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{{Internet|expanded=General}}

The '''history of the Internet''' has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect [[computer network]]s. The [[Internet protocol suite|Internet Protocol Suite]], the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the [[United States]] and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the [[United Kingdom]] and [[France]].<ref name="Abbatep3">{{harvnb|Abbate|1999|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=9BfZxFZpElwC&pg=PA3 3] "The manager of the ARPANET project, Lawrence Roberts, assembled a large team of computer scientists ... and he drew on the ideas of network experimenters in the United States and the United Kingdom. Cerf and Kahn also enlisted the help of computer scientists from England, France and the United States"}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{cite web|url=https://www.sri.com/newsroom/press-releases/computer-history-museum-sri-international-and-bbn-celebrate-40th-anniversary|title=The Computer History Museum, SRI International, and BBN Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of First ARPANET Transmission, Precursor to Today's Internet|date=27 October 2009|publisher=SRI International|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190329134941/https://www.sri.com/newsroom/press-releases/computer-history-museum-sri-international-and-bbn-celebrate-40th-anniversary|archive-date=March 29, 2019|access-date=25 September 2017|quote=But the ARPANET itself had now become an island, with no links to the other networks that had sprung up. By the early 1970s, researchers in France, the UK, and the U.S. began developing ways of connecting networks to each other, a process known as internetworking.}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{cite web|url=http://elk.informatik.hs-augsburg.de/tmp/cdrom-oss/CerfHowInternetCame2B.html|title=How the Internet Came to Be|author1=by Vinton Cerf, as told to Bernard Aboba|date=1993|access-date=25 September 2017|quote=We began doing concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN, and University College London. So effort at developing the Internet protocols was international from the beginning.|archive-date=September 26, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170926042220/http://elk.informatik.hs-augsburg.de/tmp/cdrom-oss/CerfHowInternetCame2B.html}}</ref>

[[Computer science]] was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider [[time-sharing]] between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over [[wide area network]]s. [[J. C. R. Licklider]] developed the idea of a universal network at the [[Information Processing Techniques Office]] (IPTO) of the United States [[United States Department of Defense|Department of Defense]] (DoD) [[DARPA|Advanced Research Projects Agency]] (ARPA). Independently, [[Paul Baran]] at the [[RAND Corporation]] proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and [[Donald Davies]] conceived of [[packet switching]] in 1965 at the [[National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)|National Physical Laboratory]] (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom.

ARPA awarded contracts in 1969 for the development of the [[ARPANET]] project, directed by [[Robert Taylor (computer scientist)|Robert Taylor]] and managed by [[Lawrence Roberts (scientist)|Lawrence Roberts]]. ARPANET adopted the packet switching technology proposed by Davies and Baran. The network of [[Interface Message Processor|Interface Message Processors]] was built by a team at [[Bolt, Beranek, and Newman]], with the design and specification led by [[Bob Kahn]]. The host-to-host protocol was specified by a group of graduate students at UCLA, led by [[Steve Crocker]], along with [[Jon Postel]] and [[Vint Cerf]]. The ARPANET expanded rapidly across the United States with connections to the United Kingdom and Norway.

Several [[Packet switching#Packet-switched networks|early packet-switched networks]] emerged in the 1970s which researched and provided [[computer network|data networking]]. [[Louis Pouzin]] and [[Hubert Zimmermann]] pioneered a simplified end-to-end approach to [[internetworking]] at the [[INRIA|IRIA]]. [[Peter T. Kirstein|Peter Kirstein]] at [[University College London]] put internetworking into practice in 1973. [[Robert Metcalfe|Bob Metcalfe]] developed the theory behind [[Ethernet]] and [[PARC Universal Packet]]. ARPA projects, the [[International Networking Working Group|International Network Working Group]] and commercial initiatives led to the development of various ideas for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a ''network of networks''. Vint Cerf, now at [[Stanford University]], and Bob Kahn, now at DARPA, published research in 1974 that evolved into the [[Transmission Control Protocol]] (TCP) and [[Internet Protocol]] (IP), two protocols of the [[Internet protocol suite]]. The design included concepts from the French [[CYCLADES]] project directed by Louis Pouzin. The development of packet switching networks was underpinned by mathematical work in the 1970s by [[Leonard Kleinrock]] at [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]].

In the late 1970s, national and international [[public data network]]s emerged based on the [[X.25]] protocol, designed by [[Rémi Després]] and others. In the United States, the [[National Science Foundation]] (NSF) funded national [[Supercomputer|supercomputing]] centers at several universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the [[NSFNET]] project, thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic organizations in the United States. International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of architecture such as the [[Domain Name System]], and the [[Internet protocol suite#Adoption|adoption of TCP/IP]] on existing networks in the United States and around the world marked the beginnings of the [[Internet]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/blog/2015/10/19/untold-internet|title=The Untold Internet|date=October 19, 2015|website=Internet Hall of Fame|access-date=April 3, 2020|quote=many of the milestones that led to the development of the modern Internet are already familiar to many of us: the genesis of the ARPANET, the implementation of the standard network protocol TCP/IP, the growth of LANs (Large Area Networks), the invention of DNS (the Domain Name System), and the adoption of American legislation that funded U.S. Internet expansion—which helped fuel global network access—to name just a few.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |date=2014 |title=Study into UK IPv4 and IPv6 allocations |url=https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0031/37795/rtfm.pdf |journal=Reid Technical Facilities Management LLP |quote=As the network continued to grow, the model of central co-ordination by a contractor funded by the US government became unsustainable. Organisations were using IP-based networking even if they were not directly connected to the ARPAnet. They needed to get globally unique IP addresses. The nature of the ARPAnet was also changing as it was no longer limited to organisations working on ARPA-funded contracts. The US National Science Foundation set up a national IP-based backbone network, NSFnet, so that its grant-holders could be interconnected to supercomputer centres, universities and various national/regional academic/research networks, including ARPAnet. That resulting network of networks was the beginning of today's Internet.}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{cite web | title=Origins of the Internet | website=www.nethistory.info | date=2 May 2005 | url=http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/origins.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110903001108/http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/origins.html | archive-date=3 September 2011 | url-status=live}}</ref> Commercial [[Internet service provider]]s (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/OzI04.html#CIAP|title=Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia|last=Clarke|first=Roger|access-date=21 January 2014|archive-date=9 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210209201253/http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/OzI04.html#CIAP|url-status=live}}</ref> Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.indra.com/homepages/spike/isp.html |title=The First ISP |publisher=Indra.com |date=1992-08-13 |access-date=2015-10-17  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305130609/https://www.indra.com/homepages/spike/isp.html |archive-date=March 5, 2016 }}</ref>  The optical backbone of the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic, as traffic transitioned to optical networks managed by Sprint, MCI and AT&T in the United States.

Research at [[CERN]] in [[Switzerland]] by the British computer scientist [[Tim Berners-Lee]] in 1989–90 resulted in the [[World Wide Web]], linking [[hypertext]] documents into an information system, accessible from any [[Node (networking)|node]] on the network.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Couldry|first1=Nick |title=Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice |date=2012 |publisher=Polity Press |location=London|page=2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AcHvP9trbkAC&pg=PA2|isbn=978-0-7456-3920-8}}</ref> The dramatic expansion of the capacity of the Internet, enabled by the advent of [[Wavelength-division multiplexing|wave division multiplexing]] (WDM) and the rollout of [[Fiber-optic cable|fiber optic cables]] in the mid-1990s, had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology. This made possible the rise of near-instant communication by [[email|electronic mail]], [[instant messaging]], [[voice over Internet Protocol]] (VoIP) telephone calls, [[video chat]], and the World Wide Web with its [[discussion forums]], [[blogs]], [[social networking service]]s, and [[online shopping]] sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over [[Fiber-optic communication|fiber-optic networks]] operating at 1 [[Gbits/sec|Gbit/s]], 10 Gbit/s, and 800 Gbit/s by 2019.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Nelson|first=Patrick|date=March 20, 2019|title=Data center fiber to jump to 800 gigabits in 2019.|work=Network World|url=https://www.networkworld.com/article/3374545/data-center-fiber-to-jump-to-800-gigabits-in-2019.html}}</ref> The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was rapid in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way [[telecommunication]]s networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007.<ref name="HilbertLopez2011">{{cite journal |last1=Hilbert |first1=Martin |last2=López |first2=Priscila |title=The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information |journal=Science |date=April 2011 |volume=332 |issue=6025 |pages=60–65 |doi=10.1126/science.1200970 |pmid=21310967 |bibcode=2011Sci...332...60H |s2cid=206531385 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and [[social networking service]]s. However, the future of the global network may be shaped by regional differences.<ref name="NYT-20181015">{{cite news |author=The Editorial Board |title=There May Soon Be Three Internets. America's Won't Necessarily Be the Best. – A breakup of the web grants privacy, security and freedom to some, and not so much to others. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/internet-google-china-balkanization.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/internet-google-china-balkanization.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=15 October 2018 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=16 October 2018 }}{{cbignore}}</ref>

==Foundations==
===Precursors===
;Telegraphy
:The practice of transmitting messages between two different places through an electromagnetic medium dates back to the [[electrical telegraph]] in the late 19th century, which was the first fully digital communication system. [[Radiotelegraphy]] began to be used commercially in the early 20th century. [[Telex]] became an operational [[teleprinter]] service in the 1930s. Such systems were limited to [[Point-to-point (telecommunications)|point-to-point communication]] between two [[End system|end devices]]. 
;Information theory
:Fundamental theoretical work in [[telecommunications]] technology was developed by [[Harry Nyquist]] and [[Ralph Hartley]] in the 1920s. [[Information theory]], as enunciated by [[Claude Shannon]] in 1948, provided a firm theoretical [[underpinning]] to understand the trade-offs between [[signal-to-noise ratio]], [[Bandwidth (computing)|bandwidth]], and error-free [[Transmission (telecommunications)|transmission]] in the presence of [[noise]].
;Computers and modems
:Early fixed-program [[computer]]s in the 1940s were operated manually by entering small programs via [[Switch|switches]] in order to load and run a series of programs. As [[transistor]] technology evolved in the 1950s, [[central processing unit]]s and user [[Computer terminal|terminals]] came into use by 1955. The [[mainframe computer]] model was devised, and  [[modem]]s, such as the [[Bell 101 modem|Bell 101]], allowed [[digital data]] to be transmitted over regular unconditioned [[Telephone line|telephone lines]] at low speeds by the late 1950s. These technologies made it possible to exchange data between [[Remote desktop software|remote computers]]. However, a fixed-line link was still necessary; the point-to-point communication model did not allow for direct communication between any two arbitrary systems. In addition, the applications were specific and not general purpose. Examples included [[Semi-Automatic Ground Environment|SAGE]] (1958) and [[Sabre (travel reservation system)|SABRE]] (1960).
;Time-sharing
:[[Christopher Strachey]], who became [[University of Oxford|Oxford University's]] first Professor of [[Computation]], filed a [[patent application]] for [[time-sharing]] in February 1959.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://history.computer.org/pioneers/strachey.html|title=Computer Pioneers - Christopher Strachey|website=history.computer.org|access-date=2020-01-23}}</ref><ref name=":13">{{Cite web |title=Computer - Time-sharing, Minicomputers, Multitasking |url=https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer/Time-sharing-and-minicomputers |access-date=2023-07-23 |website=Britannica |language=en}}</ref> In June that year, he gave a paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers" at the [[International Federation for Information Processing#History|UNESCO Information Processing Conference]] in Paris where he passed the concept on to [[J. C. R. Licklider]].<ref name="ctsspg">{{cite book|first=F. J. |last=Corbató |display-authors=etal |url=http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ctss/CTSS_ProgrammersGuide.pdf |title=The Compatible Time-Sharing System: A Programmer's Guide |publisher=MIT Press |year=1963 |isbn=978-0-262-03008-3}}. "the first paper on time-shared computers by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing conference".</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Gillies|Cailliau|2000|page=13}}</ref> Licklider, a vice president at [[BBN Technologies|Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.]] (BBN), promoted the idea of time-sharing as an alternative to [[batch processing]].<ref name=":13" /> [[John McCarthy (computer scientist)|John McCarthy]], at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], wrote a memo in 1959 that broadened the concept of time sharing to encompass multiple interactive user sessions, which resulted in the [[Compatible Time-Sharing System]] (CTSS) implemented at MIT. Other multi-user mainframe systems developed, such as [[PLATO (computer system)|PLATO]] at the [[University of Illinois Chicago]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Reminiscences on the Theory of Time-Sharing |url=http://jmc.stanford.edu/computing-science/timesharing.html |access-date=2020-01-23 |website=John McCarthy's Original Website |quote=in 1960 'time-sharing' as a phrase was much in the air. It was, however, generally used in my sense rather than in John McCarthy's sense of a CTSS-like object.}}</ref> In the early 1960, the [[Advanced Research Projects Agency]] (ARPA) of the [[United States Department of Defense]] funded further research into time-sharing at MIT through [[Project MAC]].

===Inspiration===
J. C. R. Licklider, while working at BBN, proposed a computer network in his March 1960 paper ''[[Man-Computer Symbiosis]]'':<ref>{{cite journal|author=J. C. R. Licklider|title=Man-Computer Symbiosis|journal=IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics|volume=HFE-1|pages=4–11|date=March 1960|url=http://medg.lcs.mit.edu/people/psz/Licklider.html|doi=10.1109/thfe2.1960.4503259|access-date=January 25, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051103053540/http://medg.lcs.mit.edu/people/psz/Licklider.html|archive-date=November 3, 2005|author-link=J. C. R. Licklider}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|A network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [...] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and symbiotic functions suggested earlier in this paper}}

In August 1962, Licklider and Welden Clark published the paper "On-Line Man-Computer Communication"<ref>{{cite journal|author=[[J. C. R. Licklider]] and Welden Clark|title=On-Line Man-Computer Communication|journal=AIEE-IRE '62 (Spring)|pages=113–128|date=August 1962|url=http://cis.msjc.edu/courses/internet_authoring/CSIS103/resources/ON-LINE%20MAN-COMPUTER%20COMMUNICATION.pdf|access-date=October 31, 2014|archive-date=October 31, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141031214616/http://cis.msjc.edu/courses/internet_authoring/CSIS103/resources/ON-LINE%20MAN-COMPUTER%20COMMUNICATION.pdf}}</ref> which was one of the first descriptions of a networked future.

In October 1962, Licklider was hired by [[Jack Ruina]] as director of the newly established [[Information Processing Techniques Office]] (IPTO) within ARPA, with a mandate to interconnect the United States Department of Defense's main computers at [[Cheyenne Mountain]], the Pentagon, and SAC HQ. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. He began by writing memos in 1963 describing a distributed network to the IPTO staff, whom he called "Members and Affiliates of the [[Intergalactic Computer Network]]".<ref>{{cite web|author=Licklider, J. C. R.|title=Topics for Discussion at the Forthcoming Meeting, Memorandum For: Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network|date=23 April 1963|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=Advanced Research Projects Agency|url=http://www.kurzweilai.net/memorandum-for-members-and-affiliates-of-the-intergalactic-computer-network|access-date=2013-01-26}}</ref>

Although he left the IPTO in 1964, five years before the ARPANET went live, it was his vision of universal networking that provided the impetus for one of his successors, [[Robert Taylor (computer scientist)|Robert Taylor]], to initiate the ARPANET development. Licklider later returned to lead the IPTO in 1973 for two years.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_licklider.htm|title=J.C.R. Licklider and the Universal Network|work=The Internet|year=2000|access-date=February 16, 2010|archive-date=October 17, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191017134454/https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_licklider.htm}}</ref>

===Packet switching===
{{Main|Packet switching}}

The infrastructure for [[telephone]] systems at the time was based on [[circuit switching]], which requires pre-allocation of a dedicated communication line for the duration of the call. [[Telegram]] services had developed [[store and forward]] telecommunication techniques. [[Western Union]]'s Automatic Telegraph Switching System [[Plan 55-A]] was based on [[message switching]]. The U.S. military's [[AUTODIN]] network became operational in 1962. These systems, like SAGE and SBRE, still required rigid routing structures that were prone to [[single point of failure]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kim |first1=Byung-Keun |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lESrw3neDokC&pg=PA52 |title=Internationalising the Internet the Co-evolution of Influence and Technology |date=2005 |publisher=Edward Elgar |isbn=978-1-84542-675-0 |pages=51–55}}</ref>

The technology was considered vulnerable for strategic and military use because there were no alternative paths for the communication in case of a broken link. In the early 1960s, [[Paul Baran]] of the [[RAND Corporation]] produced a study of survivable networks for the U.S. military in the event of nuclear war.<ref>{{Cite report |title=Reliable Digital Communications Using Unreliable Network Repeater Nodes |first=Paul |last=Baran |page=1 |date=May 27, 1960 |publisher=The RAND Corporation |url=http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P1995.pdf |access-date=July 25, 2012}}</ref> Information would be transmitted across a "distributed" network, divided into what he called "message blocks".<ref>{{cite web |title=About Rand |work=Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet |url=http://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html |access-date=July 25, 2012}}</ref><ref name="Pelkey6.1a">{{Cite book |last=Pelkey |first=James L. |title=Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications 1968–1988 |chapter=6.1 The Communications Subnet: BBN 1969 |quote=As Kahn recalls: ... Paul Baran’s contributions ... I also think Paul was motivated almost entirely by voice considerations. If you look at what he wrote, he was talking about switches that were low-cost electronics. The idea of putting powerful computers in these locations hadn’t quite occurred to him as being cost effective. So the idea of computer switches was missing. The whole notion of protocols didn’t exist at that time. And the idea of computer-to-computer communications was really a secondary concern. |chapter-url=https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/section/6.1/the-communications-subnet-bbn-1969/}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Barber |first1=Derek |date=Spring 1993 |title=The Origins of Packet Switching |url=http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res05.htm#f |journal=The Bulletin of the Computer Conservation Society |issue=5 |issn=0958-7403 |access-date=6 September 2017 |quote=There had been a paper written by [Paul Baran] from the Rand Corporation which, in a sense, foreshadowed packet switching in a way for speech networks and voice networks}}</ref><ref name=":5a">{{Cite book |last=Waldrop |first=M. Mitchell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eRnBEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT285 |title=The Dream Machine |date=2018 |publisher=Stripe Press |isbn=978-1-953953-36-0 |pages=286 |language=en |quote=Baran had put more emphasis on digital voice communications than on computer communications.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=On packet switching |url=https://www.nethistory.info/Archives/packets.html |access-date=2024-01-08 |website=Net History |quote=[Scantlebury said] Clearly Donald and Paul Baran had independently come to a similar idea albeit for different purposes. Paul for a survivable voice/telex network, ours for a high-speed computer network.}}</ref>

In addition to being prone to a single point of failure, existing telegraphic techniques were inefficient and inflexible. Beginning in 1965 [[Donald Davies]], at the [[National Physical Laboratory, UK|National Physical Laboratory]] in the United Kingdom, developed a more advanced proposal of the concept, designed for high-speed [[computer network]]ing, which he called [[packet switching]], the term that would ultimately be adopted.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Dr. Ed Smith, FBCS, FITP, University of the Third Age; Mr Chris Miller BSc.; Prof Jim Norton OBE, FREng, University of Sheffield |title=Packet Switching: The first steps on the road to the information society |url=https://www.npl.co.uk/getattachment/about-us/History/Famous-faces/Donald-Davies/UK-role-in-Packet-Switching-(1).pdf |website=National Physical Laboratory}}</ref><ref>{{cite report |url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA115440.pdf |title=A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade |date=1 April 1981 |publisher=Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. |pages=53 of 183 (III-11 on the printed copy) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121201013642/http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA115440 |archive-date=1 December 2012 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=":62">{{Cite book |last=Yates |first=David M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ToMfAQAAIAAJ&q=packet+switch |title=Turing's Legacy: A History of Computing at the National Physical Laboratory 1945-1995 |date=1997 |publisher=National Museum of Science and Industry |isbn=978-0-901805-94-2 |page=132-4 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="A Hey, G Pápay2">{{cite book |author=A Hey, G Pápay |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NrMkBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA201 |title=The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution |date=2014 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521766456 |pages=201 |access-date=2015-08-16}}</ref>

