- 2070 Magh · 10 marks
History and development of Internet
Short answer
ARPANET, the first packet-switched network, began in 1969. TCP/IP was adopted on 1 Jan 1983, enabling internetworking. DNS introduced in 1984, WWW in 1991, and commercial ISPs after NSFNET retirement in 1995 drove global expansion through broadband, mobile, and IoT.
Write down the history of Internet. Explain how is it developed to this stage.
History of the Internet
The Internet grew from a research project into a worldwide network over about five decades.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1961-64 | Packet switching theory by Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran and Donald Davies |
| 1969 | ARPANET (US DoD, ARPA) connects four nodes: UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, University of Utah |
| 1971 | Ray Tomlinson sends the first network e-mail using the @ sign |
| 1973-74 | Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn design TCP/IP |
| 1978 | TCP is split into TCP and IP |
| 1 Jan 1983 | ARPANET switches from NCP to TCP/IP ("flag day") |
| 1983-84 | DNS is introduced; names replace host tables |
| 1985-86 | NSFNET links supercomputer centres, becomes the new backbone |
| 1989-91 | Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web (HTTP, HTML, URL) at CERN |
| 1990 | ARPANET is shut down |
| 1993 | Mosaic browser makes the web popular |
| 1995 | NSFNET backbone is retired; commercial ISPs take over |
| 1998 | ICANN is formed; IPv6 is specified |
| 2000s | Broadband, search engines, social media, e-commerce |
| 2007 onward | Smartphones, mobile Internet, cloud, IoT |
| 2011 | IANA IPv4 pool exhausted; IPv6 deployment grows |
In Nepal, e-mail services started in the early 1990s and the first commercial ISP (Mercantile) began service around 1995.
How it developed to this stage
- Research to standards: ARPANET proved packet switching. The adoption of TCP/IP allowed different networks to be joined (internetworking), and open standards (RFCs) let anyone build compatible systems.
- Expansion of access: universities connected through NSFNET and regional networks; the lifting of NSFNET's ban on commercial traffic in the early 1990s and the retirement of the NSFNET backbone in 1995 brought private ISPs and the tiered ISP structure.
- Ease of use: the Web and graphical browsers made the Internet usable by non-experts; DNS made addressing human-friendly.
- Technology growth: fibre optics, DSL, cable, Wi-Fi, 4G/5G and submarine cables increased speed and reach, while falling hardware cost brought devices to everyone.
- Governance and addressing: IANA, ICANN and the RIRs coordinated names and numbers; CIDR and NAT delayed IPv4 exhaustion, and IPv6 gives a long-term solution.
- New services: e-commerce, social media, streaming, cloud and IoT created the demand that keeps the network growing.
✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)
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