📜 The Story of The Internet

🛰️ 1. The Beginning: ARPANET (1960s)

The Internet’s story begins during the Cold War. The U.S. Department of Defense wanted a communication system that could survive a potential nuclear attack.

• Agency: ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency).
• Goal: To create a decentralized, fault-tolerant network. This meant if one part of the network was destroyed, the rest could still communicate.
• The Result: ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was born.
• First Message: In 1969, the first message was sent between two computers. The intended message was “LOGIN,” but the system crashed after receiving the first two letters, “LO”.

🧱 2. The Foundation: TCP/IP (1970s - 1983)

As more networks were created, they couldn’t talk to each other because they used different protocols. A common language was needed.

• Inventors: Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the solution: TCP/IP.
  • TCP (Transmission Control Protocol): Manages breaking data into small packets before they are sent and reassembling them at the destination.
  • IP (Internet Protocol): Acts like a postal address, ensuring each packet is sent to the correct destination.
• The Big Switch: On January 1, 1983, ARPANET officially switched to using TCP/IP. This moment is often considered the true birth of the modern Internet, as it allowed different networks to connect and form a universal “internetwork”.

🌍 3. The Web is Born: WWW (1990s)

The Internet existed, but it was mostly used by academics and military personnel and was not very user-friendly.

• Inventor: In 1990, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web (WWW).
• Key Distinction:
  • The Internet is the global network of computers (the infrastructure).
  • The World Wide Web is the system of information, like web pages and documents, that flows over the Internet.
• His Inventions: He created the core components of the web:
  • HTML: The language to create web pages.
  • URL: The address to find a web page.
  • HTTP: The protocol to transfer web pages across the Internet.

🚀 4. The Explosion and Modern Era (Late 1990s - Present)

The invention of the first popular graphical web browser, Mosaic, in 1993 made the web accessible to everyone.

• The “Dot-com” Boom: The mid-to-late 1990s saw a massive commercialization of the web, with companies like Amazon and Google getting their start.
• Web 2.0 & Mobile: The 2000s brought social media (Facebook, Twitter), user-generated content (YouTube, Wikipedia), and the rise of smartphones, putting the Internet in our pockets.
• Today: The Internet continues to evolve with the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and high-speed mobile networks like 5G, connecting nearly every aspect of modern life in India and across the world.