Packet switching is a technique for transmitting computer data by splitting it into very short, standardized chunks, attaching routing information to each of these chunks, and transmitting them independently through a [[computer network]]. It provides better bandwidth utilization than traditional circuit-switching used for telephony, and enables the connection of computers with different transmission and receive rates. It is a distinct concept to message switching.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ruthfield |first=Scott |url=http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=332198.332202&coll=portal&dl=ACM |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071018045734/http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds2-1/inet-history.html |archive-date=October 18, 2007 |url-status=live |title=The Internet's History and Development From Wartime Tool to the Fish-Cam |periodical=Crossroads |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=2–4 |date=September 1995 |access-date=April 1, 2016 |doi=10.1145/332198.332202}}</ref>

==Networks that led to the Internet==

===NPL network===
{{Main|NPL network}}
Following discussions with [[J. C. R. Licklider]] in 1965, [[Donald Davies]] became interested in [[data communications]] for computer networks.<ref name=Roberts1978>{{cite journal |last1=Roberts |first1=L.G. |title=The evolution of packet switching |journal=Proceedings of the IEEE |date=1978 |volume=66 |issue=11 |pages=1307–1313 |doi=10.1109/PROC.1978.11141 |s2cid=26876676 }}</ref><ref name=Roberts1995>{{cite web|last1=Roberts|first1=Dr. Lawrence G.|title=The ARPANET & Computer Networks|url=http://www.packet.cc/files/arpanet-computernet.html|access-date=13 April 2016|date=May 1995|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160324032800/http://www.packet.cc/files/arpanet-computernet.html|archive-date=March 24, 2016}}</ref> Later that year, at the [[National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)|National Physical Laboratory]] (NPL) in the United Kingdom, Davies designed and proposed a national commercial data network based on packet switching. The following year, he described the use of an "interface computer" to act as a [[router (computing)|router]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Roberts|first1=Dr. Lawrence G.|title=The ARPANET & Computer Networks|url=http://www.packet.cc/files/arpanet-computernet.html|access-date=13 April 2016|date=May 1995|quote=Then in June 1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, "Proposal for a Digital Communication Network" In which he coined the word packet,- a small sub part of the message the user wants to send, and also introduced the concept of an "Interface computer" to sit between the user equipment and the packet network.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160324032800/http://www.packet.cc/files/arpanet-computernet.html|archive-date=March 24, 2016}}</ref> The proposal was not taken up nationally but he produced a design for a local network to serve the needs of the NPL and prove the feasibility of packet switching using high-speed data transmission.<ref name="K.G. Coffman & A.M. Odlyzco">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TXhWJcsO134C&q=ARPANET&pg=PA29|author=K.G. Coffman & A.M. Odlyzco|title=Optical Fiber Telecommunications IV-B: Systems and Impairments|publisher=[[Academic Press]]|pages=1022 pages|series=''Optics and Photonics'' (edited by I. Kaminow & T. Li)  |access-date=2015-08-15|isbn=978-0-12-395173-1|date=2002-05-22}}</ref><ref name="B. Steil, Council on Foreign Relations">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ndiYguRu66oC&q=NPL+Network&pg=PA260|author=B. Steil, Council on Foreign Relations|title=Technological Innovation and Economic Performance|publisher=published by [[Princeton University Press]] 1 Jan 2002, 476 pages |access-date=2015-08-15|isbn=978-0-691-09091-7|year=2002}}</ref> To deal with packet permutations (due to dynamically updated route preferences) and to datagram losses (unavoidable when fast sources send to a slow destinations), he assumed that "all users of the network will provide themselves with some kind of error control",<ref>{{cite web|date=1967|title=A Digital Communication Network for Computers Giving Rapid Response at remote Terminals|url=https://people.mpi-sws.org/~gummadi/teaching/sp07/sys_seminar/how_did_erope_blow_this_vision.pdf|access-date=2020-09-15}}</ref> thus inventing what came to be known as the [[end-to-end principle]]. In 1967, he and his team were the first to use the term 'protocol' in a modern data-commutation context.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bbonCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT290|title=A Brief History of the Future|last=Naughton|first=John|date=2015-09-24|publisher=Orion|isbn=978-1-4746-0277-8|language=en}}</ref> The network's development was described at a 1968 conference.<ref>{{Cite web|last1=Smith|first1=Ed|last2=Miller|first2=Chris|last3=Norton|first3=Jim|title=Packet Switching: The first steps on the road to the information society|url=https://www.npl.co.uk/getattachment/about-us/History/Famous-faces/Donald-Davies/UK-role-in-Packet-Switching-(1).pdf.aspx|quote=Its development was described at a 1968 conference, two years before similar progress on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, was demonstrated}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|date=5 August 2008|title=The accelerator of the modern age|work=BBC News|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7541123.stm|access-date=19 May 2009}}</ref>

By 1968,<ref>{{cite conference|last=Scantlebury|first=R. A.|author2=Wilkinson, P.T.|year=1974|title=The National Physical Laboratory Data Communications Network|url=http://www.rogerdmoore.ca/PS/NPLPh/NPL1974A.html|pages=223–228|book-title=Proceedings of the 2nd ICCC 74}}</ref> Davies had begun building the Mark I packet-switched network to meet the needs of the multidisciplinary laboratory and prove the technology under operational conditions.<ref name="C. Hempstead, W. Worthington2">{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/EncyclopediaOf20thCenturyTechnologyAZMalestrom/page/n621/mode/2up?q=packet+switching |title=Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology |date=2005 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-45551-4 |editor1-last=Hempstead |editor1-first=C. |pages=573–5 |access-date=2015-08-15 |editor2-last=Worthington |editor2-first=W.}}</ref><ref name="BBC Technology">{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8331253.stm|title=Celebrating 40 years of the net|first=Mark|last=Ward|newspaper=BBC News|date=October 29, 2009}}</ref> Elements of the network became operational in 1969,<ref name="C. Hempstead, W. Worthington2" /> the first implementation of packet switching,<ref name=":22">{{Cite journal |last1=John S |first1=Quarterman |last2=Josiah C |first2=Hoskins |date=1986 |title=Notable computer networks |journal=Communications of the ACM |language=EN |volume=29 |issue=10 |pages=932–971 |doi=10.1145/6617.6618 |s2cid=25341056 |quote=The first packet-switching network was implemented at the National Physical Laboratories in the United Kingdom. It was quickly followed by the ARPANET in 1969. |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.inc.com/computerfreaks |title=Computer Freaks |date=June 22, 2023 |last=Haughney Dare-Bryan |first=Christine |type=Podcast |publisher=Inc. Magazine |series=Chapter Two: In the Air |minutes=35:55 |quote=Leonard Kleinrock: Donald Davies ... did make a single node packet switch before ARPA did}}</ref> and the NPL network became the first to use high-speed links.<ref name=":32">{{Cite journal|last=Cambell-Kelly|first=Martin|date=1987|title=Data Communications at the National Physical Laboratory (1965–1975)|url=https://archive.org/details/DataCommunicationsAtTheNationalPhysicalLaboratory|journal=Annals of the History of Computing|language=en|volume=9|issue=3/4|pages=221–247|doi=10.1109/MAHC.1987.10023|s2cid=8172150}}</ref> Many other packet switching networks built in the 1970s were similar "in nearly all respects" to Davies' original 1965 design.<ref name=Roberts1978/> The Mark II version which operated from 1973 used a layered protocol architecture.<ref name=":32" /> The NPL team carried out [[simulation]] work on packet networks, including [[datagram|datagrams]] and congestion; and research into [[internetworking]] and computer network security.<ref name="C. Hempstead, W. Worthington2" /><ref name="Pelkey">{{cite book|chapter-url=http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/Book/6/6.3-CYCLADESNetworkLouisPouzin1-72.html|title=Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications 1968–1988|last=Pelkey|first=James|chapter=6.3 CYCLADES Network and Louis Pouzin 1971–1972}}</ref> In 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached,<ref>{{cite web|date=1974|title=The National Physical Laboratory Data Communications Netowrk|url=http://rogerdmoore.ca/PS/NPLPh/NPL1974A.html|access-date=5 September 2017}}</ref> and more were added until the network was replaced in 1986.

===ARPANET===
{{Main|ARPANET}}
Robert Taylor was promoted to the head of the [[Information Processing Techniques Office]] (IPTO) at [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]] (DARPA) in 1966. He intended to realize [[J. C. R. Licklider|Licklider]]'s ideas of an interconnected networking system.<ref>{{harvnb|Hafner|Lyon|1998|pages=39–41}}</ref> As part of the IPTO's role, three network terminals had been installed: one for [[System Development Corporation]] in [[Santa Monica, California|Santa Monica]], one for [[Project Genie]] at [[University of California, Berkeley]], and one for the [[Compatible Time-Sharing System]] project at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT).<ref name="Markoff 1999"/> Taylor's identified need for networking became obvious from the waste of resources apparent to him.

{{Blockquote|For each of these three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C. and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley or M.I.T. about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in touch with them.... 
I said, oh man, it's obvious what to do: If you have these three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go where you have interactive computing. That idea is the ARPAnet.<ref name="Markoff 1999">{{cite news |last=Markoff |first=John |title=An Internet Pioneer Ponders the Next Revolution |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/122099outlook-bobb.html |access-date=March 7, 2020 |date=December 20, 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050304045456/http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/122099outlook-bobb.html |archive-date=March 4, 2005 |url-status=live}}</ref>}}Bringing in [[Lawrence Roberts (scientist)|Larry Roberts]] from MIT in January 1967, he initiated a project to build such a network. Roberts and Thomas Merrill had been researching computer [[time-sharing]] over [[wide area network]]s (WANs).<ref>{{cite conference|last1=Roberts|first1=Larry|last2=Marrill|first2=Tom|date=October 1966|title=Toward a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers|url=http://www.packet.cc/files/toward-coop-net.html|conference=Fall AFIPS Conference|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020401051508/http://www.packet.cc/files/toward-coop-net.html|archive-date=2002-04-01|access-date=2017-09-10|author-link1=Lawrence Roberts (scientist)}}</ref> Wide area networks emerged during the late 1950s and became established during the 1960s. At the first ACM [[Symposium on Operating Systems Principles]] in October 1967, Roberts presented a proposal for the "ARPA net", based on [[Wesley A. Clark|Wesley Clark's]] proposal to use [[Interface Message Processor]]s (IMP) to create a [[message switching]] network.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2015/01/02/a-very-short-history-of-the-internet-and-the-web-2/|title=A Very Short History Of The Internet And The Web|last=Press|first=Gil|date=January 2, 2015|website=Forbes|language=en|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150109145400/https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2015/01/02/a-very-short-history-of-the-internet-and-the-web-2/|archive-date=January 9, 2015|access-date=2020-02-07|quote=Roberts' proposal that all host computers would connect to one another directly ... was not endorsed ... Wesley Clark ... suggested to Roberts that the network be managed by identical small computers, each attached to a host computer. Accepting the idea, Roberts named the small computers dedicated to network administration 'Interface Message Processors' (IMPs), which later evolved into today's routers.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |url=https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/EngelbartPapers/B1_F20_CompuMtg.html|title=SRI Project 5890-1; Networking (Reports on Meetings) |year=1967|publisher=Stanford University|access-date=2020-02-15|quote=W. Clark's message switching proposal (appended to Taylor's letter of April 24, 1967 to Engelbart)were reviewed.|archive-date=February 2, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200202062940/https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/EngelbartPapers/B1_F20_CompuMtg.html}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Roberts|first=Lawrence|date=1967|title=Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communications|chapter-url=https://people.mpi-sws.org/~gummadi/teaching/sp07/sys_seminar/arpanet.pdf|pages=3.1–3.6|doi=10.1145/800001.811680|quote=Thus the set of IMP's, plus the telephone lines and data sets would constitute a message switching network|chapter=Multiple computer networks and intercomputer communication|s2cid=17409102}}</ref>  At the conference, [[Roger Scantlebury]] presented [[Donald Davies|Donald Davies']] work on [[packet switching]] for data communications and referenced the work of [[Paul Baran]] at [[RAND Corporation|RAND]]. Roberts incorporated the packet switching concepts into the ARPANET design and upgraded the proposed communications speed from 2.4 kbit/s to 50 kbit/s.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Press |first=Gil |title=A Very Short History Of The Internet And The Web |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2015/01/02/a-very-short-history-of-the-internet-and-the-web-2/ |access-date=2020-01-30 |website=Forbes |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Inductee Details – Donald Watts Davies|url=http://www.invent.org/honor/inductees/inductee-detail/?IID=328|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170906091936/http://www.invent.org/honor/inductees/inductee-detail/?IID=328|archive-date=September 6, 2017|access-date=6 September 2017|publisher=National Inventors Hall of Fame}}</ref><ref name="MCK">{{cite journal|last=Cambell-Kelly|first=Martin|date=Autumn 2008|title=Pioneer Profiles: Donald Davies|url=http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/resurrection/res44.htm|journal=Computer Resurrection|issn=0958-7403|number=44}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine | first=Cade| last=Metz| title=What Do the H-Bomb and the Internet Have in Common? Paul Baran | magazine=WIRED | date=3 September 2012 | url=https://www.wired.com/2012/09/what-do-the-h-bomb-and-the-internet-have-in-common-paul-baran/ |quote=He was very conscious of people mistaken belief that the work he did at RAND somehow led to the creation of the ARPAnet. It didn't, and he was very honest about that.}}</ref> 

ARPA awarded the contract to build the network to [[Bolt Beranek & Newman]]. The "IMP guys", led by Frank Heart and [[Bob Kahn]], developed the routing, flow control, software design and network control.<ref name="Roberts1978" /><ref name="F.E. Froehlich, A. Kent">{{cite book |author=F.E. Froehlich, A. Kent |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gaRBTHdUKmgC&pg=PA344 |title=The Froehlich/Kent Encyclopedia of Telecommunications: Volume 1 - Access Charges in the U.S.A. to Basics of Digital Communications |date=1990 |publisher=CRC Press |isbn=0824729005 |page=344}}</ref> The first ARPANET link was established between the Network Measurement Center at the [[University of California, Los Angeles]] (UCLA) [[Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science]] directed by [[Leonard Kleinrock]], and the NLS system at [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI) directed by [[Douglas Engelbart]] in [[Menlo Park, California|Menlo Park]], California at 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969.<ref name="How ARPANET Works">{{cite web|url=http://computer.howstuffworks.com/arpanet1.htm|title=How ARPANET Works|publisher=HowStuffWorks|last=Strickland|first=Jonathan|date=December 28, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080112102002/http://computer.howstuffworks.com/arpanet1.htm|archive-date=January 12, 2008|url-status=live|access-date=March 7, 2020}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI ...", Kleinrock ... said in an interview: "We typed the L and we asked on the phone,

:"Do you see the L?"
:"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
:We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."
:"Yes, we see the O."
:Then we typed the G, and the system crashed ...

Yet a revolution had begun" ....<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Beranek |first=Leo |date=2000 |title=Roots of the Internet: A Personal History |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25081152 |journal=Massachusetts Historical Review |volume=2 |pages=55–75 |jstor=25081152 |issn=1526-3894}}</ref><ref name="NetValley">{{cite web|url=http://www.netvalley.com/intval.html|title=Roads and Crossroads of Internet History|first=Gregory|last=Gromov|year=1995}}</ref> |author=|title=|source=}}

[[File:Stamps of Azerbaijan, 2004-683.jpg|thumb|Postage stamp of Azerbaijan (2004): 35 Years of the Internet, 1969–2004]]

By December 1969, a four-node network was connected by adding the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the [[University of California, Santa Barbara]] followed by the [[University of Utah]] Graphics Department.<ref>{{harvnb|Hafner|Lyon|1998|pages=154–156}}</ref> In the same year, Taylor helped fund [[ALOHAnet]], a system designed by professor [[Norman Abramson]] and others at the [[University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa]] that transmitted data by radio between seven computers on four islands on [[Hawaii]].<ref>{{harvnb|Hafner|Lyon|1998|page=220}}</ref>

[[Steve Crocker]] formed the "Network Working Group" in 1969 at UCLA. He initiated and managed the [[Request for Comments]] (RFC) process, which is still used today for proposing and distributing contributions. RFC 1, entitled "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker and published on April 7, 1969. The protocol for establishing links between network sites in the ARPANET, the [[Network Control Protocol (ARPANET)|Network Control Program]] (NCP), was completed in 1970. These early years were documented in the 1972 film [[Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing]].

Roberts presented the idea of packet switching to the communication professionals, and faced anger and hostility. Before ARPANET was operating, they argued that the router buffers would quickly run out. After the ARPANET was operating, they argued packet switching would never be economic without the government subsidy. Baran faced the same rejection and thus failed to convince the military into constructing a packet switching network.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Roberts |first=L. |title=A history of personal workstations |date=1988-01-01 |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |isbn=978-0-201-11259-7 |place=New York, NY, USA |pages=141–172 |chapter=The arpanet and computer networks |doi=10.1145/61975.66916 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Roberts |first1=Larry |title=Proceedings of the ACM Conference on the history of personal workstations |date=1986 |isbn=0897911768 |pages=51–58 |chapter=The Arpanet and computer networks |doi=10.1145/12178.12182 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Early international collaborations via the ARPANET were sparse. Connections were made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array ([[NORSAR]]),<ref>{{cite web |title=NORSAR and the Internet |url=http://www.norsar.no/pc-5-30-NORSAR-and-the-Internet.aspx  |archive-url=http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20090607094725/http://www.norsar.no/pc-5-30-NORSAR-and-the-Internet.aspx |archive-date=June 7, 2009 |access-date=June 5, 2009 |publisher=NORSAR }}</ref> via a satellite link at the [[Tanum Municipality|Tanum]] Earth Station in Sweden, and to [[Peter T. Kirstein|Peter Kirstein]]'s research group at [[University College London]], which provided a gateway to [[Internet in the United Kingdom#History|British academic networks]], the first international heterogenous [[resource sharing]] network.<ref name=":9" /> Throughout the 1970s, Leonard Kleinrock developed the mathematical theory to model and measure the performance of packet-switching technology, building on his earlier work on the application of [[queueing theory]] to message switching systems.<ref name="Gillies2000">{{harvnb|Gillies|Cailliau|2000|page=26}}</ref> By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7XAZnpCfQnEC&q=1981+213+arpanet+hosts&pg=PT289|title=Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals|last1=Grant|first1=August E.|last2=Meadows|first2=Jennifer E.|place=Burlington, Massachusetts|publisher=Focal Press|year=2008|edition=11th|isbn=978-0-240-81062-1|page=289}}</ref> The ARPANET became the technical core of what would become the Internet, and a primary tool in developing the technologies used.

