from arpanet to internet...

From ARPANET to INTERNET...

Although the early space program was run by the Air Force, it was the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, in the Pentagon that was the research and development for the military. After the Soviets launched Sputnik the government formed NASA thereby removing the need for ARPA. Fighting for their survival and then for any kind of funding they could get ARPA stayed afloat. And with new leadership came new direction and ARPA moved forward. ARPA was deemed the agency that would work on farfetched projects. Science fiction to many senior Pentagon officials as well as senators who spoke in terms of decades of development for projects.

The government was already the largest buyer of early main frame computers. Large corporations and leading universities might also have a computer. One computer had to be shared amongst many people waiting for time on it. These behemoths were manufactured by corporations such as IBM, Burroughs, and Cray just to name a few. The problem was that all of these different systems and hardware required different software and operating instructions. None of these systems were compatible. They could not interface or talk to each other. It's as if you were in a room with a large group of people all speaking a different language. This was all about to change.

ARPA organized and worked with people from different leading universities. Mainly Cambridge (where hardware packet switching was first used), MIT, and Cal Tech. were some of the first. The first true network was formed when packet switching hardware made it possible to connect coast to coast systems at MIT and Cal Tech and share information. Simple and only a couple of nodes, it was called ARPANET. The internet was born!

The TCP/IP standard packet of today is relatively the same conceptual data packed as was first used decades ago. Packet switching has revolutionized how we interface and move data. Even every telephone switching circuit in America is now a digital packet switching based circuit.

We now live in an information age defined by the brilliance of a generation with the foresight to know how things ought to be. (Except that we’re running out of TCP/IP V.4 addresses! Hence TCP/IP V.6)

With super fast PC’s so small now they fit in our pockets; all interfaced together on an information superhighway highway called the internet. But… all of this is built on the dirt roads and routes of the ARPANET.

- B. Campbell