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  • The Internet in the year 2009.

  • We send e-mails, make calls over the internet

  • and discuss topics we take an interest in.

  • Even our banking is going virtual.

  • But what we take for granted today

  • was only a vague idea fifty years ago.

  • In order to understand how we got this far

  • let's go back to 1957, when everything began.

  • Before 1957 computers only worked on one task at a time.

  • This is called batch processing.

  • Of course, this was quite ineffective.

  • With computers getting bigger and bigger

  • they had to be stored in special cooled rooms.

  • But then the developers couldn't work directly on the computers anymore

  • specialists had to be called in to connect them.

  • Programming at that time meant a lot of manual work

  • and the indirect connection to the computers led to

  • a lot of bugs, wasting time and fraying the developers´ nerves.

  • The year 1957 marked a big change.

  • A remote connection had to be installed

  • so the developers could work directly on the computers.

  • At the same time the idea of time-sharing came up.

  • This is the first concept in computer technology

  • to share the processing power of one computer with multiple users.

  • On October 4th 1957, during the Cold War

  • the first unmanned satellite, Sputnik 1, was sent into orbit by the Soviet Union.

  • The fear of a "Missile Gap" emerged.

  • In order to secure America's lead in technology,

  • the US founded the "Defense Advanced Research Project Agency" in February 1958.

  • At that time, knowledge was only transferred by people.

  • The DARPA planned a large-scale computer network

  • in order to accelerate knowledge transfer and avoid the doubling up

  • of already existing research.

  • This network would become the Arpanet.

  • Furthermore three other concepts were to be developed,

  • which are fundamental for the history of the Internet:

  • The concept of a military network by the RAND Corporation in America.

  • The commercial network of the National Physical Laboratory in England.

  • And the scientific network, Cyclades, in France.

  • The scientific, military and commercial approaches of these concepts

  • are the foundations for our modern Internet.

  • Let's begin with the Arpanet, the most familiar of these networks.

  • Its development began in 1966.

  • Universities were generally quite cautious about sharing their computers.

  • Therefore small computers were put on front of the mainframe.

  • This computer, the Interface Message Processor, took over control of the network actvitities,

  • while the mainframe was only in charge of the initialization of programs and data files.

  • At the same time, the IMP also served as interface for the mainframe.

  • Since only the IMPs were interconnected in a network

  • this was also called IMP-subnet.

  • For the first connections between the computers

  • the Network Working Group developed the Network Control Protocol [Network Control Program].

  • Later on, the NCP was replaced by the more efficient Transmission Control Protocol.

  • The specific feature of the TCP is the verification of the file transfer.

  • Let's take a short detour to England.

  • Since the NPL network was designed on a commercial basis

  • a lot of users and file transfer were expected.

  • In order to avoid congestion of the lines, the sent files were divided into smaller packets

  • which were put together again at the receiver.

  • "Packet Switching" was born!

  • In 1962 American ferret aircrafts discovered middle and long range range missiles in Cuba,

  • which were able to reach the United States.

  • This stoked fear of an atomic conflict.

  • At that time information systems had a centralized network architecture.

  • To avoid the breakdown during an attack,

  • a decentralized network architecture had to be developed,

  • which in case of loss of a node would still be operative.

  • Communication still used to work through radio waves,

  • that would have caused problems in case of an atomic attack:

  • the ionosphere would be affected and the long-wave radio waves wouldn't work anymore.

  • Therefore they had to use direct waves, which, however, don't have a long range.

  • A better solution was the model of a distributed network.

  • Thus long distances could be covered with a minimum of interference.

  • Another milestone followed with the development of the French network "Cyclades".

  • Since Cyclades had a far smaller budget than Arpanet and thus also fewer nodes

  • the focus was layed on the communication with other networks.

  • In this way the term "inter-net" was born.

  • Moreover, Cyclades´ concept went further than ARPA's and the NPL's.

  • During communication between sender and receiver the computers were not to intervene anymore,

  • but simply serve as a transfer node.

  • Cyclades´ protocol went through all machines using a physical layer

  • that was implemented into the hardware,

  • providing a direct connection with the receiveran end-to-end structure.

  • Inspired by the Cyclades network and driven by the incompatibility between the networks,

  • their connection gained in importance everywhere.

  • The phone companies developed the X.25 protocol which enabled communication

  • through their serversin exchange for monthly basic charge of course.

  • DARPA's Transmission Control Protocol was to connect the computers through gateways...

  • and the International Organization for Standardization designed the OSI Reference Model.

  • The innovation of OSI was the attempt to standardize the network from its ends

  • and the channel's division into separate layers.

  • Finally, the TCP assimilated the preferences of the OSI Reference Model

  • and gave way to the TCP/IP protocol

  • a standard which guaranteed compatibility between networks

  • and finally merged them, creating the Internet.

  • By February 28, 1990 the ARPANET hardware was removed, but the Internet...

  • ... was up and running.

  • Subtitles by HackJack (aka StevXtreme)

The Internet in the year 2009.

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