===Merit Network===
{{Main|Merit Network}}
The [[Merit Network]]<ref name="Merit">The [[Merit Network|Merit Network, Inc.]] is an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation governed by Michigan's public universities. Merit receives administrative services under an agreement with the [[University of Michigan]].</ref> was formed in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad to explore computer networking between three of Michigan's public universities as a means to help the state's educational and economic development.<ref>{{cite web | title=A Chronicle of Merit's Early History | website=merit.edu | date=1 August 2006 | url=http://merit.edu/about/history/article.php | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090207130720/http://merit.edu/about/history/article.php | archive-date=7 February 2009 }}</ref> With initial support from the [[State of Michigan]] and the [[National Science Foundation]] (NSF), the packet-switched network was first demonstrated in December 1971 when an interactive host to host connection was made between the [[IBM]] [[mainframe computer]] systems at the [[University of Michigan]] in [[Ann Arbor]] and [[Wayne State University]] in [[Detroit]].<ref name="MeritTimeline1970-1979">{{cite web | title=Timeline: The 1970s | website=merit.edu| date=11 July 2013 | url=http://www.merit.edu/about/history/timeline_1970.php | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101025735/http://www.merit.edu/about/history/timeline_1970.php | archive-date=1 January 2016  }}</ref> In October 1972 connections to the [[Control Data Corporation|CDC]] mainframe at [[Michigan State University]] in [[East Lansing]] completed the triad. Over the next several years in addition to host to host interactive connections the network was enhanced to support terminal to host connections, host to host batch connections (remote job submission, remote printing, batch file transfer), interactive file transfer, gateways to the [[Tymnet]] and [[Telenet]] [[public data network]]s, [[X.25]] host attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks, [[Ethernet]] attached hosts, and eventually [[TCP/IP]] and additional [[List of colleges and universities in Michigan#Public colleges and universities|public universities in Michigan]] join the network.<ref name=MeritTimeline1970-1979/><ref name="MeritTimeline1980-1989">{{cite web | title=Timeline: The 1980's | website=merit.edu | date=11 July 2013 | url=http://www.merit.edu/about/history/timeline_1980.php | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101025735/http://www.merit.edu/about/history/timeline_1980.php | archive-date=1 January 2016 }}</ref> All of this set the stage for Merit's role in the [[NSFNET]] project starting in the mid-1980s.

===CYCLADES===
{{Main|CYCLADES}}

The [[CYCLADES]] packet switching network was a French research network designed and directed by [[Louis Pouzin]].<ref name=":8">{{Cite news |date=2013-11-30 |title=The internet's fifth man |newspaper=The Economist |url=https://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590765-louis-pouzin-helped-create-internet-now-he-campaigning-ensure-its |access-date=2020-04-22 |quote=In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could connect not just dozens of machines, but millions of them. It captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now power the internet.}}</ref> In 1971, he began planning the network to explore alternatives to the early ARPANET design and to support internetworking research. First demonstrated in 1973, it was the first network to implement the [[end-to-end principle]] conceived by Donald Davies and make the hosts responsible for reliable delivery of data, rather than the network itself, using [[Datagrams#Packets vs. datagrams|unreliable datagrams]]. Concepts implemented in this network influenced [[TCP/IP]] architecture.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Cyclades/index.shtml|title=A Technical History of CYCLADES|work=Technical Histories of the Internet & other Network Protocols|publisher=Computer Science Department, University of Texas Austin|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130901092641/http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Cyclades/index.shtml|archive-date=September 1, 2013}}</ref><ref>
{{cite conference |url=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ifip/Zimmermann77 |title=The Cyclades Experience: Results and Impacts |last=Zimmermann |first=H. |conference=Proc. IFIP'77 Congress |location=Toronto |date=August 1977 |pages=465–469}}</ref><ref name=":8" />

===X.25 and public data networks===
{{Main|X.25|public data network}}

[[File:ABC Clarke predicts internet and PC.ogv|thumb|1974 interview with [[Arthur C. Clarke]] by the [[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]], in which he describes a future of ubiquitous networked personal computers]]
Based on international research initiatives, particularly the contributions of [[Rémi Després]], packet switching network standards were developed by the [[International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee]] (ITU-T) in the form of [[X.25]] and related standards.<ref name=":11">{{Cite journal |last=Rybczynski |first=Tony |date=2009 |title=Commercialization of packet switching (1975–1985): A Canadian perspective [History of Communications] |journal=IEEE Communications Magazine |volume=47 |issue=12 |pages=26–31 |doi=10.1109/MCOM.2009.5350364 |s2cid=23243636 }}</ref><ref name=":12">{{Cite journal|last=Schwartz|first=Mischa|date=2010|title=X.25 Virtual Circuits - TRANSPAC IN France - Pre-Internet Data Networking [History of communications]|journal=IEEE Communications Magazine|volume=48|issue=11|pages=40–46|doi=10.1109/MCOM.2010.5621965|s2cid=23639680 }}</ref> X.25 is built on the concept of [[virtual circuit]]s emulating traditional telephone connections. In 1974, X.25 formed the basis for the SERCnet network between British academic and research sites, which later became [[JANET]], the United Kingdom's high-speed [[national research and education network]] (NREN). The initial ITU Standard on X.25 was approved in March 1976.<ref>{{cite web|author=tsbedh |url=http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com17/history.html |title=History of X.25, CCITT Plenary Assemblies and Book Colors |publisher=Itu.int |access-date=June 5, 2009}}</ref> Existing networks, such as [[Telenet]] in the United States adopted X.25 as well as new [[public data network]]s, such as [[DATAPAC]] in Canada and [[Packet switching#TRANSPAC|TRANSPAC]] in France.<ref name=":11" /><ref name=":12" /> [[X.25]] was supplemented by the [[X.75]] protocol which enabled internetworking between national PTT networks in Europe and commercial networks in North America.<ref>{{harvnb|Davies|Bressan|2010|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=DN-t8MpZ0-wC&pg=PA2 2, 9]}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Ikram |first1=Nadeem |date=1985 |title=Internet Protocols and a Partial Implementation of CCITT X.75 |id={{OCLC|663449435|1091194379}} |url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/678d6e16a1f0ac0470e12db67623ce91/1 |page=2 |quote=Two main approaches to internetworking have come into existence based upon the virtual circuit and the datagram services. The vast majority of the work on interconnecting networks falls into one of these two approaches: The CCITT X.75 Recommendation; The DoD Internet Protocol (IP).}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Unsoy |first1=Mehmet S. |last2=Shanahan |first2=Theresa A. |date=1981 |title=X.75 internetworking of Datapac and Telenet |journal=ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=232–239 |doi=10.1145/1013879.802679 }}</ref>

The [[General Post Office (United Kingdom)|British Post Office]], [[Western Union|Western Union International]], and [[Tymnet]] collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network, referred to as the [[International Packet Switched Service]] (IPSS), in 1978. This network grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia by 1981. By the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking infrastructure.<ref>{{cite web |title=Events in British Telecomms History |work=Events in British TelecommsHistory |url=http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_brief.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030405153523/http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_brief.html |archive-date=April 5, 2003 |access-date=November 25, 2005}}</ref>

Unlike ARPANET, X.25 was commonly available for business use. [[Telenet]] offered its Telemail electronic mail service, which was also targeted to enterprise use rather than the general email system of the ARPANET.

The first public dial-in networks used asynchronous [[teleprinter]] (TTY) terminal protocols to reach a concentrator operated in the public network. Some networks, such as [[Telenet]] and [[CompuServe]], used X.25 to multiplex the terminal sessions into their packet-switched backbones, while others, such as [[Tymnet]], used proprietary protocols. In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer [[e-mail|electronic mail]] capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. The company broke new ground again in 1980 as the first to offer [[online chat|real-time chat]] with its [[CB Simulator]]. Other major dial-in networks were [[America Online]] (AOL) and [[Prodigy (ISP)|Prodigy]] that also provided communications, content, and entertainment features.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Council|first1=National Research|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Jh1pORpfvrQC&pg=PA148|title=The Unpredictable Certainty: White Papers|last2=Sciences|first2=Division on Engineering and Physical|last3=Board|first3=Computer Science and Telecommunications|last4=Applications|first4=Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and|last5=Committee|first5=NII 2000 Steering|date=1998-02-05|publisher=National Academies Press|isbn=978-0-309-17414-5|language=en}}</ref> Many [[bulletin board system]] (BBS) networks also provided on-line access, such as [[FidoNet]] which was popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them [[hacker]]s and [[amateur radio operator]]s.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}

===UUCP and Usenet===
{{Main|UUCP|Usenet}}

In 1979, two students at [[Duke University]], [[Tom Truscott]] and [[Jim Ellis (computing)|Jim Ellis]], originated the idea of using [[Bourne shell]] scripts to transfer news and messages on a serial line [[UUCP]] connection with nearby [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]]. Following public release of the software in 1980, the mesh of UUCP hosts forwarding on the Usenet news rapidly expanded. UUCPnet, as it would later be named, also created gateways and links between [[FidoNet]] and dial-up BBS hosts. UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, ability to use existing leased lines, [[X.25]] links or even [[ARPANET]] connections, and the lack of strict use policies compared to later networks like [[CSNET]] and [[Bitnet]]. All connects were local. By 1981 the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.faqs.org/faqs/uucp-internals/|title=UUCP Internals Frequently Asked Questions|website=www.faqs.org}}</ref>

[[Sublink Network]], operating since 1987 and officially founded in Italy in 1989, based its interconnectivity upon UUCP to redistribute mail and news groups messages throughout its Italian nodes (about 100 at the time) owned both by private individuals and small companies. Sublink Network evolved into one of the first examples of Internet technology coming into use through popular diffusion.

==1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet==
[[File:Internet map in February 82.png|thumb|200px|Map of the [[TCP/IP]] test network in February 1982]]

===TCP/IP===
{{Main|Internet Protocol Suite}}
{{See also|Transmission Control Protocol|Internet Protocol}}
[[File:First Internet Demonstration, 1977.jpg|thumb|First Internet demonstration, linking the [[ARPANET]], [[PRNET]], and [[SATNET]] on November 22, 1977]]
With so many different networking methods seeking interconnection, a method was needed to unify them. [[Louis Pouzin]] initiated the [[CYCLADES]] project in 1971, building on the work of [[Donald Davies]]. In his work, Pouzin coined the term ''[[catenet]]'' for concatenated network. An [[International Network Working Group]] formed in 1972; active members included [[Vint Cerf]] from [[Stanford University]], Alex McKenzie from [[Bolt Beranek & Newman|BBN]], Donald Davies and [[Roger Scantlebury]] from [[National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)|NPL]], and Louis Pouzin and [[Hubert Zimmermann]] from [[French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation|IRIA]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=McKenzie|first=Alexander|date=2011|title=INWG and the Conception of the Internet: An Eyewitness Account|journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing|volume=33|issue=1|pages=66–71|doi=10.1109/MAHC.2011.9|s2cid=206443072 }}</ref><ref name="ieee201703">{{cite journal |last1=Russell |first1=A. L. |title=The internet that wasn't |journal=IEEE Spectrum |date=August 2013 |volume=50 |issue=8 |pages=39–43 |doi=10.1109/MSPEC.2013.6565559 |s2cid=11259224 |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/osi-the-internet-that-wasnt }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Vinton Cerf: How the Internet Came to Be|url=http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.html|access-date=2021-12-21|website=www.netvalley.com}}</ref> [[Robert E. Kahn|Bob Kahn]], now at [[DARPA]], recruited Vint Cerf to work with him on the problem. [[Robert Metcalfe|Bob Metcalfe]] at [[PARC (company)|Xerox PARC]] outlined the idea of [[Ethernet]] and [[PARC Universal Packet]] (PUP). By 1973, these groups had worked out a fundamental reformulation, in which the differences between network protocols were hidden by using a common [[internetworking]] protocol. Instead of the network being responsible for reliability, as in the ARPANET, the hosts became responsible.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":5" />

Cerf and Kahn published their ideas in May 1974,<ref name=":7">{{cite journal |last1=Cerf |first1=V. |last2=Kahn |first2=R. |title=A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication |journal=IEEE Transactions on Communications |date=May 1974 |volume=22 |issue=5 |pages=637–648 |doi=10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259 |quote=The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.}}</ref> which incorporated concepts implemented by Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann in the CYCLADES network.<ref>{{cite news|date=13 December 2013|title=The internet's fifth man|work=Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590765-louis-pouzin-helped-create-internet-now-he-campaigning-ensure-its|access-date=11 September 2017|quote=In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could connect not just dozens of machines, but millions of them. It captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now power the internet.}}</ref> The specification of the resulting protocol, the [[Transmission Control Program]], was published as {{IETF RFC|675}} by the Network Working Group in December 1974.<ref>{{cite ietf |author1=[[Vint Cerf]] |author2=[[Yogen Dalal]] |author3=Carl Sunshine |date=December 1974 |RFC=675 |title=Specification of Internet Transmission Control Protocol}}</ref> It contains the first attested use of the term ''internet'', as a shorthand for internetwork. This software was monolithic in design using two [[simplex communication]] channels for each user session.

With the role of the network reduced to a core of functionality, it became possible to exchange traffic with other networks independently from their detailed characteristics, thereby solving the fundamental problems of internetworking. DARPA agreed to fund the development of prototype software. Testing began in 1975 through concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN and [[University College London]] (UCL).<ref name=":4" /> After several years of work, the first demonstration of a gateway between the [[PRNET|Packet Radio network]] (PRNET) in the SF Bay area and the ARPANET was conducted by the [[SRI International|Stanford Research Institute]]. On November 22, 1977, a three network demonstration was conducted including the ARPANET, the SRI's [[Packet Radio Van]] on the Packet Radio Network and the [[Atlantic Packet Satellite Network]] (SATNET) including a node at UCL.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.computerhistory.org/about/press_relations/releases/20071101/ |access-date=November 22, 2007 |title=Computer History Museum and Web History Center Celebrate 30th Anniversary of Internet Milestone  }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.cnet.com/Internet-van-helped-drive-evolution-of-the-Web/2100-1033_3-6217511.html|title='Internet van' helped drive evolution of the Web|first=Erica|last=Ogg|work=[[CNET]]|date=2007-11-08|access-date=2011-11-12}}</ref>

The software was redesigned as a modular protocol stack, using full-duplex channels; between 1976 and 1977, [[Yogen Dalal]] and Robert Metcalfe among others, proposed separating TCP's [[routing]] and transmission control functions into two discrete layers,<ref name="Panzaris">{{cite book|last1=Panzaris|first1=Georgios|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9yMhAQAAIAAJ|title=Machines and romances: the technical and narrative construction of networked computing as a general-purpose platform, 1960–1995|date=2008|publisher=[[Stanford University]]|page=128|quote=Despite the misgivings of Xerox Corporation (which intended to make PUP the basis of a proprietary commercial networking product), researchers at Xerox PARC, including ARPANET pioneers Robert Metcalfe and Yogen Dalal, shared the basic contours of their research with colleagues at TCP and Internet working group meetings in 1976 and 1977, suggesting the possible benefits of separating TCPs routing and transmission control functions into two discrete layers.}}</ref><ref name="Pelkey-Dalal">{{cite book|last1=Pelkey|first1=James L.|title=Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications, 1968–1988|date=2007|chapter=Yogen Dalal|access-date=5 September 2019|chapter-url=http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/Individuals/abstracts/yogen-dalal.html|archive-date=September 5, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190905162105/http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/Individuals/abstracts/yogen-dalal.html}}</ref> which led to the splitting of the Transmission Control Program into the [[Transmission Control Protocol]] (TCP) and the [[Internet Protocol]] (IP) in version 3 in 1978.<ref name="Pelkey-Dalal" /><ref name=":0">{{cite web|title=BGP Analysis Reports|url=http://bgp.potaroo.net/index-bgp.html|access-date=2013-01-09}}</ref> Originally referred to as ''IP/TCP'', [[IPv4|version 4]] was described in [[IETF]] publication RFC 791 (September 1981), 792 and 793. It was installed on [[SATNET]] in 1982 and the ARPANET in January 1983 after the DoD made it standard for all military computer networking.<ref>{{Cite web|title=TCP/IP Internet Protocol|url=https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_tcpip.htm|access-date=2020-02-20|website=www.livinginternet.com|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726154118/https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_tcpip.htm}}</ref><ref>{{cite ietf |author=[[Jon Postel]] |title=NCP/TCP Transition Plan |RFC= 801}}</ref> This resulted in a networking model that became known informally as TCP/IP. It was also referred to as the Department of Defense (DoD) model, DARPA model, or ARPANET model.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The TCP/IP Guide – TCP/IP Architecture and the TCP/IP Model|url=http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_TCPIPArchitectureandtheTCPIPModel.htm|access-date=2020-02-11|website=www.tcpipguide.com}}</ref> Cerf credits his graduate students Yogen Dalal, Carl Sunshine, [[Judy Estrin]], [[Richard Karp]], and [[Gérard Le Lann]] with important work on the design and testing.<ref>{{cite web|date=24 April 1990|title=Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Vinton Cerf|url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/vc1.html|access-date=23 September 2019|website=[[National Museum of American History]]|publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]]}}</ref> DARPA sponsored or encouraged the [[Internet protocol suite#Adoption|development of TCP/IP implementations]] for many operating systems.

[[Image:IPv4 address structure and writing systems-en.svg|300px|thumb|Decomposition of the quad-dotted IPv4 address representation to its [[Binary numeral system|binary]] value]]

===From ARPANET to NSFNET===
{{Main|2 = NSFNET}}

[[File:InetCirca85.jpg|thumb|320px|[[BBN Technologies]] TCP/IP Internet map of early 1986]]

After the ARPANET had been up and running for several years, ARPA looked for another agency to hand off the network to; ARPA's primary mission was funding cutting-edge research and development, not running a communications utility. In July 1975, the network was turned over to the [[Defense Communications Agency]], also part of the [[United States Department of Defense|Department of Defense]]. In 1983, the [[U.S. military]] portion of the ARPANET was broken off as a separate network, the [[MILNET]]. MILNET subsequently became the unclassified but military-only [[NIPRNET]], in parallel with the SECRET-level [[SIPRNET]] and [[JWICS]] for TOP SECRET and above. NIPRNET does have controlled security gateways to the public Internet.

The networks based on the ARPANET were government funded and therefore restricted to noncommercial uses such as research; unrelated commercial use was strictly forbidden. This initially restricted connections to military sites and universities. During the 1980s, the connections expanded to more educational institutions, and a growing number of companies such as [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] and [[Hewlett-Packard]], which were participating in research projects or providing services to those who were. Data transmission speeds depended upon the type of connection, the slowest being analog telephone lines and the fastest using optical networking technology.

Several other branches of the [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. government]], the [[National Aeronautics and Space Administration]] (NASA), the [[National Science Foundation]] (NSF), and the [[United States Department of Energy|Department of Energy]] (DOE) became heavily involved in Internet research and started development of a successor to ARPANET. In the mid-1980s, all three of these branches developed the first Wide Area Networks based on TCP/IP. NASA developed the [[NASA Science Network]], NSF developed [[CSNET]] and DOE evolved the [[Energy Sciences Network]] or ESNet.

[[File:NSFNET-backbone-T3.png|thumb|320px|T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992]]
NASA developed the TCP/IP based NASA Science Network (NSN) in the mid-1980s, connecting space scientists to data and information stored anywhere in the world. In 1989, the [[DECnet]]-based Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) and the TCP/IP-based NASA Science Network (NSN) were brought together at NASA Ames Research Center creating the first multiprotocol wide area network called the NASA Science Internet, or NSI. NSI was established to provide a totally integrated communications infrastructure to the NASA scientific community for the advancement of earth, space and life sciences. As a high-speed, multiprotocol, international network, NSI provided connectivity to over 20,000 scientists across all seven continents.

