the internet

the internet has a very complicated history that begins in the 1950s. but first, it is important to properly understand terminolgy, specifically the meaning of 'internet' vs. 'world wide web'. the internet is the collection of interconnected computers and computer networks linked by physical connections (telephone lines, ethernet cables, fiber-optics cables). the world wide web, which is often mistakenly called the internet, is a collection of documents and resources that exist in the virtual world and are interconnected by hyperlinks and urls. in other words, you can view documents on the world wide web because you know there unique web address (url) or because you link to them from another web page, which is often a web page dynamically generated by a web search engine, like google. these documents and resources, which are located on computers around the world, are available through the internet.

now a brief history of what we now call the internet. the first computer networks began to emerge in the 1950s, epescially in government agencies and universities. these network connected computer terminals with direct, dedicated lines (even over great distances), allowing for intra-netting. by the early 1960s, national security concerns and the desire to allow researchers in different geographical locations to share resources and ideas created the need for inter-netting. J.C.R. Licklider theorizes on the idea of an 'Intergalactic Network' where people can access data and programs on one computer from any other computer anywhere else in the world (or galaxy...he was quite the visionary). The early internet pioneers faced two key challenges: how to efficently move data and how to overcome the lack of standardization among computer hardware and software used on each individual network.
Paul Baran, Donald Davies, Leonard Kleinrock address how to move data. They develop the notion of packet switching. When data is sent from one computer to another, it is broken into small packets of information which are routed from the source to the destination computer through various nodes. If one of these packets is lost in transmisison, it can simply resent from the source, and therefor the entire transmission is not lost. becuase a didicated line is not required for the duration of the transmission, packets from diffenent sources bound for different destinations can be sent across the same communication line, which maximizes bandwidth. packet switching also allow for complete decentralization of the internet. it is plausable that each packet in a transmission could take a different route to the destination. also, as the architecture of the internet changes, data can still move through it without reinfrastructing.

the first internet was the ARPANET developed and managed by ARPA (advanded research projects agency), an agency of the u.s. department of defense. ARPANET went live in 1969 and had four nodes: ucla, us santa barba, university of utah, and the stanford research institutue.

the following is the map of arpanet in 1971:



and then the ARPANET in 1980:



increases in technology and demand for internetting caused the internet to continue to grow. various other networks were created and integrated. standards were implemented to allow these various networks to interconnect. in 1990, the ARPANET was disbanded as it had been rendered obsolete by other networks.

the growth of the internet (charts show the number of internet hosts):

today, there are 1,086 billion users connected to the internet. this represents roughly 16.7% of the worlds population.

a map of the interet (just in north america):



as we all know and experience daily, the internet allows for information to be exchanged at a blinding rate. rarely, however, do we consider the geographic movement of our data transfers as them move through the internet. below is a map that traces the path of data from dallas texas to tuscany, italy (generated by traceroute). it represent the shortest path between the two points at the time of the trace.




below is the same route by traditional means of travel:


air travel


land + sea




some great links:
internet history
internet maps