Computing devices can be traced back all the back to Ancient times. Aristotle perhaps being the first creating a device known as the Aristotelian Sphere. A device used to predict future movements of the planets. In the early 20th century during World War II the U.S military needed a good code breaker. The first computer as we no them today was born, enigma.
Debugging a term developed during WWII when a moth got trapped in a relay switch on the Mark 3 computer.
As computing devices evolved such as calculators etc… Questions were being asked could computers be used for other things besides crunching numbers? JCR Licklider from MIT in 1962 idealized the concept he called the “Galactic Network”. Would it be possible to globally connect computing devices for military or scientific purposes? Later that year he had managed to convince DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency) to develop this concept further. Experiments with this radical idea have already been taking place. 1961 Leonard Kleinrock was conducting experiment with “packet switching”. A technique used that divides messages into smaller units then reassembles those units into their original form.
Three years had passed with little interests until 1965. Thomas Merrill and Roberts managed to connect a TX2 computer to a Q-32 (low speed dial up line, phone line) and transmit data over the phone line. However, the desired results were never achieved.
1972 a fellow by the name of Kahn decided he would improve on this current system. Instead he developed a newer protocol for transmitting packets. A open end architecture network environment called TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol). By doing so he could further develope the theory :
1. Networks should be stand alone.
2. Each packet failure would be resent.
3. Networks would be connected by black boxes.
4. No Global Control (important)
But the key issues were:
1. Algorithms must be used to prevent packets from not being resent
2. A host to host connection is a must for Pipelining (giving the networks the ability to send multiple packets at once)
3. A Gateway Function was needed to forward packets and interpreting the IP header for routing purposes (important the IP determines how you packet gets routed)
Mission accomplished the Internet is born and functions as it should. Things really began to change in the early part of 1980. The spread of Lans , Pc’s and workstations challenged the capabilities of routing packets. Basically an Internet overflow something that had not been anticipated. People began buying up PC’s as prices dropped and began accessing other people computers for whatever.
This is the Internet a Unix based system used to communicate between computers. The World Wide Web is an entirely different story.
There is a part two is anyone find this valuable. The www part of thing is where the problems really begin.
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