In 1981, NSF supported the development of the [[CSNET|Computer Science Network]] (CSNET). CSNET connected with ARPANET using TCP/IP, and ran TCP/IP over [[X.25]], but it also supported departments without sophisticated network connections, using automated dial-up mail exchange. CSNET played a central role in popularizing the Internet outside the ARPANET.<ref name=":10" />

In 1986, the NSF created [[NSFNET]], a 56&nbsp;kbit/s [[Internet backbone|backbone]] to support the NSF-sponsored [[supercomputer|supercomputing]] centers. The NSFNET also provided support for the creation of regional research and education networks in the United States, and for the connection of university and college campus networks to the regional networks.<ref>{{cite web |author1=David Roessner |author2=Barry Bozeman |author3=Irwin Feller |author4=Christopher Hill |author5=Nils Newman |title=The Role of NSF's Support of Engineering in Enabling Technological Innovation |year=1997 |url=http://www.sri.com/policy/csted/reports/techin/inter2.html |access-date=May 28, 2009  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081219114437/http://www.sri.com/policy/csted/reports/techin/inter2.html |archive-date=December 19, 2008 }}</ref> The use of NSFNET and the regional networks was not limited to supercomputer users and the 56&nbsp;kbit/s network quickly became overloaded. NSFNET was upgraded to 1.5&nbsp;Mbit/s in 1988 under a cooperative agreement with the [[Merit Network]] in partnership with [[IBM]], [[MCI Communications|MCI]], and the [[State of Michigan]]. The existence of NSFNET and the creation of [[Federal Internet Exchange]]s (FIXes) allowed the ARPANET to be decommissioned in 1990.

NSFNET was expanded and upgraded to dedicated fiber, optical lasers and optical amplifier systems capable of delivering T3 start up speeds or 45 Mbit/s in 1991. However, the T3 transition by MCI took longer than expected, allowing Sprint to establish a coast-to-coast long-distance commercial Internet service. When NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, its optical networking backbones were handed off to several commercial Internet service providers, including MCI, [[PSINet|PSI Net]] and Sprint.<ref>{{cite report | title=Internet Traffic Exchange | series=OECD Digital Economy Papers | publisher=Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) | date=1 April 1998 | doi=10.1787/236767263531| doi-access=free }}</ref> As a result, when the handoff was complete, Sprint and its Washington DC Network Access Points began to carry Internet traffic, and by 1996, Sprint was the world's largest carrier of Internet traffic.<ref>{{cite press release |title=Sprint Boosts Fiber-Optic Network Capacity 1600 Percent |url=https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/sprint-boosts-fiber-optic-network-capacity-1600-percent-prx.html |location=Kansas City, MO |publisher=Ciena Corporation |date=June 11, 1996 |access-date=December 20, 2022}}</ref>

The research and academic community continues to develop and use advanced networks such as [[Internet2]] in the United States and [[JANET]] in the United Kingdom.

===Transition towards the Internet===
The term "internet" was reflected in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol (RFC 675:<ref>{{cite ietf|rfc=675 |title=RFC 675 – Specification of internet transmission control program |year=1974 |doi=10.17487/RFC0675 |access-date=May 28, 2009|last1=Cerf |first1=V. |last2=Dalal |first2=Y. |last3=Sunshine |first3=C. }}</ref> Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974) as a short form of ''internetworking'', when the two terms were used interchangeably. In general, an internet was a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the ARPANET was connected to the newly formed [[NSFNET]] project in the late 1980s, the term was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tanenbaum |first=Andrew S. |author-link=Andrew S. Tanenbaum |title=Computer Networks |url=https://archive.org/details/computernetwork000tane |url-access=registration |year=1996 |publisher=Prentice Hall |isbn=978-0-13-394248-4 }}</ref>

Opening the Internet and the fiber optic backbone to corporate and consumers increased demand for network capacity. The expense and delay of laying new fiber led providers to test a fiber bandwidth expansion alternative that had been pioneered in the late 1970s by [[Optelecom]] using "interactions between light and matter, such as lasers and optical devices used for [[Optical amplifier|optical amplification]] and wave mixing".<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Saleh|first1=Bahaa EA|title=Fundamentals of Photonics|last2=Teich|first2=Malvin Carl|publisher=John Wiley and Son|year=2019|pages=Preface xxii}}</ref> This technology became known as [[Wavelength-division multiplexing|wave division multiplexing (WDM)]]. Bell Labs deployed a 4-channel WDM system in 1995.<ref name="Winzer Neilson Chraplyvy 2018 p. 24190">{{cite journal | last1=Winzer | first1=Peter J. | last2=Neilson | first2=David T. | last3=Chraplyvy | first3=Andrew R. | title=Fiber-optic transmission and networking: the previous 20 and the next 20 years | journal=Optics Express | publisher=The Optical Society | volume=26 | issue=18 | date=31 August 2018 | pages=24190–24239 | doi=10.1364/oe.26.024190 |pmid=30184909|s2cid=52168806|doi-access=free}}</ref> To develop a mass capacity (dense) WDM system, [[Optelecom]] and its former head of Light Systems Research, [[David R. Huber]] formed a new venture, [[Ciena Corp.]], that deployed the world's first dense WDM system on the Sprint fiber network in June 1996.<ref name="Winzer Neilson Chraplyvy 2018 p. 24190"/>  This was referred to as the real start of optical networking.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Cvijetic | first1=M. | last2=Djordjevic | first2=I. | title=Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks | publisher=Artech House | series=Artech House applied photonics series | year=2013 | isbn=978-1-60807-555-3}}</ref>

As interest in networking grew by needs of collaboration, exchange of data, and access of remote computing resources, the Internet technologies spread throughout the rest of the world. The hardware-agnostic approach in TCP/IP supported the use of existing network infrastructure, such as the [[International Packet Switched Service]] (IPSS) X.25 network, to carry Internet traffic.

Many sites unable to link directly to the Internet created simple gateways for the transfer of electronic mail, the most important application of the time. Sites with only intermittent connections used [[UUCP]] or [[FidoNet]] and relied on the gateways between these networks and the Internet. Some gateway services went beyond simple mail peering, such as allowing access to [[File Transfer Protocol]] (FTP) sites via UUCP or mail.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/internexus/ACCESS.PROVIDRS|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020112024958/http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/internexus/ACCESS.PROVIDRS|archive-date=January 12, 2002|title=Internet Access Provider Lists|access-date=May 10, 2012}}</ref>

Finally, routing technologies were developed for the Internet to remove the remaining centralized routing aspects. The [[Exterior Gateway Protocol]] (EGP) was replaced by a new protocol, the [[Border Gateway Protocol]] (BGP). This provided a meshed topology for the Internet and reduced the centric architecture which ARPANET had emphasized. In 1994, [[Classless Inter-Domain Routing]] (CIDR) was introduced to support better conservation of address space which allowed use of [[supernet|route aggregation]] to decrease the size of [[routing table]]s.<ref>{{cite ietf|rfc=1871 |title=RFC 1871 – CIDR and Classful Routing |date=November 1995 |access-date=May 28, 2009|last1=Postel |first1=Jon |doi=10.17487/RFC1871 }}</ref>

===Optical networking===
The [[MOS transistor]] underpinned the rapid growth of telecommunication bandwidth over the second half of the 20th century.<ref name="Jindal">{{cite book |last1=Jindal |first1=R. P. |title=2009 2nd International Workshop on Electron Devices and Semiconductor Technology |chapter=From millibits to terabits per second and beyond - over 60 years of innovation |date=2009 |chapter-url=https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/195547 |pages=1–6 |doi=10.1109/EDST.2009.5166093 |isbn=978-1-4244-3831-0 |s2cid=25112828}}</ref> To address the need for transmission capacity beyond that provided by [[radio]], [[satellite]] and analog copper telephone lines, engineers developed [[optical communication]]s systems based on [[Fiber-optic cable|fiber optic cables]] powered by [[laser]]s and [[optical amplifier]] techniques.

The concept of lasing arose from a 1917 paper by [[Albert Einstein]], "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation." Einstein expanded upon a dialog with [[Max Planck]] on how [[atom]]s absorb and emit [[light]], part of a thought process that, with input from [[Erwin Schrödinger]], [[Werner Heisenberg]] and others, gave rise to [[Quantum mechanics|Quantum Mechanics]]. Specifically, in his [[Quantum theory of matter|quantum theory]], Einstein mathematically determined that light could be generated not only by [[spontaneous emission]], such as the light emitted by an [[Incandescent light bulb|incandescent light]] or the Sun, but also by [[stimulated emission]].

Forty years later, on November 13, 1957, [[Columbia University]] physics student [[Gordon Gould]] first realized how to make light by stimulated emission through a process of [[optical amplification]]. He coined the term LASER for this technology—Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.<ref>{{cite book | last=Taylor | first=Nick | title=Laser: The Inventor, the Noble Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War | publisher=Kensington Publishing Corporation | year=2000 | isbn=978-0-8065-2471-9 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VZ3dsdWRz6kC&pg=PA212 | page=212}}</ref> Using Gould's light amplification method (patented as "Optically Pumped Laser Amplifier"),<ref>{{cite patent |country=US |number=4053845A |title=Optically pumped laser amplifiers |status=patent}}</ref> [[Theodore Maiman]] made the first working laser on May 16, 1960.<ref>{{cite book | editor-last1=Garwin | editor-first1=Laura |editor-last2=Lincoln |editor-first2=Tim | title=A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World |chapter=The first laser: Charles H. Townes | publisher=University of Chicago Press | year=2010 | isbn=978-0-226-28416-3 | page=105}}</ref>

Gould co-founded [[Optelecom]], Inc. in 1973 to commercialize his inventions in optical fiber telecommunications.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bertolotti|first=Mario|title=Masers and Lasers: An Historical Approach|publisher=CRC Press|year=2015|edition=2nd|location=Chicago|page=151}}</ref> just as [[Corning Glass]] was producing the first commercial fiber optic cable in small quantities. Optelecom configured its own fiber lasers and optical amplifiers into the first commercial optical communication systems which it delivered to [[Chevron Corporation|Chevron]] and the US Army Missile Defense.<ref>{{cite book | last=Taylor | first=Nick | title=Laser: The Inventor, the Noble Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War | publisher=Kensington Publishing Corporation | year=2000 | isbn=978-0-8065-2471-9 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VZ3dsdWRz6kC&pg=PA225 | pages=225–226}}</ref> Three years later, [[GTE]] deployed the first optical telephone system in 1977 in Long Beach, California.<ref>{{cite book | last=Kangovi | first=S. | title=Peering Carrier Ethernet Networks | publisher=Elsevier Science | year=2016 | isbn=978-0-12-809249-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8kLQDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA46 | page=46}}</ref> By the early 1980s, optical networks powered by lasers, [[LED]] and optical amplifier equipment supplied by [[Bell Labs]], [[NTT Docomo|NTT]] and [[Pirelli|Perelli]] were used by select universities and long-distance telephone providers.

===TCP/IP goes global (1980s)===
====CERN and the European Internet====
{{See also|Protocol Wars}}
In early 1982, [[NORSAR]] and [[Peter T. Kirstein|Peter Kirstein's]] group at University College London (UCL) left the ARPANET and began to use TCP/IP over SATNET.<ref name=":5">{{cite journal|last=Hauben|first=Ronda|year=2004|title=The Internet: On its International Origins and Collaborative Vision|url=http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn12-2.a03.txt|journal=Amateur Computerist|volume=12|issue=2|access-date=May 29, 2009}}</ref> UCL continued to provide access between the ARPANET and [[JANET|academic networks in the UK]], a role it had performed since 1973.<ref name=":9">{{cite journal |last1=Kirstein |first1=P.T. |title=Early experiences with the Arpanet and Internet in the United Kingdom |journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing |date=1999 |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=38–44 |doi=10.1109/85.759368 |s2cid=1558618 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-01-26 |title=Oral-History:Silvia Wilbur |url=https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Silvia_Wilbur |access-date=2022-07-18 |website=ETHW |language=en}}</ref>

Between 1984 and 1988, [[CERN]] began installation and operation of TCP/IP to interconnect its major internal computer systems, workstations, PCs, and an accelerator control system. CERN continued to operate a limited self-developed system (CERNET) internally and several incompatible (typically proprietary) network protocols externally. There was considerable resistance in Europe towards more widespread use of TCP/IP, and the CERN TCP/IP intranets remained isolated from the Internet until 1989, when a transatlantic connection to Cornell University was established.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last=Fluckiger|first=Francois|date=February 2000|title=The European Researchers' Network|url=https://fluckiger.web.cern.ch/Fluckiger/Articles/F.Fluckiger-The_European_Researchers_Network.pdf|journal=La Recherche|issue=328|access-date=February 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180929121140/https://fluckiger.web.cern.ch/Fluckiger/Articles/F.Fluckiger-The_European_Researchers_Network.pdf|archive-date=September 29, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/blog/2014/07/02/how-web-got-its-lingua-franca|title=How the Web Got its 'Lingua Franca' {{!}} Internet Hall of Fame|website=www.internethalloffame.org|date=July 2, 2014 |access-date=2020-04-03}}</ref><ref name="nsf">{{Cite web |title=The Internet—From Modest Beginnings |url=https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/modest.htm  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161007113705/https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/modest.htm |archive-date=2016-10-07 |work=NSF website |access-date=September 30, 2011}}</ref>

The [[CSNET|Computer Science Network]] (CSNET) began operation in 1981 to provide networking connections to institutions that could not connect directly to ARPANET. Its first international connection was to Israel in 1984. Soon after, connections were established to computer science departments in Canada, France, and Germany.<ref name=":10">{{Cite web|url=https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_csnet.htm|title=CSNET, Computer Science Network}}</ref>

In 1988, the first international connections to [[National Science Foundation Network|NSFNET]] was established by France's [[French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation|INRIA]],<ref name=":02">{{cite book |doi=10.4324/9781315748962-6 |chapter=From the Minitel to the Internet: The Path to Digital Literacy and Network Culture in France (1980s–1990s) |title=The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories |date=2017 |last1=Schafer |first1=Valérie |last2=Thierry |first2=Benjamin G. |pages=77–89 |isbn=978-1-315-74896-2 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rlwlDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT191 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=A brief history of the internet|url=http://thetechnologytrend.blogspot.com/2012/03/brief-history-of-internet.html|last=Andrianarisoa|first=Menjanirina|date=March 2, 2012}}{{user-generated inline|date=September 2023}}</ref> and [[Piet Beertema]] at the [[Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica]] (CWI) in the Netherlands.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cwi.nl/about/history/cwi-achievements-details|title=CWI History: details|website=CWI|language=en-gb|access-date=2020-02-09}}</ref> Daniel Karrenberg, from CWI, visited Ben Segal, CERN's TCP/IP coordinator, looking for advice about the transition of [[EUnet]], the European side of the UUCP Usenet network (much of which ran over X.25 links), over to TCP/IP. The previous year, Segal had met with [[Len Bosack]] from the then still small company [[Cisco Systems|Cisco]] about purchasing some TCP/IP routers for CERN, and Segal was able to give Karrenberg advice and forward him on to Cisco for the appropriate hardware. This expanded the European portion of the Internet across the existing UUCP networks. The [[NORDUnet]] connection to NSFNET was in place soon after, providing open access for university students in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lehtisalo|first=Kaarina|url=http://www.nordu.net/history/TheHistoryOfNordunet_simple.pdf|title=The history of NORDUnet: twenty-five years of networking cooperation in the noridic countries|date=2005|publisher=NORDUnet|isbn=978-87-990712-0-3|language=en|access-date=May 2, 2020|archive-date=March 4, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304031416/http://www.nordu.net/history/TheHistoryOfNordunet_simple.pdf}}</ref> In January 1989, CERN opened its first external TCP/IP connections.<ref>{{cite web |author=Ben Segal |title=A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN |year=1995 |url=http://ben.web.cern.ch/ben/TCPHIST.html |author-link=Ben Segal }}</ref> This coincided with the creation of Réseaux IP Européens ([[RIPE]]), initially a group of IP network administrators who met regularly to carry out coordination work together. Later, in 1992, RIPE was formally registered as a [[cooperative]] in Amsterdam.

The United Kingdom's [[national research and education network]] (NREN), [[JANET]], began operation in 1984 using the UK's [[Coloured Book protocols]] and connected to NSFNET in 1989. In 1991, JANET adopted Internet Protocol on the existing network.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=January 1991|title=FLAGSHIP|url=http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ccd/literature/ccd_newsletters/flagship/p012.htm|journal=Central Computing Department Newsletter|issue=12|access-date=February 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200213100220/http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ccd/literature/ccd_newsletters/flagship/p012.htm|archive-date=February 13, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|date=September 1991|title=FLAGSHIP|url=http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ccd/literature/ccd_newsletters/flagship/p016.htm|journal=Central Computing Department Newsletter|issue=16|access-date=February 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200213100222/http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ccd/literature/ccd_newsletters/flagship/p016.htm|archive-date=February 13, 2020}}</ref> The same year, Dai Davies introduced Internet technology into the pan-European NREN, [[DANTE|EuropaNet]], which was built on the X.25 protocol.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/dai-davies/ |title=Dai Davies |website=Internet Hall of Fame }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/2015/01/16/protocol-wars/ |title=Protocol Wars |website=Internet Hall of Fame |date=January 16, 2015 }}</ref> The [[European Academic and Research Network]] (EARN) and [[TERENA|RARE]] adopted IP around the same time, and the European Internet backbone [[EBONE]] became operational in 1992.<ref name=":6" />

Nonetheless, for a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engineers, organizations and nations were [[Protocol Wars|polarized over the issue of which standard]], the [[OSI model]] or the Internet protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.<ref name="ieee201703" /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Russell |first1=A.L. |title='Rough Consensus and Running Code' and the Internet-OSI Standards War |journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing |date=July 2006 |volume=28 |issue=3 |pages=48–61 |doi=10.1109/MAHC.2006.42 |s2cid=206442834 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url={{Google books|DN-t8MpZ0-wC|page=106|plainurl=yes}} |title=The Protocol Wars |pages=106–107 }} in  {{cite book |doi=10.1002/9783527629336.ch4 |chapter=Different Approaches |title=A History of International Research Networking |date=2010 |pages=73–110 |isbn=978-3-527-32710-2 |first1=Howard |last1=Davies |first2=Beatrice |last2=Bressan }}</ref>

====The link to the Pacific====
South Korea set up a two-node domestic TCP/IP network in 1982, the System Development Network (SDN), adding a third node the following year. SDN was connected to the rest of the world in August 1983 using UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-Copy); connected to CSNET in December 1984;<ref name=":10" /> and formally connected to the NSFNET in 1990.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://net.its.hawaii.edu/history/Korean_Internet_History.pdf |title=A Brief History of the Internet in Korea |author=Kilnam Chon |author2=Hyunje Park |author3=Kyungran Kang |author4=Youngeum Lee }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=A Brief History of the Internet in Korea (2005) – 한국 인터넷 역사 프로젝트 |url=https://sites.google.com/site/koreainternethistory/publication/brief-history-korea-eng-ver |access-date=2016-05-30 |website=sites.google.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Shrum |first1=Wesley |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cNFOD_g7xXIC&pg=PA55 |title=Past, Present and Future of Research in the Information Society |last2=Benson |first2=Keith |last3=Bijker |first3=Wiebe |last4=Brunnstein |first4=Klaus |date=2007-12-14 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=978-0-387-47650-6 |page=55 |language=en}}</ref>

Japan, which had built the UUCP-based network [[JUNET]] in 1984, connected to CSNET,<ref name=":10" /> and later to NSFNET in 1989, marking the spread of the Internet to Asia.

In Australia, ad hoc networking to ARPA and in-between Australian universities formed in the late 1980s, based on various technologies such as X.25, [[UUCP]]Net, and via a CSNET.<ref name=":10" /> These were limited in their connection to the global networks, due to the cost of making individual international UUCP dial-up or X.25 connections. In 1989, Australian universities joined the push towards using IP protocols to unify their networking infrastructures. [[AARNet]] was formed in 1989 by the [[Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee]] and provided a dedicated IP based network for Australia.

