal with. This led to a reorganization of the original TCP into two protocols, the simple IP which provided only for addressing and forwarding of individual packets, and the separate TCP, which was concerned with service features such as flow control and recovery from lost packets. For those applications that did not want the services of TCP, an alternative called the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) was added in order to provide direct access to the basic service of IP.

A major initial motivation for both the ARPANET and the Internet was resource sharing - for example allowing users on the packet radio networks to access the time sharing systems attached to the ARPANET. Connecting the two together was far more economical that duplicating these very expensive computers. However, while file transfer and remote login (Telnet) were very important applications, electronic mail has probably had the most significant impact of the innovations from that era. Email provided a new model of how people could communicate with each other, and changed the nature of collaboration, first in the building of the Internet itself (as is discussed below) and later for much of society.

The Future Of The Internet

The Internet has been used daily and widely throughout the globe. It gives such a huge impact on culture and commerce since the mid-1990s, including the rise of near instant communication for instances, electronic mail, instant messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web. Based on how the Internet revolutionized and the way people around the world accessed information and communicated through the 1990s, the research and education community always strive to develop a better speed, bandwidth, and functionality for the benefits of next generation.

There are several major trends in recreating the future of the Internet along with extrapolated predictions. The first trend lies in bandwidth. The future of the Internet growth in bandwidth availability shows little sign of flattening. Large increases of bandwidth in the 10 Mbps range and up will continue to be installed to home users through cable, phone, and wireless networks. Cable modems and telephone-based DSL modems will continue to spread high speed Internet throughout populated areas. High resolution audio, video, and virtual reality will be increasingly available online and on demand, and the cost of all kinds of Internet connections will continue to decrease.

The second major trend is about wireless. The future of Internet wireless communications is the end game. Wireless frequencies have two great advantages. The first one is there are no infrastructure start-up or maintenance costs other than the base stations. The second one is, it give users the availability to access the internet almost anywhere and everywhere, taking Internet use from one dimension to three. Wireless Internet networks will offer increasingly faster services at vastly lower costs over wider distances and it would eventually push out the physical transmission systems. The use of radio communications networks in the 1970's inspired the Internet's open TCP/IP design. Since then, the wireless technologies experimented in the 1990's was continually improved. By the early 2000s, several technologies provided reliable, secure, high bandwidth networking that worked in crowded city centers and on the move, providing nearly the same mobility for Internet communications as for the cellular phone.

Last but not least is about the integration. The future of the Internet integration with an increasing number of other technologies is slowly but surely taking their places in this modern world. Furthermore, phones, televisions, home appliances, portable digital assistants, and a range of other small hardware devices, will become increasingly integrated with the internet. That means the accessibility of the internet would become much easier for the users, thus they will be able to access, status, and control this connected infrastructure from anywhere that have the connection of the internet and vice versa.

In addition, one of the leading efforts to define the future of the next generation Internet is the Internet2 project, which grew out of the transition of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) to the Very High Speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS, vbns.net). The vBNS supported very high bandwidth research applications, and was established in 1995 as a cooperative agreement between MCI and the National Science Foundation. Internet2 is an advanced networking consortium led by the U.S. research and education community. Internet2 also used revolutionary-class IP and optical network technologies and it also known as the advanced technologies that enable services and achievements beyond the scope of individual institutions.

The Role of Documentation

A key to the rapid growth of the Internet has been the free and open access to the basic documents, especially the specifications of the protocols.

The beginnings of the ARPANET and the Internet in the university research community promoted the academic tradition of open publication of ideas and results. However, the normal cycle of traditional academic publication was too formal and too slow for the dynamic exchange of ideas essential to creating networks.

