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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Internet</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../I.html" title="I"/><link rel="previous" href="interesting.html" title="interesting"/><link rel="next" href="Internet-Death-Penalty.html" title="Internet Death Penalty"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Internet</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="interesting.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">I</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="Internet-Death-Penalty.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="Internet"/><dt xmlns="" id="Internet"><b>Internet</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969 as
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the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed. Though it has
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been widely believed that the goal was to develop a network architecture
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for military command-and-control that could survive disruptions up to and
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including nuclear war, this is a myth; in fact, ARPANET was conceived from
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the start as a way to get most economical use out of then-scarce
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large-computer resources. Robert Herzfeld, who was director of ARPA at
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the time, has been at some pains to debunk the
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“<span class="quote">survive-a-nuclear-war</span>” myth, but it seems unkillable.</p><p>As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to
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support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms of
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distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic mail quickly
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grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research labs and defense
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contractors early discovered the Internet's potential as a medium of
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communication between <span class="emphasis"><em>humans</em></span> and linked up in steadily
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increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of academics, techies,
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hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The roots of this lexicon lie
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in those early years.</p><p>Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The
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typical machine/OS combination moved from <a href="../D/DEC.html"><i class="glossterm">DEC</i></a>
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<a href="../P/PDP-10.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-10</i></a>s and <a href="../P/PDP-20.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-20</i></a>s, running
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<a href="../T/TOPS-10.html"><i class="glossterm">TOPS-10</i></a> and <a href="../T/TOPS-20.html"><i class="glossterm">TOPS-20</i></a>, to
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PDP-11s and <a href="../V/VAX.html"><i class="glossterm">VAX</i></a>en and Suns running
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<a href="../U/Unix.html"><i class="glossterm">Unix</i></a>, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel
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microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable, most notably
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in the move from NCP/IP to <a href="../T/TCP-IP.html"><i class="glossterm">TCP/IP</i></a> in 1982 and the
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implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this time
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that people began referring to the collection of interconnected networks
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with ARPANET at its core as “<span class="quote">the Internet</span>”.</p><p>The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines --
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connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related research
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project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations clamoring to join
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didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National Science Foundation built
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NSFnet to open up access to its five regional supercomputing centers;
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NSFnet became the backbone of the Internet, replacing the original ARPANET
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pipes (which were formally shut down in 1990). Between 1990 and late 1994
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the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major telecommunications companies until
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the Internet backbone had gone completely commercial.</p><p>That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered
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the Internet. Once again, the <a href="../K/killer-app.html"><i class="glossterm">killer app</i></a> was not
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the anticipated one — rather, what caught the public imagination was
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the hypertext and multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently
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the Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol
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stack favored by European telecoms monopolies) and is in the process of
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absorbing into itself many of the proprietary networks built during the
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second wave of wide-area networking after 1980. By 1996 it had become a
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commonplace even in mainstream media to predict that a globally-extended
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Internet would become the key unifying communications technology of the
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next century. See also <a href="../T/the-network.html"><i class="glossterm">the network</i></a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="interesting.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../I.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="Internet-Death-Penalty.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">interesting </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Internet Death Penalty</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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