New Zealand adopted the UK's [[Coloured Book protocols]] as an interim standard and established its first international IP connection to the U.S. in 1989.<ref>{{Cite web|title=History of University of Waikato: University of Waikato|url=https://www.waikato.ac.nz/about/history.shtml|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801155046/https://www.waikato.ac.nz/about/history.shtml|archive-date=2020-08-01|access-date=2020-02-09|website=www.waikato.ac.nz}}</ref>

====A "digital divide" emerges====
[[File:InternetPenetrationWorldMap.svg|thumb|360px|<div style="text-align: center;">'''[[List of countries by number of Internet users|Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country's population]]'''</div><small>Source: [[International Telecommunication Union]].<ref name=ITU-IndividualsUsingTheInternet>{{citation |url=http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/statistics/2013/Individuals_Internet_2000-2012.xls |title=Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000–2012 |publisher=International Telecommunication Union |location=Geneva |date=June 2013 |format=XLS}}</ref></small>]]
{{Main|Global digital divide|Digital divide}}

[[File:FixedBroadbandInternetPenetrationWorldMap.svg|thumb |360px |<div style="text-align: center;">'''[[List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions|Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012]]<br/>as a percentage of a country's population'''</div>Source: [[International Telecommunication Union]].<ref name="FixedBroadbandITUDynamic2012">{{citation |url=http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ICTEYE/Reporting/DynamicReportWizard.aspx |title=Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012 |format=Dynamic Report |publisher=ITU ITC EYE, [[International Telecommunication Union]]}}</ref>]]

[[File:MobileBroadbandInternetPenetrationWorldMap 2013.svg|thumb |360px |<div style="text-align: center;">'''[[List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions|Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012]]<br/>as a percentage of a country's population'''</div>Source: [[International Telecommunication Union]].<ref name="MobleBroadbandITUDynamic2012">{{citation |url=http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ICTEYE/Reporting/DynamicReportWizard.aspx |title=Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012 |format=Dynamic Report |publisher=ITU ITC EYE, [[International Telecommunication Union]]}}</ref>]]

While developed countries with technological infrastructures were joining the Internet, [[Developing country|developing countries]] began to experience a [[digital divide#Global digital divide|digital divide]] separating them from the Internet. On an essentially continental basis, they built organizations for Internet resource administration and to share operational experience, which enabled more transmission facilities to be put into place.

====Africa====
At the beginning of the 1990s, African countries relied upon X.25 [[International Packet Switched Service|IPSS]] and 2400 baud modem UUCP links for international and internetwork computer communications.

In August 1995, InfoMail Uganda, Ltd., a privately held firm in Kampala now known as InfoCom, and NSN Network Services of Avon, Colorado, sold in 1997 and now known as Clear Channel Satellite, established Africa's first native TCP/IP high-speed satellite Internet services. The data connection was originally carried by a C-Band RSCC Russian satellite which connected InfoMail's Kampala offices directly to NSN's MAE-West point of presence using a private network from NSN's leased ground station in New Jersey. InfoCom's first satellite connection was just 64 kbit/s, serving a Sun host computer and twelve US Robotics dial-up modems.

In 1996, a [[USAID]] funded project, the [[Leland Initiative]], started work on developing full Internet connectivity for the continent. [[Guinea]], Mozambique, [[Madagascar]] and [[Rwanda]] gained [[satellite earth station]]s in 1997, followed by [[Ivory Coast]] and [[Benin]] in 1998.

Africa is building an Internet infrastructure. [[AFRINIC]], headquartered in [[Mauritius]], manages IP address allocation for the continent. As do the other Internet regions, there is an operational forum, the Internet Community of Operational Networking Specialists.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://icons.afrinic.net/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070509143416/http://icons.afrinic.net/  |archive-date=May 9, 2007 |title=ICONS webpage |publisher=Icons.afrinic.net |access-date=May 28, 2009 }}</ref>

There are many programs to provide high-performance transmission plant, and the western and southern coasts have undersea optical cable. High-speed cables join North Africa and the Horn of Africa to intercontinental cable systems. Undersea cable development is slower for East Africa; the original joint effort between [[NEPAD|New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)]] and the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) has broken off and may become two efforts.<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.fmtech.co.za/?p=209 | title =  Nepad, Eassy partnership ends in divorce | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120423094056/http://www.fmtech.co.za/?p=209 | archive-date=April 23, 2012 | website=South African Financial Times }}</ref>

====Asia and Oceania====
The [[APNIC|Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC)]], headquartered in Australia, manages IP address allocation for the continent. APNIC sponsors an operational forum, the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT).<ref>{{cite web |date=May 4, 2009 |title=APRICOT webpage |url=http://www.apricot.net/ |access-date=May 28, 2009 |publisher=Apricot.net}}</ref>

In South Korea, VDSL, a last mile technology developed in the 1990s by NextLevel Communications, connected corporate and consumer copper-based telephone lines to the Internet.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://article.wn.com/view/2000/09/11/Next_Level_Communications_Inc_Next_Level_Announces_Purchase_/ |title=Next Level Communications, Inc. - Next Level Announces Purchase Order For DSL Equipment in South Korea From Hansol Electronics |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=September 11, 2000  |publisher=[[Business Wire]] |access-date=December 20, 2022}}</ref>

The People's Republic of China established its first TCP/IP college network, [[Tsinghua University]]'s TUNET in 1991. The PRC went on to make its first global Internet connection in 1994, between the Beijing Electro-Spectrometer Collaboration and [[Stanford University]]'s Linear Accelerator Center. However, China went on to implement its own digital divide by implementing a country-wide [[Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China|content filter]].<ref>{{cite web |title=A brief history of the Internet in China |url=http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;854351844;pp;2;fp;2;fpid;1 |access-date=December 25, 2005 |work=China celebrates 10 years of being connected to the Internet |archive-date=October 21, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081021161952/http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;854351844;pp;2;fp;2;fpid;1  }}</ref>

Japan hosted the annual meeting of the [[Internet Society]], INET'92, in [[Kobe]]. Singapore developed [[TechNet (computer network)|TECHNET]] in 1990, and Thailand gained a global Internet connection between Chulalongkorn University and UUNET in 1992.<ref>{{cite web |title=Internet History in Asia |url=http://www.apan.net/meetings/busan03/cs-history.htm  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060201035514/http://apan.net/meetings/busan03/cs-history.htm |archive-date=February 1, 2006 |access-date=December 25, 2005 |work=16th APAN Meetings/Advanced Network Conference in Busan}}</ref>

====Latin America====
As with the other regions, [[LACNIC|the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC)]] manages the IP address space and other resources for its area. LACNIC, headquartered in Uruguay, operates DNS root, reverse DNS, and other key services.

==1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0==
{{Main|History of the World Wide Web|Digital revolution}}

Initially, as with its predecessor networks, the system that would evolve into the Internet was primarily for government and government body use. Although commercial use was forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use was unclear and subjective. [[UUCP]]Net and the X.25 [[International Packet Switched Service|IPSS]] had no such restrictions, which would eventually see the official barring of UUCPNet use of [[ARPANET]] and [[NSFNET]] connections.

[[File:Internet Hosts Count log.svg|thumb |360px |<div style="text-align: center;">'''Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019'''</div>Source: [[Internet Systems Consortium]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.isc.org/solutions/survey/history |title=Internet host count history |publisher=Internet Systems Consortium |access-date=May 16, 2012  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120518101749/http://www.isc.org/solutions/survey/history |archive-date=May 18, 2012 }}</ref>]]
As a result, during the late 1980s, the first [[Internet service provider]] (ISP) companies were formed. Companies like [[PSINet]], [[UUNET]], [[Netcom (USA)|Netcom]], and [[Portal Software]] were formed to provide service to the regional research networks and provide alternate network access, UUCP-based email and [[Usenet|Usenet News]] to the public. In 1989, [[MCI Mail]] became the first commercial email provider to get an experimental gateway to the Internet.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Meet Mr. Internet: Vint Cerf - IEEE Spectrum |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/vint-cerf |access-date=2023-05-03 |website=spectrum.ieee.org |language=en}}</ref> The first commercial dialup ISP in the United States was [[The World (internet service provider)|The World]], which opened in 1989.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.std.com/|title=The World internet provider|access-date=May 28, 2009}}</ref>

In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, {{usc|42|1862(g)}}, which allowed NSF to support access by the research and education communities to computer networks which were not used exclusively for research and education purposes, thus permitting NSFNET to interconnect with commercial networks.<ref name="ogc-00-33r_p6">{{Cite book |title=OGC-00-33R Department of Commerce: Relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers |publisher=[[Government Accountability Office]] |date=July 7, 2000 |page=6 |url=http://www.gao.gov/new.items/og00033r.pdf |access-date=June 5, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615020451/http://www.gao.gov/new.items/og00033r.pdf |archive-date=June 15, 2009  }}</ref><ref name="NSFAUPNote1">Even after the appropriations act was amended in 1992 to give NSF more flexibility with regard to commercial traffic, NSF never felt that it could entirely do away with its [[National Science Foundation Network#Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)|Acceptable Use Policy]] and its restrictions on commercial traffic, see the response to Recommendation 5 in NSF's response to the Inspector General's review (an April 19, 1993 memo from Frederick Bernthal, Acting Director, to Linda Sundro, Inspector General, that is included at the end of [https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/stis1993/oig9301/oig9301.txt Review of NSFNET], Office of the Inspector General, National Science Foundation, March 23, 1993)</ref> This caused controversy within the research and education community, who were concerned commercial use of the network might lead to an Internet that was less responsive to their needs, and within the community of commercial network providers, who felt that government subsidies were giving an unfair advantage to some organizations.<ref name="NSFNETHearing1992">[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED350986&searchtype=keyword&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=ED350986&_nfls=false Management of NSFNET], a transcript of the March 12, 1992 hearing before the Subcommittee on Science of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session, Hon. [[Rick Boucher]], subcommittee chairman, presiding</ref>

By 1990, ARPANET's goals had been fulfilled and new networking technologies exceeded the original scope and the project came to a close. New network service providers including [[PSINet]], [[UUNET#Early existence|Alternet]], CERFNet, ANS CO+RE, and many others were offering network access to commercial customers. [[NSFNET]] was no longer the de facto backbone and exchange point of the Internet. The [[Commercial Internet eXchange]] (CIX), [[MAE-East|Metropolitan Area Exchanges]] (MAEs), and later [[Network Access Point]]s (NAPs) were becoming the primary interconnections between many networks. The final restrictions on carrying commercial traffic ended on April 30, 1995, when the National Science Foundation ended its sponsorship of the NSFNET Backbone Service.<ref>[http://merit.edu/research/nsfnet_article.php "Retiring the NSFNET Backbone Service: Chronicling the End of an Era"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101025735/http://merit.edu/research/nsfnet_article.php |date=January 1, 2016 }}, Susan R. Harris, PhD, and Elise Gerich, ''ConneXions'', Vol. 10, No. 4, April 1996</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://walthowe.com/history/|title=Walt's Internet History &#124; Walt's World|website=walthowe.com}}</ref> NSF provided initial support for the NAPs and interim support to help the regional research and education networks transition to commercial ISPs. NSF also sponsored the [[VBNS|very high speed Backbone Network Service]] (vBNS) which continued to provide support for the supercomputing centers and research and education in the United States.<ref>[http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Govt_docs/nsf_nren.rfp NSF Solicitation 93-52] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305030153/http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Govt_docs/nsf_nren.rfp |date=March 5, 2016 }} – Network Access Point Manager, Routing Arbiter, Regional Network Providers, and Very High Speed Backbone Network Services Provider for NSFNET and the NREN(SM) Program, May 6, 1993</ref>

An event held on 11 January 1994, ''[[The Superhighway Summit]]'' at [[UCLA]]'s Royce Hall, was the "first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the ''[[Information Superhighway]]'' and its implications".<ref>{{cite web |title=UCLA Center for Communication Policy |url=http://www.digitalcenter.org/webreport94/apph.htm  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090526024957/http://www.digitalcenter.org/webreport94/apph.htm |archive-date=26 May 2009 |access-date=28 May 2009 |publisher=Digitalcenter.org }}</ref>

===Internet use in wider society===
The invention of the [[World Wide Web]] by [[Tim Berners-Lee]] at [[CERN]], as an application on the Internet,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tobin |first=James |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XXalQ6BTkyQC&pg=PT389 |title=Great Projects: The Epic Story of the Building of America, from the Taming of the Mississippi to the Invention of the Internet |date=2012-06-12 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-1476-6 |language=en}}</ref> brought many social and commercial uses to what was, at the time, a network of networks for academic and research institutions.<ref>{{Cite book |last=In |first=Lee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wKyeBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA7 |title=Electronic Commerce Management for Business Activities and Global Enterprises: Competitive Advantages: Competitive Advantages |date=2012-06-30 |publisher=IGI Global |isbn=978-1-4666-1801-5 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Misiroglu |first=Gina |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j4KsBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA398 |title=American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US History: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US History |date=2015-03-26 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-47729-7 |language=en}}</ref> The Web opened to the public in 1991 and began to enter general use in 1993–4, when [[List of websites founded before 1995|websites for everyday use]] started to become available.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Couldry |first1=Nick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AcHvP9trbkAC&pg=PA2 |title=Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice |date=2012 |publisher=Polity Press |isbn=978-0-7456-3920-8 |location=London |page=2}}</ref>[[File:Russia-Denmark 1993-envelope.jpg|thumb|[[Stamped envelope]] of [[Russian Post]] issued in 1993 with stamp and graphics dedicated to first Russian [[Submarine communications cable#Optical telecommunications cables|underwater digital optic cable]] laid in 1993 by [[Rostelecom]] from [[Kingisepp]] to [[Copenhagen]]]]
During the first decade or so of the public Internet, the immense changes it would eventually enable in the 2000s were still nascent. In terms of providing context for this period, [[cellphone|mobile cellular devices]] ("smartphones" and other cellular devices) which today provide near-universal access, were used for business and not a routine household item owned by parents and children worldwide. [[Social media]] in the modern sense had yet to come into existence, laptops were bulky and most households did not have computers. Data rates were slow and most people lacked means to video or digitize video; media storage was transitioning slowly from [[analog tape]] to [[digital data|digital]] [[optical disc]]s ([[DVD]] and to an extent still, [[floppy disc]] to [[CD]]). Enabling technologies used from the early 2000s such as [[PHP]], modern [[JavaScript]] and [[Java (programming language)|Java]], technologies such as [[AJAX]], [[HTML 4]] (and its emphasis on [[CSS]]), and various [[software framework]]s, which enabled and simplified speed of web development, largely awaited invention and their eventual widespread adoption.

The Internet was widely used for [[mailing list]]s, [[email]]s, [[Internet GIS|creating and distributing maps]] with tools like [[MapQuest]], [[e-commerce]] and early popular [[online shopping]] ([[Amazon.com|Amazon]] and [[eBay]] for example), [[online forum]]s and [[bulletin board]]s, and personal websites and [[blog]]s, and use was growing rapidly, but by more modern standards, the systems used were static and lacked widespread social engagement. It awaited a number of events in the early 2000s to change from a communications technology to gradually develop into a key part of global society's infrastructure.

Typical design elements of these "Web 1.0" era websites included:<ref>{{cite conference |last1=Viswanathan |first1=Ganesh |last2=Dutt Mathur |first2=Punit |last3=Yammiyavar |first3=Pradeep |title=From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and beyond: Reviewing usability heuristic criteria taking music sites as case studies |url=https://www.academia.edu/8381037 |date=March 2010 |place=Mumbai |access-date=20 February 2015 |series=IndiaHCI Conference}}</ref> Static pages instead of [[dynamic HTML]];<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-10.htm|title=Is There a Web 1.0?|date=January 28, 2008|website=HowStuffWorks}}</ref> content served from [[filesystem]]s instead of [[relational database]]s; pages built using [[Server Side Includes]] or [[Common Gateway Interface|CGI]] instead of a [[web application]] written in a [[dynamic programming language]]; [[HTML 3.2]]-era structures such as [[Framing (World Wide Web)|frames]] and tables to create page layouts; online [[guestbook]]s; overuse of [[GIF]] buttons and similar small graphics promoting particular items;<ref>[http://www.complexify.com/buttons/ "Web 1.0 Revisited – Too many stupid buttons"]. Complexify.com. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060216081719/http://www.complexify.com/buttons/ |date=February 16, 2006 }}</ref> and HTML forms sent via [[email]]. (Support for [[server side scripting]] was rare on [[shared server]]s so the usual feedback mechanism was via email, using [[mailto|mailto forms]] and their [[email client|email program]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch13s04.html|title=The Right Size of Software|website=www.catb.org}}</ref>

During the period 1997 to 2001, the first [[speculative investment]] [[investment bubble|bubble]] related to the Internet took place, in which [[dot-com company|"dot-com" companies]] (referring to the "[[.com]]" [[top level domain]] used by businesses) were propelled to exceedingly high valuations as investors rapidly stoked [[stock value]]s, followed by a [[market crash]]; the first [[dot-com bubble]]. However this only temporarily slowed enthusiasm and growth, which quickly recovered and continued to grow.

The [[history of the World Wide Web]] up to around 2004 was retrospectively named and described by some as "Web 1.0".<ref>{{Citation|last1=Jurgenson|first1=Nathan|title=The Internet, Web 2.0, and Beyond|date=2012-02-02|work=The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology|pages=626–648|editor-last=Ritzer|editor-first=George|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd|doi=10.1002/9781444347388.ch33|isbn=978-1-4443-4738-8|last2=Ritzer|first2=George}}</ref>

===IPv6===
In the final stage of [[IPv4 address exhaustion]], the last IPv4 address block was assigned in January 2011 at the level of the regional Internet registries.<ref name="ins">{{Cite web|title=State of IPv6 Deployment 2017|url=https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2017/state-of-ipv6-deployment-2017/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406005544/https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2017/state-of-ipv6-deployment-2017/|archive-date=April 6, 2018}}</ref> IPv4 uses 32-[[bit]] addresses which limits the [[address space]] to 2<sup>32</sup> addresses, i.e. {{gaps|4|294|967|296}} addresses.<ref name=":0" /> IPv4 is in the process of replacement by [[IPv6]], its successor, which uses 128-bit addresses, providing 2<sup>128</sup> addresses, i.e. {{gaps|340|282|366|920|938|463|463|374|607|431|768|211|456}},<ref>{{Cite web|date=January 27, 2010|title=What is the Difference Between IPv6 and IPv4?|url=https://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/ipv6_ipv4_difference.html}}</ref> a vastly increased address space. The shift to IPv6 is expected to take a long time to complete.<ref name="ins" />

==2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media==
{{Main|Web 2.0|History of the World Wide Web#Web 2.0}}

The rapid technical advances that would propel the Internet into its place as a social system, which has completely transformed the way humans interact with each other, took place during a relatively short period from around 2005 to 2010, coinciding with the point in time in which [[Internet of things|IoT]] devices surpassed the number of humans alive at some point in the late 2000s. They included:
:* The call to "[[Web 2.0]]" in 2004 (first suggested in 1999),
:* Accelerating adoption and commoditization among households of, and familiarity with, the necessary hardware (such as computers).
:* Accelerating storage technology and data access speeds – [[hard drive]]s emerged, took over from far smaller, slower [[floppy disc]]s, and grew from [[megabyte]]s to [[gigabyte]]s (and by around 2010, [[terabyte]]s), [[Random-access memory|RAM]] from hundreds of [[kilobyte]]s to gigabytes as typical amounts on a system, and [[Ethernet]], the enabling technology for TCP/IP, moved from common speeds of kilobits to tens of megabits per second, to gigabits per second.
:* High speed Internet and wider coverage of data connections, at lower prices, allowing larger traffic rates, more reliable simpler traffic, and traffic from more locations,
:* The public's accelerating perception of the potential of computers to create new means and approaches to communication, the emergence of social media and websites such as [[Twitter]] and [[Facebook]] to their later prominence, and global collaborations such as [[Wikipedia]] (which existed before but gained prominence as a result),
:* The mobile device revolution, particularly with smartphones and tablet computers becoming widespread, which began to provide easy access to the Internet to much of human society of all ages, in their daily lives, and allowed them to share, discuss, and continually update, inquire, and respond.
:* [[Non-volatile RAM]] rapidly grew in size and reliability, and decreased in price, becoming a commodity capable of enabling high levels of computing activity on these small handheld devices as well as [[solid-state drive]]s (SSD).
:* An emphasis on power efficient processor and device design, rather than purely high processing power; one of the beneficiaries of this was [[Arm (company)|Arm]], a British company which had focused since the 1980s on powerful but low cost simple microprocessors. [[ARM architecture family]] rapidly gained dominance in the market for mobile and embedded devices.