In 1969 a key step was taken by S. Crocker (then at UCLA) in establishing the Request for Comments (or RFC) series of notes. These memos were intended to be an informal fast distribution way to share ideas with other network researchers. At first the RFCs were printed on paper and distributed via snail mail. As the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) came into use, the RFCs were prepared as online files and accessed via FTP. Now, of course, the RFCs are easily accessed via the World Wide Web at dozens of sites around the world. SRI, in its role as Network Information Center, maintained the online directories. Jon Postel acted as RFC Editor as well as managing the centralized administration of required protocol number assignments, roles that he continued to play until his death, October 16, 1998.

The effect of the RFCs was to create a positive feedback loop, with ideas or proposals presented in one RFC triggering another RFC with additional ideas, and so on. When some consensus (or a least a consistent set of ideas) had come together a specification document would be prepared. Such a specification would then be used as the base for implementations by the various research teams.

Over time, the RFCs have become more focused on protocol standards (the "official" specifications), though there are still informational RFCs that describe alternate approaches, or provide background information on protocols and engineering issues. The RFCs are now viewed as the "documents of record" in the Internet engineering and standards community.

The open access to the RFCs (for free, if you have any kind of a connection to the Internet) promotes the growth of the Internet because it allows the actual specifications to be used for examples in college classes and by entrepreneurs developing new systems.

Email has been a significant factor in all areas of the Internet, and that is certainly true in the development of protocol specifications, technical standards, and Internet engineering. The very early RFCs often presented a set of ideas developed by the researchers at one location to the rest of the community. After email came into use, the authorship pattern changed - RFCs were presented by joint authors with common view independent of their locations.

The use of specialized email mailing lists has been long used in the development of protocol specifications, and continues to be an important tool. The IETF now has in excess of 75 working groups, each working on a different aspect of Internet engineering. Each of these working groups has a mailing list to discuss one or more draft documents under development. When consensus is reached on a draft document it may be distributed as an RFC.

As the current rapid expansion of the Internet is fueled by the realization of its capability to promote information sharing, we should understand that the network's first role in information sharing was sharing the information about its own design and operation through the RFC documents. This unique method for evolving new capabilities in the network will continue to be critical to future evolution of the Internet.

History of the future

The FNC commonly passed a term resolution on October 24, 1995. Resolution definition was developed in discussion with members of the internet and intellectual property rights communities. RESOLUTION: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term "Internet". "Internet" refers to the global information system that -- (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.

In two decades since internet exists, it has changed so much. It has conceived in the era of time-sharing, but somehow survived until the era of personal computers, client-server, peer-to-peer computing, and the network computer. It was designed before LANs existed but has accommodated that new network technology as well as the more recent ATM and frame switched services. It was made as supporting a range of function from file sharing and remote login to resource sharing and collaboration, and produced electronic mail as well as World Wide Web. The most important thing is that it started as small band of committed researchers, and has grown to be a commercial success with billions of dollars of annual investment.

The internet, even though a network in name and geography, is a creature of the computer, not the traditional network of the telephone or television industry. It will continue change almost same speed as the rate change of the computer industry if it remain useful. So many services that has been provide nowadays such as real time transport, in order to support audio and video streams. The availability of the of persistent networking along with powerful computing and communication in portable form such as laptop computers, PDAs, cellular phones and other always making things possible for a new paradigm of nomadic computing and communications.

This development gave us new applications such as internet telephone, and nowadays got internet television. Usually it was developed to allow more complicated forms of pricing and cost recovery. It is changing to put up another generation of original network technologies with different characteristics and requirements, from broadband residential access to satellites.

According to [8], the structural design of the Internet has always been driven by a core group of designers, but the form of that group has changed as the number of interested parties has grown. With the success of the Internet has come a production of stakeholders - stakeholders now with an economic as well as a good investment in the network. In the debates over control of the domain name space and the form of the next generation IP addresses, an effort to find the next social structure that will guide the Internet in the future. The form of that structure will be harder to find, given the large number of concerned stake-holders. At the same time, the industry hard to find the economic rationale for the large investment needed for the future growth, for example to upgrade residential access to a more suitable technology.