The Creation of the Internet

It is interesting, very interesting, how the Internet we know today just came from an idea. The idea provoked the creation of the first Computer Network ever - ARPAnet, which was full positive effects benefiting everyone that was involved. But this same Internet, an International network of networks, was yet to be implemented by 1972.

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Story of the Internet:
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the idea of the Internet.
Part 2: The first Computer Network to be created.
Part 3: How the first computer network changed the world.
Part 4: The Creation of the Internet (current post).

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By 1972, ARPAnet included dozens of integrated sites. But still hardly anyone, outside, knew about the network. So the ARPAnet team, together with the BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman), organized a public show.

Showing ARPAnet to the World
The Internet Conference on Computer Communications was carefully picked as where to show the network to the world. This was held at the Hilton Hotel, in Washington at the end of October, 1972.
The public show was meant for the real test of the network. For instance, a computer in the conference, in Washington, contacted another computer in UCLA commanding it to execute (run) a program. The results were then confirmed as the output was printed from a printer that was in the conference, which was also in the system.

Even though everything in the show never went smoothly, nothing stopped it from being a success. Finally, the ARPAnet team had convinced and proved to the world that a computer network was areal fact, not just a dream. The guest appreciated and accepted that a computer network could be built and that it could be useful. Universities, government departments and other organizations saw that networking could increase the power of their computers, the people who used them, and... Other networks began to appear.

A New Problem
But these new networks created their own rules. A system that was best for ARPAnet did not necessarily suit other organizations with different needs, different style of work and different hardware.
For instance, Alohanet in Hawaii used radiowaves to deal with the problem of communicating over mountains and between different islands. And, Atlantic Packet Satelite Network used a different system sending messages up to the satelite in space to communicate across half the world.

So then, once again, there were many different computer systems that could not communicate to each other. Just a few years after ARPAnet was invented, the appearance of the new networks had once again created the problem that caused Bob Taylor to imagine the world's first computer network.

Solving The Puzzle
This time it was not Bob Taylor's problem to solve again, but Bob Khan - the man who was now in charge of ARPAnet's projects. Khan was familiar with the new problem. He had worked on some of the newer networks that were designed to deal with different circumstances. This gave him a first hand experience to the problem in hand, and, in a college at Stanford, he asked Vent Cerf - an engineer, to work with him on a new project.

"I need to find a way to connect these networks", said Khan. "They are not like the ARPAnet. They all use their own software and hardware, its a mess!"
"They are not going to change over to the ARPAnet system now", responded Cerf. "They have spent too much money, and their systems work".
"I know, but I still need a way to join them together. Its worser than before the ARPAnet. At least then we didn't know what a network could do." Bob argued in return.
"So what do you want to do?" Asked Cerf.
"I don't know. How do we make a network of networks?"

It was generally challenging. But after Bob convinced Cerf, the two managed to begin to write a software that would allow networks to communicate.

Programming The Internet
Their aim was to come up with a kind of gate to each network. The gate was not to affect the architecture or the technical functioning of any network, but to facilitate communication by translating between the different networks to reduce the number of differences between them.

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In a set of rules they invented in 1973, they used the word 'Internet' for the first time. It meant: ' a network of networks'.

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The new software wrapped messages inside Internet 'envelopes' from each different network. The message could leave home network and travel from one gate to another. There, they would be taken from the envelopes and sent into the destination network.
Consequently, data lose risk, in this new software, was much higher compared to the individual computer networks.
Nevertheless, Khan and Cerf's rules are still the glue that holds the Internet together today, more than a quarter a century after they wrote them.

Bob Khan and Vent Cerf thought that the demand of the Internet would grow. But. they never imagined the size of this growth!