=== Web 2.0 ===
The term "Web 2.0" describes [[website]]s that emphasize [[user-generated content]] (including user-to-user interaction), [[usability]], and [[Web API|interoperability]]. It first appeared in a January 1999 article called "Fragmented Future" written by [[Darcy DiNucci]], a consultant on [[information architecture|electronic information design]], where she wrote:<ref name="graham">{{cite web|url=http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html |title=Web 2.0 |first=Paul|last=Graham |author-link=Paul Graham (computer programmer) |date=November 2005 |access-date=2006-08-02 |quote=I first heard the phrase 'Web 2.0' in the name of the Web 2.0 conference in 2004.}}</ref><ref name="oreilly">{{cite web|url=http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html |title=What Is Web 2.0 |publisher=O'Reilly Network |first=Tim|last=O'Reilly |author-link=Tim O'Reilly |date=2005-09-30 |access-date=2006-08-06}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Strickland |first=Jonathan |url=http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-20.htm |title=How Web 2.0 Works |website=computer.howstuffworks.com |date=2007-12-28 |access-date=2015-02-28}}</ref><ref name="DiNucci">{{cite journal
|last=DiNucci |first=Darcy
|year=1999
|title=Fragmented Future
|journal=Print
|volume=53
|issue=4
|page=32
|url=http://darcyd.com/fragmented_future.pdf
}}</ref>
: ''"The Web we know now, which loads into a [[Web browser|browser window]] in essentially static screenfuls, is only an [[embryo]] of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens. It will [...] appear on your computer screen, [...] on your TV set [...] your car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held game machines [...] maybe even your microwave oven."''

The term resurfaced during 2002–2004,<ref>{{cite web | title=RSS: INJAN (It's not just about news) | website=Kingsley Idehen's Blog | date=21 Aug 2003| url=http://www.openlinksw.com:80/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com's%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/241 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091128090508/http://www.openlinksw.com:80/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com's%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/241 | archive-date=28 November 2009 | url-status=unfit}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=Jeff Bezos Comments about Web Services | website=Kingsley Idehen's Blog | date=25 Sep 2003 | url=http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com's%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/373 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120307150619/http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com's%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/373 | archive-date=7 March 2012 | url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Knorr, Eric 2003">{{cite magazine |last=Knorr |first=Eric |title=The year of Web services |magazine=CIO |date=15 December 2003| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1QwAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA90 | page=90}}</ref><ref name="jrobb.mindplex.org">{{cite web |title=Web 2.0 | website=John Robb's Weblog | date=16 August 2003 | url=http://jrobb.mindplex.org:80/2003/08/16.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030918142346/http://jrobb.mindplex.org:80/2003/08/16.html | archive-date=18 September 2003 | url-status=unfit}}</ref> and gained prominence in late 2004 following presentations by [[Tim O'Reilly]] and Dale Dougherty at the first [[Web 2.0 Summit|Web 2.0 Conference]]. In their opening remarks, [[John Battelle]] and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the "Web as Platform", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that "customers are building your business for you".<ref name="O'Reilly, Tim 2004">O'Reilly, Tim, and John Battelle. 2004. Opening Welcome: State of the Internet Industry. In San Francisco, California, October 5.</ref> They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be "harnessed" to create value.

Web 2.0 does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the way Web pages are made and used. Web 2.0 describes an approach, in which sites focus substantially upon allowing users to interact and collaborate with each other in a [[social media]] dialogue as creators of [[user-generated content]] in a [[virtual community]], in contrast to Web sites where people are limited to the passive viewing of [[Content (media and publishing)|content]]. Examples of Web 2.0 include [[social networking service]]s, [[blog]]s, [[wiki]]s, [[Folksonomy|folksonomies]], [[video sharing]] sites, [[Web service|hosted services]], [[Web application]]s, and [[Mashup (web application hybrid)|mashups]].<ref>{{cite web | last=O'Reilly | first=Tim | title=Web 2.0: Compact Definition? | website=O'Reilly Radar | date=1 October 2005 | url=http://radar.oreilly.com/2005/10/web-20-compact-definition.html}}</ref> [[Terry Flew]], in his 3rd Edition of ''New Media'' described what he believed to characterize the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:
: "[The] move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging ([[folksonomy]])".<ref>{{Cite book
  |title=New Media: An Introduction
  |last=Flew  |first=Terry
  |year=2008
  |edition=3rd
  |publisher=Oxford University Press  |location=Melbourne
  |page=19
| isbn=978-0-19-555149-5
}}</ref>
This era saw several household names gain prominence through their community-oriented operation – [[YouTube]], Twitter, Facebook, [[Reddit]] and Wikipedia being some examples.

===The mobile revolution===
{{Main|History of mobile phones|Mobile Web|Responsive web design}}

The process of change that generally coincided with "Web 2.0" was itself greatly accelerated and transformed only a short time later by the increasing growth in mobile devices.  This mobile revolution meant that computers in the form of smartphones became something many people used, took with them everywhere, communicated with, used for photographs and videos they instantly shared or to shop or seek information "on the move" – and used socially, as opposed to items on a desk at home or just used for work.{{citation needed|date=November 2019}}

Location-based services, services using location and other sensor information, and [[crowdsourcing]] (frequently but not always location based), became common, with posts tagged by location, or websites and services becoming location aware. Mobile-targeted websites (such as "m.website.com") became common, designed especially for the new devices used. [[Netbook]]s, [[ultrabook]]s, widespread [[4G]] and [[Wi-Fi]], and mobile chips capable or running at nearly the power of desktops from not many years before on far lower power usage, became enablers of this stage of Internet development, and the term "[[App (computing)|App]]" emerged (short for "Application program" or "Program") as did the "[[App store]]".

This "mobile revolution" has allowed for people to have a nearly unlimited amount of information at all times. With the ability to access the internet from cell phones came a change in the way media was consumed. Media consumption statistics show that over half of media consumption between those aged 18 and 34 were using a smartphone.<ref>{{Cite news|date=2020-02-12|title=Media consumption on mobile skyrockets in the US|url=https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/apps-home-banner/media-consumption-on-mobile-skyrockets-in-the-us|access-date=2020-11-01|website=Mobile World Live|language=en-GB|last1=Boyadzhieva |first1=Yanitsa }}</ref>

===Networking in outer space===
{{Main|Interplanetary Internet}}
The first Internet link into [[low Earth orbit]] was established on January 22, 2010, when astronaut [[Timothy Creamer|T. J. Creamer]] posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account from the [[International Space Station]], marking the extension of the Internet into space.<ref>{{cite tweet |author=T. J. Creamer |user=Astro_TJ |number=8062317551 |title=Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s |date=2010-01-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131108225641/https://twitter.com/Astro_TJ/status/8062317551 |archive-date=November 8, 2013 }}</ref> (Astronauts at the ISS had used email and Twitter before, but these messages had been relayed to the ground through a NASA data link before being posted by a human proxy.) This personal Web access, which NASA calls the Crew Support LAN, uses the space station's high-speed [[Ku band]] microwave link. To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop computer to control a desktop computer on Earth, and they can talk to their families and friends on Earth using [[Voice over IP]] equipment.<ref>{{cite web | title=NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out Into Space | website=nasa.gov | date=24 January 2010 | url=http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jan/HQ_M10-011_Hawaii221169.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101213014423/http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jan/HQ_M10-011_Hawaii221169.html | archive-date=13 December 2010 | url-status=unfit | id=NASA media advisory M10-012}}</ref>

Communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-point links through the [[Deep Space Network]]. Each such data link must be manually scheduled and configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new network protocol, [[Delay-tolerant networking]] (DTN) which automates this process, allows networking of spaceborne transmission nodes, and takes the fact into account that spacecraft can temporarily lose contact because they move behind the Moon or planets, or because [[space weather]] disrupts the connection. Under such conditions, DTN retransmits data packages instead of dropping them, as the standard TCP/IP Internet Protocol does. NASA conducted the first field test of what it calls the "deep space internet" in November 2008.<ref>{{cite web | title=NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet | website=nasa.gov | date=19 November 2008 | url=http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101124220808/http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html | archive-date=24 November 2010 | url-status=unfit | id=NASA media advisory 08-298}}</ref> Testing of DTN-based communications between the International Space Station and Earth (now termed Disruption-Tolerant Networking) has been ongoing since March 2009, and is scheduled to continue until March 2014.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/DTN.html |title=Disruption Tolerant Networking for Space Operations (DTN). July 31, 2012 |access-date=August 26, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120729092707/http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/DTN.html |archive-date=July 29, 2012  }}</ref>

This network technology is supposed to ultimately enable missions that involve multiple spacecraft where reliable inter-vessel communication might take precedence over vessel-to-Earth downlinks. According to a February 2011 statement by Google's [[Vint Cerf]], the so-called "Bundle protocols" have been uploaded to NASA's [[EPOXI]] mission spacecraft (which is in orbit around the Sun) and communication with Earth has been tested at a distance of approximately 80 light seconds.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/021811-cerf-interplanetary-internet.html |title=Cerf: 2011 will be proving point for 'InterPlanetary Internet' |work=Network World interview with Vint Cerf |date=February 18, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120524165936/http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/021811-cerf-interplanetary-internet.html |archive-date=May 24, 2012  |access-date=April 23, 2012 }}</ref>

==Internet governance==
{{Main|Internet governance}}
As a [[global network|globally distributed network]] of voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks, the Internet operates without a central governing body. Each constituent network chooses the technologies and protocols it deploys from the technical standards that are developed by the [[Internet Engineering Task Force]] (IETF).<ref>{{cite ietf|title=Internet Architecture|work=IAB Architectural Principles of the Internet |rfc=1958}}</ref> However, successful interoperation of many networks requires certain parameters that must be common throughout the network. For managing such parameters, the [[Internet Assigned Numbers Authority]] (IANA) oversees the allocation and assignment of various technical identifiers.<ref name="DDN NIC">{{cite ietf|title=DDN NIC |work=IAB Recommended Policy on Distributing Internet Identifier Assignment |rfc=1174}}</ref>  In addition, the [[Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers]] (ICANN) provides oversight and coordination for the two principal [[name space]]s in the Internet, the [[IP address|Internet Protocol address space]] and the [[Domain Name System]].

===NIC, InterNIC, IANA, and ICANN===
The IANA function was originally performed by USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), and it delegated portions of this responsibility with respect to numeric network and autonomous system identifiers to the [[Network Information Center]] (NIC) at [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI International) in [[Menlo Park, California]]. ISI's [[Jonathan Postel]] managed the IANA, served as RFC Editor and performed other key roles until his premature death in 1998.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/2012/10/15/remembering-jon-postel-and-day-he-redirected-internet/|title=Remembering Jon Postel — And the Day He Redirected the Internet|first=Internet|last=Society|date=October 15, 2012}}</ref>

As the early ARPANET grew, hosts were referred to by names, and a HOSTS.TXT file would be distributed from [[SRI International]] to each host on the network. As the network grew, this became cumbersome. A technical solution came in the form of the [[Domain Name System]], created by ISI's [[Paul Mockapetris]] in 1983.<ref>Elizabeth Feinler, IEEE Annals [3B2-9] man2011030074.3d 29/7/011 11:54 Page 74</ref> The Defense Data Network—Network Information Center (DDN-NIC) at SRI handled all registration services, including the [[top-level domain]]s (TLDs) of [[.mil]], [[.gov]], [[.edu]], [[.org]], [[.net]], [[.com]] and [[.us]], [[root nameserver]] administration and Internet number assignments under a [[United States Department of Defense]] contract.<ref name="DDN NIC"/> In 1991, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded the administration and maintenance of DDN-NIC (managed by SRI up until this point) to Government Systems, Inc., who subcontracted it to the small private-sector [[Network Solutions|Network Solutions, Inc.]]<ref>{{cite ietf|title=GSI-Network Solutions |work=TRANSITION OF NIC SERVICES |rfc=1261}}</ref><ref>{{cite court|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081222065509/http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980428/972412.htm |litigants=William THOMAS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC., and National Science Foundation Defendants. Civ. No. 97-2412 (TFH), Sec. I.A. |court=D.D.C. |vol=2 |reporter=F.Supp.2d |opinion=22 |date=April 6, 1998}}</ref>

The increasing cultural diversity of the Internet also posed administrative challenges for centralized management of the IP addresses. In October 1992, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published RFC 1366,<ref>{{cite ietf |title=RFC 1366 |work=Guidelines for Management of IP Address Space |rfc=1366}}</ref> which described the "growth of the Internet and its increasing globalization" and set out the basis for an evolution of the IP registry process, based on a regionally distributed registry model. This document stressed the need for a single Internet number registry to exist in each geographical region of the world (which would be of "continental dimensions"). Registries would be "unbiased and widely recognized by network providers and subscribers" within their region.
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) was established as the first RIR in May 1992. The second RIR, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), was established in Tokyo in 1993, as a pilot project of the Asia Pacific Networking Group.<ref name="Cisco">{{cite web|url=http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_4-4/regional_internet_registries.html|title=Development of the Regional Internet Registry System|publisher=Cisco|access-date=April 10, 2012|archive-date=January 1, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101025735/http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_4-4/regional_internet_registries.html}}</ref>

Since at this point in history most of the growth on the Internet was coming from non-military sources, it was decided that the [[United States Department of Defense|Department of Defense]] would no longer fund registration services outside of the .mil TLD. In 1993 the U.S. [[National Science Foundation]], after a competitive bidding process in 1992, created the [[InterNIC]] to manage the allocations of addresses and management of the address databases, and awarded the contract to three organizations. Registration Services would be provided by [[Network Solutions]]; Directory and Database Services would be provided by [[AT&T Corporation|AT&T]]; and Information Services would be provided by [[General Atomics]].<ref>{{cite mailing list|title=NIS Manager Award Announced |url=https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/lir-wg/1993-January/000028.html | date=5 January 1993 |mailing-list=lir-wg }}</ref>

Over time, after consultation with the IANA, the [[IETF]], [[RIPE NCC]], [[APNIC]], and the [[Federal Networking Council]] (FNC), the decision was made to separate the management of domain names from the management of IP numbers.<ref name="Cisco"/> Following the examples of RIPE NCC and APNIC, it was recommended that management of IP address space then administered by the InterNIC should be under the control of those that use it, specifically the ISPs, end-user organizations, corporate entities, universities, and individuals. As a result, the [[American Registry for Internet Numbers]] (ARIN) was established as in December 1997, as an independent, not-for-profit corporation by direction of the [[National Science Foundation]] and became the third Regional Internet Registry.<ref>{{cite web|title=Internet Moves Toward Privatization|url=https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102819|work=www.nsf.gov|date=24 June 1997}}</ref>

In 1998, both the IANA and remaining DNS-related InterNIC functions were reorganized under the control of [[ICANN]], a California [[non-profit corporation]] contracted by the [[United States Department of Commerce]] to manage a number of Internet-related tasks. As these tasks involved technical coordination for two principal Internet name spaces (DNS names and IP addresses) created by the IETF, ICANN also signed a memorandum of understanding with the IAB to define the technical work to be carried out by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.<ref>{{cite ietf|title=RFC 2860 |work=Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Technical Work of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority |rfc=2860}}</ref> The management of Internet address space remained with the regional Internet registries, which collectively were defined as a supporting organization within the ICANN structure.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.icann.org/en/about/governance/bylaws|title=ICANN Bylaws|access-date=April 10, 2012}}</ref> ICANN provides central coordination for the DNS system, including policy coordination for the split registry / registrar system, with competition among registry service providers to serve each top-level-domain and multiple competing registrars offering DNS services to end-users.

===Internet Engineering Task Force===
The [[Internet Engineering Task Force]] (IETF) is the largest and most visible of several loosely related ad-hoc groups that provide technical direction for the Internet, including the [[Internet Architecture Board]] (IAB), the [[Internet Engineering Steering Group]] (IESG), and the [[Internet Research Task Force]] (IRTF).

The IETF is a loosely self-organized group of international volunteers who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the development of new Internet standard specifications. Much of the work of the IETF is organized into ''Working Groups''. Standardization efforts of the Working Groups are often adopted by the Internet community, but the IETF does not control or patrol the Internet.<ref name="FYI17">{{cite web |title=The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force |url=https://www.ietf.org/tao.html |author=P. Hoffman |author2=S. Harris |website=ietf.org |date=September 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite ietf |title=A Mission Statement for the IETF |author=H. Alvestrand |rfc=3935 |date=October 2004}}</ref>

The IETF grew out of quarterly meetings with U.S. government-funded researchers, starting in January 1986. Non-government representatives were invited by the fourth IETF meeting in October 1986. The concept of Working Groups was introduced at the fifth meeting in February 1987. The seventh meeting in July 1987 was the first meeting with more than one hundred attendees. In 1992, the [[Internet Society]], a professional membership society, was formed and IETF began to operate under it as an independent international standards body. The first IETF meeting outside of the United States was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in July 1993. Today, the IETF meets three times per year and attendance has been as high as ca. 2,000 participants. Typically one in three IETF meetings are held in Europe or Asia. The number of non-US attendees is typically ca. 50%, even at meetings held in the United States.<ref name=FYI17/>

The IETF is not a legal entity, has no governing board, no members, and no dues. The closest status resembling membership is being on an IETF or Working Group mailing list. IETF volunteers come from all over the world and from many different parts of the Internet community. The IETF works closely with and under the supervision of the [[Internet Engineering Steering Group]] (IESG)<ref>{{cite ietf |title=An IESG charter |author=H. Alvestrand |rfc=3710 |date=February 2004}}</ref> and the [[Internet Architecture Board]] (IAB).<ref>{{cite ietf |title=Charter of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) |author=B. Carpenter |rfc= 2850 |date=May 2000}}</ref> The [[Internet Research Task Force]] (IRTF) and the [[Internet Research Steering Group]] (IRSG), peer activities to the IETF and IESG under the general supervision of the IAB, focus on longer-term research issues.<ref name=FYI17/><ref>{{cite ietf |title=IAB Thoughts on the Role of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) |author=S. Floyd |author2=V. Paxson |author3=A. Falk |rfc=4440 |date=March 2006}}</ref>

====RFCs====
[[Request for Comments|RFCs]] are the main documentation for the work of the IAB, IESG, IETF, and IRTF.<ref>{{Cite web |title=RFCs |url=https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/ |access-date=2023-11-04 |website=IETF |language=en}}</ref> Originally intended as requests for comments, RFC 1, "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker at [[UCLA]] in April 1969. These technical memos documented aspects of ARPANET development. They were edited by [[Jon Postel]], the first [[RFC Editor]].<ref name=FYI17/><ref name="RFC4844">{{cite ietf |title=The RFC Series and RFC Editor |author=L. Daigle |rfc=4844 |date=July 2007}}</ref>

