Evolution of the Internet – From ARPANET to Fibre Broadband
The internet is said to have evolved from ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network of the US Defence Department. The start date is generally given as 1969 and the project saw funding provided to many computer specialists who developed many of the Internet communication protocols that we know and still use today.
There has been a great and rapid evolution in the internet and connectivity since then and it is fair to say that the internet has transformed the way that people live and how businesses engage and interact. As the timeline of the internet, included below, suggests, there have been many changes but one of the biggest developments was broadband.
Traditional dial-up connections were ground-breaking and life changing in sharing information but it was clearly a limited method of sharing and transferring data. In the early 2000’s, broadband connectivity allowed for greater sums of information to be shared, which has paved the way for the large array of audio and video content that we take for granted in the present day.
Commercial broadband arrived in the UK in 2000
In the UK, the first broadband customer received the service in 2000 and in 2002; there were less than 200,000 users of broadband. This has expanded to 13 million by 2006 and there are now well over 20 million broadband users in the UK. This is a great boon for businesses because it means that they are not only connected to broadband, it means that business customers are also connected to broadband. This has helped to develop engagement and interaction between businesses and customers. Fibre optic broadband services have helped to push through the development of the internet, making it an essential component of everyday life for people and business users.
Some notable highlights over the years include:
1968: Beranek and Newman, Inc (BBN) unveils the specifications for their Interface Message Processor (IMP) and win the contract for ARPANET.
1972: Network email is introduced by Ray Tomlinson.
1973: networking around the world becomes a reality as computers in London and Norway connect to ARPANET and this is around the time that the term Internet is first used.
1974: A commercial version of ARPANET, known as Telenet, set up the first ISP, Internet Service Provider.
1977: The first use of commercial fibre optic communications was sent in California.
1979: USENT is formed and hosts discussion and news groups.
1982: The protocol for ARPANET is finalised with Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) being selected. These are still the standard protocols for the Internet in the present day.
1983: This year sees familiar domain endings such as .com, .org, .net and many more are introduced as the Domain Name System (DNS) comes into place.
1984: The first use of the word “cyberspace” is used by author William Gibson.
1985: The very first registered domain is Symbolics.com which is the website for the Symbolics Computer Corp.
1987: The number of internet hosts moves beyond 20,000 and Cisco starts selling and shipping routers.
1990: Tim Berners-Lee, the man commonly known as the inventor of the internet, develops the HTML language.
1992: Audio and video are shared over the internet for the first time.
1993: This year sees the number of websites move beyond 600.
1994: Microsoft develops a web browser, which will be used for Windows 95.
1995: Internet access is provided by firms like Prodigy, America Online and Compuserve while sites like Amazon, eBay and Craiglist are published.
1998: Google is born.
2000: The UK welcomes its first broadband customer, the service provided by NTL.
2004: Facebook is launched and a year later YouTube.com is launched.
2006: AOL becomes a provider of mainly free services while relying on advertising for income. This year sees the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum.
2009: The internet celebrates its 40th anniversary.
2015: Facebook has more than 1 billion active users per month.
The evolution of the internet has been large and rapid over the past 40 years and even though the system has come a long way, you can expect further changes in the years and decades to come.