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Internet: past and present
THIRTY-FIVE years ago, a computer graduate linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot cable, testing a new way for exchanging data over networks. It was 1969 when Stephen Crocker, a University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) graduate student, worked on a project that became the phenomena we call the internet.
Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on September 2, 1969, as bits of test data flowed silently between the two computers. By January, three other “nodes” joined the network.
Then came e-mail a few years later, a core communications protocol called TCP/IP in the late ‘70s, the domain name system in the ‘80s and the World Wide Web - now the second-most popular application behind e-mail - in 1990. The internet also expanded beyond its initial military and educational uses into businesses and homes around the world.
That was not the end. Dr. Crocker acknowledges that the internet he helped build is far from finished, and indicates changes are in store to meet growing demands for multimedia. The internet remains a work in progress. University researchers are experimenting with ways to increase its capacity and speed. Programmers are trying to imbue web pages with intelligence. Work is also under way for re-engineering the network to reduce spam and security troubles.
Today, Dr. Crocker continues work on the Internet, designing better tools for collaboration. And as security chairman for the internet’s key oversight body, he is trying to defend the core addressing system from outside threats, including an attempt last year by a private search engine to grab web surfers who mistype addresses.
Dr. Cerf, now at MCI, said he wishes he could have designed the Internet with security built in. Microsoft, Yahoo! and America Online, among others, are trying to retrofit the network so e-mail senders can be authenticated - a way to cut down on junk messages sent using “spoofed” addresses. Many features being developed today wouldn’t have been possible at birth, given the slower computing speeds and narrower internet pipes, or bandwidth. Dr. Cerf commented that “With the tools we had then, we did as much as we could reasonably have done.”
Among Dr. Cerf’s other projects is a next-generation numbering system called IPv6 to accommodate the ever-growing number of internet-ready wireless devices, game consoles, even dog collars. Working with NASA, he is trying to extend the network into outer space to better communicate with spacecraft.
While computer engineers play with the Internet’s core framework, some university researchers looking for more speed are developing separate systems that parallel the Internet. That way, such data-intensive applications as videoconferencing, brain imaging and global climate research wont have to compete with e-mail and e-commerce.
According to Ms. Tracy Futhey, chairwoman of the National LambdaRail, some applications are so data-intensive that they are “simply impractical to do on the current internet.” The project offers its members dedicated high-speed lines so data can “get from point A to point B and not have to contend with the other traffic.” LambdaRail recently completed its first optical connection from San Diego to Seattle to Pittsburgh to Jacksonville, Florida. Work on additional links is planned for next year.
Undersea explorer Dr. Robert Ballard has used another network, Internet2, to host live, interactive presentations with students and aquarium visitors from the wreck of the Titanic, which he found in 1985. The internet’s bandwidth can carry only “lousy” video and “can’t compete with looking out the window,” Ballard said. But with Internet2, “high-definition zoom cameras can show them the eyelids.” Internet2, with speeds 100 times faster than the typical broadband service at home, is now limited to select universities, companies and institutions, but researchers expect any breakthroughs to ultimately migrate to the main internet.
While Internet2 and LambdaRail seek to move data faster and faster, researchers with the World Wide Web Consortium are trying to make information smarter and smarter. Semantic Web is a next-generation web designed to make more kinds of data easier for computers to locate and process. Consider the separate teams of scientists who study genes, proteins and chemical pathways. With the Semantic Web, tags are added to information in databases describing gene and protein sequences. One group may use one scheme and a second team something else; the Semantic Web could help link the two. Ultimately, software could be written to process the data and make inferences that previously required human intervention. With the same principles, searching to buy an automobile in Karachi will also incorporate listings for cars in Lahore.
Change doesn’t come easily, however. The internet faces general resistance from the “old world” forces that want to preserve their current ways of doing things - companies that value profit over the greater good, copyright holders who want to protect their music and movies, governments that seek to censor information or spy on their citizens.
In early August, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission declared that internet-based phone calls should be subject to the same type of law enforcement surveillance as cell and land-line phones. That means internet service providers would have to design their systems to permit police wiretaps.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, fears a slippery slope. As these outside pressures meddle with the net’s open architecture, he said, there’s less opportunity for experimentation and for such innovations as the World Wide Web, born out of an unauthorized project at a Swiss nuclear research lab.
The writer
History of the internet
In 1969, the first version of the internet was brought online.
September 2, 1969: The first node of Arpanet goes online at UCLA.
October: The first attempt to login to a computer on the network results in a crash.
December: Arpanet lives, with nodes at UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.
1971: Network e-mail invented. Use of @ symbol would begin a year later.
1972: First network chat.
1973: Bob Metcalfe invents Ethernet in his Harvard Ph.D. thesis. First international connection to Arpanet from London.
1974: Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn invent TCP, first modern networking protocol.
1975: First mailing list. First satellite connections to Arpanet.
1976: Queen Elizabeth II sends e-mail.
1979: Symbols that would later become ‘emoticons’ first suggested in e-mail. =)
1980: Virus crashes Arpanet.
1982: TCP/IP adopted as protocol for Arpanet.
1982: ‘Internet’ first defined as a series of connected TCP/IP networks.
1984: DNS system invented; no need to use numbers.
1985. Symbolics.com becomes first registered domain.
1988: Internet worm attacks via the network, affecting 6,000 of 60,000 network hosts.
1990: World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee. Arpanet ceases to exist.
1993: Mosaic, first graphical Web browser, debuts. White House, United Nations go online.
1994: First ‘spam’ e-mail results in angry ‘flame’ responses. First banner ads appear on Web.
1995: Online services America Online and Prodigy offer access to World Wide Web. Java debuts. Netscape IPO raises billions.
1996: Growing hacker movement strikes CIA, Air Force and Department of Justice Web sites.
1998: Moratorium on Internet taxes passed in U.S.
2000: U.S. timekeeper reports date as Jan. 1, 19100. Otherwise, ‘Y2K’ bug largely fizzles.
2001: Napster pulls plug on free music download service.
2002: ‘Blog’ phenomenon hits Web.
2004: Google IPO reunites Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
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