RFCs cover a wide range of information from proposed standards, draft standards, full standards, best practices, experimental protocols, history, and other informational topics.<ref>{{cite ietf |title=Not All RFCs are Standards |author=C. Huitema |author2=J. Postel |author3=S. Crocker |rfc=1796 |date= April 1995}}</ref> RFCs can be written by individuals or informal groups of individuals, but many are the product of a more formal Working Group. Drafts are submitted to the IESG either by individuals or by the Working Group Chair. An RFC Editor, appointed by the IAB, separate from IANA, and working in conjunction with the IESG, receives drafts from the IESG and edits, formats, and publishes them. Once an RFC is published, it is never revised. If the standard it describes changes or its information becomes obsolete, the revised standard or updated information will be re-published as a new RFC that "obsoletes" the original.<ref name=FYI17/><ref name=RFC4844/>

===The Internet Society===
The [[Internet Society]] (ISOC) is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 "to assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world". With offices near Washington, DC, US, and in Geneva, Switzerland, ISOC has a membership base comprising more than 80 organizational and more than 50,000 individual members. Members also form "chapters" based on either common geographical location or special interests. There are currently more than 90 chapters around the world.<ref name="isoc.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.internetsociety.org/|title=Build, Promote, and Defend the Internet|website=Internet Society}}</ref>

ISOC provides financial and organizational support to and promotes the work of the standards settings bodies for which it is the organizational home: the [[Internet Engineering Task Force]] (IETF), the [[Internet Architecture Board]] (IAB), the [[Internet Engineering Steering Group]] (IESG), and the [[Internet Research Task Force]] (IRTF). ISOC also promotes understanding and appreciation of the [[Internet model]] of open, transparent processes and consensus-based decision-making.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.internetsociety.org/issues/open-internet-standards/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111213013231/https://www.isoc.org/standards/|title=Open Internet Standards|archive-date=December 13, 2011}}</ref>

===Globalization and Internet governance in the 21st century===
Since the 1990s, the [[Internet governance|Internet's governance]] and organization has been of global importance to governments, commerce, civil society, and individuals. The organizations which held control of certain technical aspects of the Internet were the successors of the old ARPANET oversight and the current decision-makers in the day-to-day technical aspects of the network. While recognized as the administrators of certain aspects of the Internet, their roles and their decision-making authority are limited and subject to increasing international scrutiny and increasing objections. These objections have led to the ICANN removing themselves from relationships with first the [[University of Southern California]] in 2000,<ref>{{cite web | title=USC/ICANN Transition Agreement | website=icann.org | date=14 May 2000 | url=http://www.icann.org/en/general/usc-icann-transition-agreement.htm | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081005055337/http://www.icann.org/en/general/usc-icann-transition-agreement.htm | archive-date=October 5, 2008  | access-date=October 15, 2009 }}</ref> and in September 2009, gaining autonomy from the US government by the ending of its longstanding agreements, although some contractual obligations with the U.S. Department of Commerce continued.<ref>{{cite web | last=Anderson | first=Nate | title=ICANN cuts cord to US government, gets broader oversight | website=Ars Technica | date=30 September 2009 | url=https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/icann-cuts-cord-to-us-government-gets-broader-oversight/ |quote=ICANN, which oversees the Internet's domain name system, is a private nonprofit that reports to the US Department of Commerce. Under a new agreement, that relationship will change, and ICANN's accountability goes global}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125432179022552705|title=U.S. Eases Grip Over Web Body: Move Addresses Criticisms as Internet Usage Becomes More Global|first=Christopher|last=Rhoads|date=October 2, 2009|work=The Wall Street Journal}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574446942665685208|title=The U.S. Abandons the Internet: Multilateral governance of the domain name system risks censorship and repression|first1=Jeremy|last1=Rabkin|first2=Jeffrey|last2=Eisenach|date=October 2, 2009|work=The Wall Street Journal}}</ref> Finally, on October 1, 2016, ICANN ended its contract with the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (<abbr>NTIA</abbr>), allowing oversight to pass to the global Internet community.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2016-10-01-en|title=Stewardship of IANA Functions Transitions to Global Internet Community as Contract with U.S. Government Ends – ICANN|website=www.icann.org|access-date=2016-10-01}}</ref>

The IETF, with financial and organizational support from the Internet Society, continues to serve as the Internet's ad-hoc standards body and issues [[Request for Comments]].

In November 2005, the [[World Summit on the Information Society]], held in [[Tunis]], called for an [[Internet Governance Forum]] (IGF) to be convened by [[United Nations Secretary General]]. The IGF opened an ongoing, non-binding conversation among stakeholders representing governments, the private sector, civil society, and the technical and academic communities about the future of Internet governance. The first IGF meeting was held in October/November 2006 with follow up meetings annually thereafter.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mueller |first=Milton L. |title=Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance |url=https://archive.org/details/networksstatesgl00muel |url-access=limited |year=2010 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-01459-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/networksstatesgl00muel/page/n67 67] }}</ref> Since WSIS, the term "Internet governance" has been broadened beyond narrow technical concerns to include a wider range of Internet-related policy issues.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mueller |first=Milton L. |title=''Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance'' |url=https://archive.org/details/networksstatesgl00muel |url-access=limited |year=2010 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-01459-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/networksstatesgl00muel/page/n79 79]–80 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=DeNardis | first=Laura | editor-first1=William H. | editor-last1=Dutton | title=Oxford Handbooks Online | chapter=The Emerging Field of Internet Governance | publisher=Oxford University Press | date=12 March 2013 | doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199589074.013.0026}}</ref>

[[Tim Berners-Lee]], inventor of the web, was becoming concerned about threats to the web's future and in November 2009 at the IGF in Washington DC launched the [[World Wide Web Foundation]] (WWWF) to campaign to make the web a safe and empowering tool for the good of humanity with access to all.<ref name="BBC20080915">{{Cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7613201.stm|title=Warning sounded on web's future|date=September 15, 2008|via=news.bbc.co.uk|access-date=November 26, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080916065056/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7613201.stm|archive-date=September 16, 2008|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="ARST20091117">{{Cite web|url=https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/tim-berners-lee-launches-www-foundation-at-igf-2009.ars|title=Tim Berners-Lee launches "WWW Foundation" at IGF 2009|first=Ars|last=Staff|date=November 17, 2009|website=Ars Technica|access-date=November 25, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110416094117/http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/tim-berners-lee-launches-www-foundation-at-igf-2009.ars|archive-date=April 16, 2011|url-status=live}}</ref>  In November 2019 at the IGF in Berlin, Berners-Lee and the WWWF went on to launch the ''[[Contract for the Web]]'', a campaign initiative to persuade governments, companies and citizens to commit to nine principles to stop "misuse" with the warning "If we don't act now - and act together - to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering" (its potential for good).<ref name="CNA20191125">{{Cite news|last=CNA Staff|date=25 November 2019|title=Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee launches plan to stop Internet abuse|url=https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-launches-plan-stop-internet-abuse-12123526|access-date=25 November 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191125193812/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-launches-plan-stop-internet-abuse-12123526|archive-date=25 November 2019|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Politicization of the Internet==
Due to its prominence and immediacy as an effective means of mass communication, the Internet has also become more [[politicized]] as it has grown.  This has led in turn, to discourses and activities that would once have taken place in other ways, migrating to being mediated by internet.

Examples include political activities such as [[mass protest|public protest]] and [[canvassing]] of support and [[vote]]s, but also:

* The spreading of ideas and opinions;
* Recruitment of followers, and "coming together" of members of the public, for ideas, products, and causes;
* Providing and widely distributing and sharing information that might be deemed sensitive or relates to [[whistleblowing]] (and efforts by specific countries to prevent this by [[internet censorship|censorship]]);
* [[crime|Criminal activity]] and [[terrorism]] (and resulting [[law enforcement]] use, together with its facilitation by [[mass surveillance]]);
* Politically motivated [[fake news]].

==Net neutrality==
{{Main|Net neutrality}}
{{Globalize |section |date=April 2015 }}

On April 23, 2014, the [[Federal Communications Commission]] (FCC) was reported to be considering a new rule that would permit [[Internet service provider]]s to offer content providers a faster track to send content, thus reversing their earlier [[net neutrality]] position.<ref name="NYT-20140423">{{cite news |last=Wyatt |first=Edward |title=F.C.C., in 'Net Neutrality' Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=April 23, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2014-04-23 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20140424a">{{cite news |author=Staff |title=Creating a Two-Speed Internet |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/creating-a-two-speed-internet.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/creating-a-two-speed-internet.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=April 24, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2014-04-25}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20140511">{{cite news |last=Carr |first=David |title=Warnings Along F.C.C.'s Fast Lane |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/business/media/warnings-along-fccs-fast-lane.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/business/media/warnings-along-fccs-fast-lane.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=May 11, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2014-05-11}}{{cbignore}}</ref> A possible solution to net neutrality concerns may be [[municipal broadband]], according to [[Susan P. Crawford|Professor Susan Crawford]], a legal and technology expert at [[Harvard Law School]].<ref name="NYT-20140428">{{cite news |last=Crawford |first=Susan |author-link=Susan P. Crawford |title=The Wire Next Time |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/the-wire-next-time.html |date=April 28, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2014-04-28 }}</ref> On May 15, 2014, the FCC decided to consider two options regarding Internet services: first, permit fast and slow broadband lanes, thereby compromising net neutrality; and second, reclassify broadband as a [[telecommunication]] service, thereby preserving net neutrality.<ref name="NYT-20140515a">{{cite news |author=Staff |title=Searching for Fairness on the Internet |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/searching-for-fairness-on-the-internet.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/searching-for-fairness-on-the-internet.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=May 15, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2014-05-15 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20140515b">{{cite news |last=Wyatt |first=Edward |title=F.C.C. Backs Opening Net Rules for Debate |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/technology/fcc-road-map-to-net-neutrality.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/technology/fcc-road-map-to-net-neutrality.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=May 15, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2014-05-15}}{{cbignore}}</ref> On November 10, 2014, [[Barack Obama|President Obama]] recommended the FCC reclassify broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service in order to preserve [[net neutrality]].<ref name="NYT-20141110-EW">{{cite news |last=Wyatt |first=Edward |title=Obama Asks F.C.C. to Adopt Tough Net Neutrality Rules |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/technology/obama-net-neutrality-fcc.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/technology/obama-net-neutrality-fcc.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=November 10, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=November 15, 2014 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20141114">{{cite news |author=NYT Editorial Board |title=Why the F.C.C. Should Heed President Obama on Internet Regulation |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/why-the-fcc-should-heed-president-obama-on-internet-regulations.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/why-the-fcc-should-heed-president-obama-on-internet-regulations.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=November 14, 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=November 15, 2014 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="WRD-20150121-DAS">{{cite journal |last=Sepulveda |first=Ambassador Daniel A. |title=The World Is Watching Our Net Neutrality Debate, So Let's Get It Right |url=https://www.wired.com/2015/01/on-net-nuetrality-internet-freedom/ |date=January 21, 2015 |journal=[[Wired (website)|Wired]] |access-date=January 20, 2015 }}</ref> On January 16, 2015, [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] presented legislation, in the form of a [[U.S. Congress]] [[United States House of Representatives|HR]] [[List of bills in the 114th United States Congress|discussion draft bill]], that makes concessions to net neutrality but prohibits the FCC from accomplishing the goal or enacting any further regulation affecting [[Internet service provider]]s (ISPs).<ref name="NYT-20150120-JW">{{cite news |last=Weisman |first=Jonathan |title=Shifting Politics of Net Neutrality Debate Ahead of F.C.C. Vote |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/technology/shifting-politics-of-net-neutrality-debate-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/technology/shifting-politics-of-net-neutrality-debate-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=January 19, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=January 20, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="HG-20150116">{{cite web |author=Staff |title=H. R. _ 114th Congress, 1st Session [Discussion Draft] – To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to ensure Internet openness... |url=http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/114/BILLS-114hr-PIH-OpenInternet.pdf |date=January 16, 2015 |work=[[U. S. Congress]] |access-date=January 20, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150120175809/http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/114/BILLS-114hr-PIH-OpenInternet.pdf |archive-date=January 20, 2015  }}</ref> On January 31, 2015, [[AP News]] reported that the FCC will present the notion of applying ("with some caveats") [[Common carrier#Telecommunications|Title II (common carrier)]] of the [[Communications Act of 1934]] to the internet in a vote expected on February 26, 2015.<ref name="NYT-20150202a">{{cite news |last=Lohr |first=Steve |title=In Net Neutrality Push, F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating Internet Service as a Utility |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/technology/in-net-neutrality-push-fcc-is-expected-to-propose-regulating-the-internet-as-a-utility.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/technology/in-net-neutrality-push-fcc-is-expected-to-propose-regulating-the-internet-as-a-utility.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=February 2, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 2, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20150202b">{{cite news |last=Lohr |first=Steve |title=F.C.C. Chief Wants to Override State Laws Curbing Community Net Services |url=http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/f-c-c-chief-wants-to-override-state-laws-curbing-community-net-services/ |date=February 2, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 2, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="AP-20150131">{{cite news |last=Flaherty |first=Anne |title=Just whose Internet is it? New federal rules may answer that |url=http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150131/us--net_neutrality-news_guide-c235cbd2b9.html |date=January 31, 2015 |agency=Associated Press |access-date=January 31, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="WP-20150102">{{cite news |last=Fung |first=Brian |title=Get ready: The FCC says it will vote on net neutrality in February |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/01/02/get-ready-the-fcc-says-itll-vote-on-net-neutrality-in-february/ |date=January 2, 2015 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=January 2, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="AP-20150102">{{cite news |author=Staff |title=FCC to vote next month on net neutrality rules |url=http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150103/us-fcc-net-neutrality-d8f89ffc53.html |date=January 2, 2015 |agency=Associated Press |access-date=January 2, 2015 }}</ref> Adoption of this notion would reclassify internet service from one of information to one of [[Telecommunications service provider|telecommunications]]<ref name="NYT-20150204">{{cite news |last=Lohr |first=Steve |title=F.C.C. Plans Strong Hand to Regulate the Internet |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/technology/fcc-wheeler-net-neutrality.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/technology/fcc-wheeler-net-neutrality.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=February 4, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 5, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref> and, according to [[Tom Wheeler]], chairman of the FCC, ensure [[net neutrality]].<ref name="WRD-20150204">{{cite magazine |last=Wheeler |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Wheeler |title=FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality |url=https://www.wired.com/2015/02/fcc-chairman-wheeler-net-neutrality |date=February 4, 2015 |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |access-date=February 5, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="NYT-20150206">{{cite news |author=The Editorial Board |title=Courage and Good Sense at the F.C.C. – Net Neutrality's Wise New Rules |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/opinion/net-neutralitys-wise-new-rules.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/opinion/net-neutralitys-wise-new-rules.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=February 6, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 6, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref> The FCC is expected to enforce net neutrality in its vote, according to ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref name="NYT-20150224">{{cite news |last=Weisman |first=Jonathan |title=As Republicans Concede, F.C.C. Is Expected to Enforce Net Neutrality |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=February 24, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 24, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20150225">{{cite news |last=Lohr |first=Steve |title=The Push for Net Neutrality Arose From Lack of Choice |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/limited-high-speed-internet-choices-underlie-net-neutrality-rules.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/limited-high-speed-internet-choices-underlie-net-neutrality-rules.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=February 25, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 25, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref>

On February 26, 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of [[net neutrality]] by applying [[Common carrier#Telecommunications|Title II (common carrier)]] of the [[Communications Act of 1934]] and [[Telecommunications policy of the United States#Broadband deployment policy objectives|Section 706]] of the [[Communications Act of 1934#Telecommunications Act of 1996|Telecommunications act of 1996]] to the Internet.<ref name="FCC-20150226">{{cite news |author=Staff |title=FCC Adopts Strong, Sustainable Rules To Protect The Open Internet  |url=http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0226/DOC-332260A1.pdf |date=February 26, 2015 |work=[[Federal Communications Commission]] |access-date=February 26, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="NYT-20150226">{{cite news |last1=Ruiz |first1=Rebecca R. |last2=Lohr |first2=Steve |title=In Net Neutrality Victory, F.C.C. Classifies Broadband Internet Service as a Public Utility |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/technology/net-neutrality-fcc-vote-internet-utility.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/technology/net-neutrality-fcc-vote-internet-utility.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=February 26, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=February 26, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="AP-20150225">{{cite news |last=Flaherty |first=Anne |title=FACT CHECK: Talking heads skew 'net neutrality' debate |url=http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150225/us--net_neutrality-fact_check-e30cfb560f.html |date=February 25, 2015 |agency=Associated Press |access-date=February 26, 2015 }}</ref> The FCC chairman, [[Tom Wheeler]], commented, "This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."<ref name="HP-20150226">{{cite news |last=Liebelson |first=Dana |title=Net Neutrality Prevails in Historic FCC Vote |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/net-neutrality-fcc-vote_n_6761702.html |date=February 26, 2015 |work=[[The Huffington Post]] |access-date=February 27, 2015 }}</ref>

On March 12, 2015, the FCC released the specific details of the net neutrality rules.<ref name="NYT-20150312a">{{cite news |last=Ruiz |first=Rebecca R. |title=F.C.C. Sets Net Neutrality Rules |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/technology/fcc-releases-net-neutrality-rules.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/technology/fcc-releases-net-neutrality-rules.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |date=March 12, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=March 13, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT-20150312b">{{cite news |last=Sommer |first=Jeff |title=What the Net Neutrality Rules Say |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/12/technology/net-neutrality-rules-explained.html |date=March 12, 2015 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=March 13, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="FCC-20150315">{{cite web |author=FCC Staff |title=Federal Communications Commission – FCC 15–24 – In the Matter of Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet – GN Docket No. 14-28 – Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order |url=http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-24A1.pdf |date=March 12, 2015 |work=[[Federal Communications Commission]] |access-date=March 13, 2015 }}</ref> On April 13, 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new "[[Net neutrality in the United States|Net Neutrality]]" regulations.<ref name="CNET-20150413">{{cite web |last=Reisinger |first=Don |title=Net neutrality rules get published – let the lawsuits begin |url=http://www.cnet.com/news/fccs-net-neutrality-rules-hit-federal-register-lawsuit-underway/ |date=April 13, 2015 |work=[[CNET]] |access-date=April 13, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="FR-20150413">{{cite web |author=Federal Communications Commission |title=Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet – A Rule by the Federal Communications Commission on 04/13/2015 |url=https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/04/13/2015-07841/protecting-and-promoting-the-open-internet |date=April 13, 2015 |work=[[Federal Register]] |access-date=April 13, 2015 |author-link=Federal Communications Commission }}</ref>

On December 14, 2017, the FCC repealed their March 12, 2015 decision by a 3–2 vote regarding net neutrality rules.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/technology/net-neutrality-repeal-vote.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/technology/net-neutrality-repeal-vote.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live|title=F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules|last=Kang|first=Cecilia|date=2017-12-14|work=The New York Times|access-date=2018-02-02|language=en-US }}{{cbignore}}</ref>

==Use and culture==

===Email and Usenet===
[[Email]] has often been called the [[killer application]] of the Internet. It predates the Internet, and was a crucial tool in creating it. Email started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a [[time-sharing]] [[mainframe computer]] to communicate. Although the history is undocumented, among the first systems to have such a facility were the [[System Development Corporation]] (SDC) [[AN/FSQ-32|Q32]] and the [[Compatible Time-Sharing System]] (CTSS) at MIT.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Risks Digest |journal=Great Moments in E-mail History |date=March 20, 1999 |volume=20 |issue=25 |url=http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.25.html#subj3 |access-date=April 27, 2006|last1=Neumann |first1=Peter G. }}</ref>

The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of electronic mail. An experimental inter-system transferred mail on the ARPANET shortly after its creation.<ref>{{cite web |title=The History of Electronic Mail |url=http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html |access-date=December 23, 2005}}</ref> In 1971 [[Ray Tomlinson]] created what was to become the standard Internet electronic mail addressing format, using the [[@|@ sign]] to separate mailbox names from host names.<ref>{{cite web |title=The First Network Email |url=http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html |access-date=December 23, 2005 |archive-date=May 6, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060506003539/http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html  }}</ref>

A number of protocols were developed to deliver messages among groups of time-sharing computers over alternative transmission systems, such as [[UUCP]] and [[IBM]]'s [[VNET]] email system. Email could be passed this way between a number of networks, including [[ARPANET]], [[BITNET]] and [[NSFNET]], as well as to hosts connected directly to other sites via UUCP. See the [[SMTP#History|history of SMTP]] protocol.

In addition, UUCP allowed the publication of text files that could be read by many others. The News software developed by Steve Daniel and [[Tom Truscott]] in 1979 was used to distribute news and bulletin board-like messages. This quickly grew into discussion groups, known as [[newsgroup]]s, on a wide range of topics. On ARPANET and NSFNET similar discussion groups would form via [[Electronic mailing list|mailing lists]], discussing both technical issues and more culturally focused topics (such as science fiction, discussed on the sflovers mailing list).

During the early years of the Internet, email and similar mechanisms were also fundamental to allow people to access resources that were not available due to the absence of online connectivity. UUCP was often used to distribute files using the 'alt.binary' groups. Also, [[FTPmail|FTP e-mail gateways]] allowed people that lived outside the US and Europe to download files using ftp commands written inside email messages. The file was encoded, broken in pieces and sent by email; the receiver had to reassemble and decode it later, and it was the only way for people living overseas to download items such as the earlier Linux versions using the slow dial-up connections available at the time. After the popularization of the Web and the HTTP protocol such tools were slowly abandoned.

===File sharing===
{{Main |File sharing |Peer-to-peer file sharing |Timeline of file sharing}}

Resource or file sharing has been an important activity on computer networks from well before the Internet was established and was supported in a variety of ways including [[bulletin board systems]] (1978), [[Usenet]] (1980), [[Kermit (software)|Kermit]] (1981), and many others. The [[File Transfer Protocol]] (FTP) for use on the Internet was standardized in 1985 and is still in use today.<ref>{{cite ietf |rfc=959 |title=RFC 959: File Transfer Protocol (FTP) |author=J. Postel |author2=J. Reynolds |date=October 1985}}</ref> A variety of tools were developed to aid the use of FTP by helping users discover files they might want to transfer, including the [[Wide Area Information Server]] (WAIS) in 1991, [[Gopher (protocol)|Gopher]] in 1991, [[Archie search engine|Archie]] in 1991, [[Veronica (search engine)|Veronica]] in 1992, [[Jughead (search engine)|Jughead]] in 1993, [[Internet Relay Chat]] (IRC) in 1988, and eventually the [[World Wide Web]] (WWW) in 1991 with [[Web directories]] and [[Web search engines]].

In 1999, [[Napster]] became the first [[peer-to-peer file sharing]] system.<ref>{{cite book |author=Kenneth P. Birman |title=Reliable Distributed Systems: Technologies, Web Services, and Applications |url=https://archive.org/details/reliabledistribu0000birm |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/reliabledistribu0000birm/page/532 532] |access-date=2012-01-20 |date=2005-03-25 |publisher=Springer-Verlag New York Incorporated |isbn=978-0-387-21509-9 }}</ref> Napster used a central server for indexing and peer discovery, but the storage and transfer of files was decentralized. A variety of peer-to-peer file sharing programs and services with different levels of decentralization and [[Anonymity application|anonymity]] followed, including: [[Gnutella]], [[eDonkey2000]], and [[Freenet]] in 2000, [[FastTrack]], [[Kazaa]], [[Limewire]], and [[BitTorrent (software)|BitTorrent]] in 2001, and Poisoned in 2003.<ref>{{cite news |last=Menta |first=Richard |title=Napster Clones Crush Napster. Take 6 out of the Top 10 Downloads on CNet |date=July 20, 2001 |publisher=MP3 Newswire |url=http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/topclones.html |access-date=March 30, 2012 |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304185434/http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/topclones.html  }}</ref>

All of these tools are general purpose and can be used to share a wide variety of content, but sharing of music files, software, and later movies and videos are major uses.<ref>{{cite web | title=Movie File-Sharing Booming: Study | website=srgnet.com | date=28 January 2007 | url=http://www.srgnet.com/pdf/Movie%20File-Sharing%20Booming%20Release%20Jan%2024%2007%20Final.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120217011553/http://www.srgnet.com/pdf/Movie%20File-Sharing%20Booming%20Release%20Jan%2024%2007%20Final.pdf | archive-date=17 February 2012 }}</ref> And while some of this sharing is legal, large portions are not. Lawsuits and other legal actions caused Napster in 2001, eDonkey2000 in 2005, [[Kazaa]] in 2006, and Limewire in 2010 to shut down or refocus their efforts.<ref>{{cite news |last=Menta |first=Richard |title=RIAA Sues Music Startup Napster for $20 Billion |date=December 9, 1999 |publisher=MP3 Newswire |url=http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/napster.html |access-date=March 30, 2012 |archive-date=June 27, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170627120059/http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/napster.html  }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php |title=EFF: What Peer-to-Peer Developers Need to Know about Copyright Law |publisher=W2.eff.org |access-date=2012-01-20  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120115034129/http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php |archive-date=January 15, 2012 }}</ref> [[The Pirate Bay]], founded in Sweden in 2003, continues despite a [[The Pirate Bay trial|trial and appeal in 2009 and 2010]] that resulted in jail terms and large fines for several of its founders.<ref>{{Cite news |author=Kobie, Nicole |title=Pirate Bay trio lose appeal against jail sentences |url=http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/363178/pirate-bay-trio-lose-appeal-against-jail-sentences |work=pcpro.co.uk |publisher=PCPRO |date=November 26, 2010 |access-date=November 26, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140421081922/http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/363178/pirate-bay-trio-lose-appeal-against-jail-sentences |archive-date=April 21, 2014  }}</ref> File sharing remains contentious and controversial with charges of theft of [[intellectual property]] on the one hand and charges of [[censorship]] on the other.<ref>{{cite web | title=Poll: Young Say File Sharing OK | website=CBS News | date=18 September 2003 | url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/18/opinion/polls/main573990.shtml | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030919194542/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/18/opinion/polls/main573990.shtml | archive-date=September 19, 2003  | access-date=March 31, 2012 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Green|first=Stuart P.|title=OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; When Stealing Isn't Stealing|work=The New York Times|page=27|date=29 March 2012|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/theft-law-in-the-21st-century.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/theft-law-in-the-21st-century.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

===File hosting services===
{{Main|File hosting service}}

File hosting allowed for people to expand their computer's hard drives and "host" their files on a server. Most file hosting services offer free storage, as well as larger storage amount for a fee. These services have greatly expanded the internet for business and personal use.

[[Google Drive]], launched on April 24, 2012, has become the most popular file hosting service. Google Drive allows users to store, edit, and share files with themselves and other users. Not only does this application allow for file editing, hosting, and sharing. It also acts as Google's own free-to-access office programs, such as [[Google Docs]], [[Google Slides]], and [[Google Sheets]]. This application served as a useful tool for University professors and students, as well as those who are in need of [[Cloud storage]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Nolledo|first=Michael|title=What is Google Drive? A guide to navigating Google's file storage service and collaboration tools|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-google-drive-guide|access-date=2020-11-16|website=Business Insider}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Introducing Google Drive... yes, really|url=https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-yes-really.html|access-date=2020-11-16|website=Official Google Blog|language=en}}</ref>

[[Dropbox (service)#History|Dropbox]], released in June 2007 is a similar file hosting service that allows users to keep all of their files in a folder on their computer, which is synced with Dropbox's servers. This differs from Google Drive as it is not web-browser based. Now, Dropbox works to keep workers and files in sync and efficient.<ref>{{Cite web|title=About|url=https://www.dropbox.com/about|access-date=2020-11-17|website=www.dropbox.com|language=en}}</ref>

[[Mega (service)|Mega]], having over 200 million users, is an encrypted storage and communication system that offers users free and paid storage, with an emphasis on privacy.<ref>{{Cite web|title=About - MEGA|url=https://mega.nz/about/main|access-date=2020-11-17|website=mega.nz}}</ref> Being three of the largest file hosting services, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Mega all represent the core ideas and values of these services.

==Online piracy==
{{Main|Online piracy}}

The earliest form of online piracy began with a P2P (peer to peer) music sharing service named [[Napster]], launched in 1999. Sites like [[LimeWire]], [[The Pirate Bay]], and [[BitTorrent]] allowed for anyone to engage in online piracy, sending ripples through the media industry. With online piracy came a change in the media industry as a whole.<ref>{{Cite web|title=1) History of Internet Piracy - The Truth About Internet Piracy|url=https://sites.google.com/site/thepiracysitethatgivesyouinfo/home/history-of-piracy|access-date=2020-12-07|website=sites.google.com}}</ref>

==Mobile telephone data traffic==
{{See also|Mobile Web}}

Total global mobile data traffic reached 588 exabytes during 2020,<ref name="ReferenceA">Mobile Data Traffic Outlook. Ericsson</ref> a 150-fold increase from 3.86 exabytes/year in 2010.<ref>Statista "Global Mobile Traffic per year from 2010–2020</ref> Most recently, smartphones accounted for 95% of this mobile data traffic with video accounting for 66% by type of data.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Mobile traffic travels by radio frequency to the closest cell phone tower and its base station where the radio signal is converted into an optical signal that is transmitted over high-capacity optical networking systems that convey the information to data centers. The optical backbones enable much of this traffic as well as a host of emerging mobile services including the Internet of things, 3-D virtual reality, gaming and autonomous vehicles. The most popular mobile phone application is texting, of which 2.1 trillion messages were logged in 2020.<ref>CTIA 2020 Annual Survey</ref> The texting phenomenon began on December 3, 1992, when Neil Papworth sent the first text message of "Merry Christmas" over a commercial cell phone network to the CEO of Vodafone.<ref>{{cite magazine| last=Eveleth | first=Rose | author-link=Rose Eveleth | title=The First Text Message, Sent Twenty Years Ago, Was 'Merry Christmas' | magazine=Smithsonian Magazine | date=5 December 2012 | url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-text-message-sent-twenty-years-ago-was-merry-christmas-152311567/}}</ref>

The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the [[Nokia 9000 Communicator]], launched in Finland in 1996. The viability of Internet services access on mobile phones was limited until prices came down from that model, and network providers started to develop systems and services conveniently accessible on phones. [[NTT DoCoMo]] in Japan launched the first mobile Internet service, [[i-mode]], in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile phone Internet services. In 2001, the mobile phone email system by Research in Motion (now [[BlackBerry Limited]]) for their [[BlackBerry]] product was launched in America. To make efficient use of the small screen and [[Telephone keypad|tiny keypad]] and one-handed operation typical of mobile phones, a specific document and networking model was created for mobile devices, the [[Wireless Application Protocol]] (WAP). Most mobile device Internet services operate using WAP. The growth of mobile phone services was initially a primarily Asian phenomenon with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all soon finding the majority of their Internet users accessing resources by phone rather than by PC.<ref>{{cite report | title=ANALYSIS: Mobile internet usage challenges in Asia — awareness, literacy and local content | website=gsma.com | date=15 July 2015 | url=https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150709-asia-local-content-final.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018175353/https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150709-asia-local-content-final.pdf | archive-date=October 18, 2015  | pages=8–9 | access-date=December 11, 2021 }}</ref> Developing countries followed, with India, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, and Pakistan all reporting that the majority of their domestic users accessed the Internet from a mobile phone rather than a PC. The European and North American use of the Internet was influenced by a large installed base of personal computers, and the growth of mobile phone Internet access was more gradual, but had reached national penetration levels of 20–30% in most Western countries.<ref name="DasguptaLall2001">{{cite book|author1=Susmita Dasgupta|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4v-04WJ4UBEC|title=Policy Reform, Economic Growth, and the Digital Divide: An Econometric Analysis|author2=Somik V. Lall|author3=David Wheeler|publisher=World Bank Publications|year=2001|pages=1–3|id=GGKEY:YLS5GEUEBAR|access-date=11 February 2013}}</ref> The cross-over occurred in 2008, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC user.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hillebrand|first=Friedhelm|title=GSM and UMTS, The Creation of Global Mobile Communications|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=2002|isbn=978-0-470-84322-2|editor-last=Hillebrand|editor-first=Friedhelm}}</ref>

==Growth in demand==
Global Internet traffic continues to grow at a rapid rate, rising 23% from 2020 to 2021<ref>{{Cite news|last=Mauldin|first=Alan|date=September 7, 2021|title=Global Internet Traffic and Capacity Return to Regularly Scheduled Programming|work=TeleGeography}}</ref> when the number of active Internet users reached 4.66 billion people, representing half of the global population. Further demand for data, and the capacity to satisfy this demand, are forecast to increase to 717 terabits per second in 2021.<ref>Cisco 2021 VNI Forecast p2</ref> This capacity stems from the [[Optical amplifier|optical amplification]] and [[Wavelength-division multiplexing|WDM]] systems that are the common basis of virtually every metro, regional, national, international and submarine telecommunications networks.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Grobe|first1=Klaus|title=Wavelength Division Multiplexing: A Practical Engineering Guide|last2=Eiselt|first2=Michael|publisher=John T Wiley & Sons|year=2013|page=2}}</ref> These [[optical networking]] systems have been installed throughout the 5 billion kilometers of [[fiber optic]] lines deployed around the world.<ref>Corning Glass Products/Optical Fiber</ref> Continued growth in traffic is expected for the foreseeable future from a combination of new users, increased mobile phone adoption, machine-to-machine connections, connected homes, 5G devices and the burgeoning requirement for cloud and Internet services such as [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]], [[Facebook]], [[Apple Music]] and [[YouTube]].

==Historiography==
{{Further|Protocol Wars#Historiography}}
There are nearly insurmountable problems in supplying a [[historiography]] of the Internet's development. The process of digitization represents a twofold challenge both for historiography in general and, in particular, for historical communication research.<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Classen | first1=Christoph | last2=Kinnebrock | first2=Susanne | last3=Löblich | first3=Maria | title=Towards Web History: Sources, Methods, and Challenges in the Digital Age. An Introduction | journal=Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung | publisher=GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, Center for Historical Social Research | volume=37 | issue=4 (142) | year=2012 | jstor=41756476 | pages=97–101 }}</ref> A sense of the difficulty in documenting early developments that led to the internet can be gathered from the quote:

{{Blockquote|"The Arpanet period is somewhat well documented because the corporation in charge – [[BBN Technologies|BBN]] – left a physical record. Moving into the [[NSFNET]] era, it became an extraordinarily decentralized process. The record exists in people's basements, in closets. ... So much of what happened was done verbally and on the basis of individual trust."|[[Doug Gale]] (2007)<ref>{{cite news |last=Barras |first=Colin |date=August 23, 2007 |title=An Internet Pioneer Ponders the Next Revolution |work=Illuminating the net's Dark Ages |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6959034.stm |access-date=February 26, 2008}}</ref>}}

Notable works on the subject were published by [[Katie Hafner]] and Matthew Lyon, ''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet'' (1996), [[Roy Rosenzweig]], ''Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet'' (1998), and [[Janet Abbate]], ''Inventing the Internet'' (2000).

Most scholarship and literature on the Internet lists ARPANET as the prior network that was iterated on and studied to create it,<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Desk Encyclopedia of World History |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-7394-7809-7 |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=Edmund |location=New York |page=311}}</ref> although other early computer networks and experiments existed alongside or before ARPANET.<ref name=":42">{{Cite news |date=30 May 2015 |title=A Flaw in the Design |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/05/30/net-of-insecurity-part-1/ |url-status=live |access-date=20 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108111512/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/05/30/net-of-insecurity-part-1/ |archive-date=8 November 2020 |quote=The Internet was born of a big idea: Messages could be chopped into chunks, sent through a network in a series of transmissions, then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently... The most important institutional force ... was the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... as ARPA began work on a groundbreaking computer network, the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the nation's top universities.}}</ref>

These histories of the Internet have since been characterized as [[Teleology|teleologies]] or [[Whig history]]; that is, they take the present to be the end point toward which history has been unfolding based on a single cause:

{{Blockquote|text=In the case of Internet history, the epoch-making event is usually said to be the demonstration of the 4-node ARPANET network in 1969. From that single happening the global Internet developed.|author=[[Martin Campbell-Kelly]], Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Campbell-Kelly |first1=Martin |last2=Garcia-Swartz |first2=Daniel D |date=2013 |title=The History of the Internet: The Missing Narratives |journal=Journal of Information Technology |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=18–33 |doi=10.1057/jit.2013.4 |s2cid=41013 |ssrn=867087 }}</ref>}}

In addition to these characteristics, historians have cited methodological problems arising in their work:
{{Blockquote|text="Internet history" ... tends to be too close to its sources. Many Internet pioneers are alive, active, and eager to shape the histories that describe their accomplishments. Many museums and historians are equally eager to interview the pioneers and to publicize their stories.|author=Andrew L. Russell (2012)<ref>{{Cite conference |last=Russell |first=Andrew |date=2012 |title=Histories of Networking vs. the History of the Internet |url=https://arussell.org/papers/russell-SIGCIS-2012.pdf |conference=2012 SIGCIS Workshop |page=6}}</ref>}}

==See also==
{{portal|Internet|History of science|World}}
{{div col|colwidth=20em}}
* [[History of email]]
* [[History of hypertext]]
* [[History of telecommunication]]
* [[Index of Internet-related articles]]
* [[Internet activism]]
* [[List of Internet pioneers]]
* [[MH & xmh: Email for Users & Programmers]]
* [[Nerds 2.0.1]] A Brief History of the Internet
* [[On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog]]
* [[Outline of the Internet]]
{{div col end}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

===Sources===
*{{cite book |last1=Abbate |first1=Janet |title=Inventing the Internet |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |author-link=Janet Abbate |publisher=MIT Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-262-01172-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/inventinginterne00abba}}
*{{cite book |last1=Cerf |first1=Vinton |url=http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.html |title=How the Internet Came to Be |year=1993}}
*{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill|url-access=registration|title=How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web|last1=Gillies|first1=James|last2=Cailliau|first2=Robert|year=2000|place=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-286207-3}}
*{{cite book |last1=Hafner |first1=Katie |author-link=Katie Hafner|last2=Lyon|first2=Matthew |title=Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RLKxSvCBQZcC |year=1998 |orig-date=1996 |place=New York |publisher=Touchstone |isbn=978-0-684-83267-8 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Rosenzweig |first1=Roy |title=Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet |journal=The American Historical Review |date=December 1998 |volume=103 |issue=5 |pages=1530–1552 |doi=10.2307/2649970 |jstor=2649970 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Russell |first1=Andrew L. |title=Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks |date=2014 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-91661-5 }}
*{{cite book |last1=Ryan |first1=Johnny |title=A history of the Internet and the digital future |location=London, England |publisher=Reaktion Books |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-86189-777-0 }}
*{{cite web |author1=Thomas Greene |author2=Larry James Landweber |author3=George Strawn |title=A Brief History of NSF and the Internet |publisher=National Science Foundation |year=2003 |url=https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/fsnsf_internet.htm}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Internet history}}
*[http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/internet_history/ Internet History Timeline] – [[Computer History Museum]]
*[http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/ Histories of the Internet] – [[Internet Society]]
*[http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ Hobbes' Internet Timeline 12]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4 ''History of the Internet''], a short animated film (2009)
*{{Curlie|Computers/Internet/History/}}

{{Telecommunications}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of The Internet}}
[[Category:History of the Internet| ]]
[[Category:American inventions|Internet]]
[[Category:Articles containing video clips]]
[[Category:History of computing]]
[[Category:Internet governance]]