The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In the late
1960’s the U.S. military was desperately afraid of a nuclear attack from the
Soviet Union. The United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
within the Department of Defense to establish a bombproof network to connect
military bases. ARPANET’s physical network was established in 1969 to enable
universities and research organizations to exchange information freely. The
first two nodes that formed the ARPANET were UCLA and the Stanford Research
Institute, shortly after the University of Utah was added to ARPANET. The
Network Control Protocol (NCP) was initially used as the ARPANET protocol,
beginning in 1970. By 1971, a total of 23 hosts at 15 locations were connected
to the ARPANET. The following year, the first international connections
occurred, linking the University College of London (UK) and the Royal Radar
Establishment (Norway) to the ARPANET. The way ARPANET was set up is so that if
one of the network links became disrupted by enemy attack, the traffic on it
could automatically be rerouted to other links. Fortunately, the Net rarely has
come under enemy attack. In the 1970s, ARPA also sponsored further research into
the applications of packet switching technologies. This included extending
packet switching to ships at sea and ground mobile units and the use of radio
for packet switching. Ethernet was created during the course of research into
the use of radio for packet switching, and it was found that coaxial cable could
support the movement of data at extremely fast rates of speed. The development
of Ethernet was crucial to the growth of local area computer networks. The
success of ARPANET made it difficult to manage, particularly with the large and
growing number of university sites on it. So it was broken into two parts. The
two parts consisted of MILNET, which had the military sites, and the new,
smaller ARPANET, which had the nonmilitary sites. On January 1,1983, every
machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet
protocol and replaced NCP (old ARPANET language) completely. Thanks to TCP/IP
MILNET and ARPANET remained connected through a technical scheme called IP
(Internet Protocol); which enables traffic to be routed from one network to
another as necessary. All the networks connected to the Internet speak IP, so
they all can exchange messages. Although there were only two networks at that
time, IP was designed to allow for tens of thousands of networks. An unusual
fact about the IP design is that every computer on an IP network is just as
capable as any other, so any machine can communicate with any other machine. In
1985 the National Science Foundation began announcing plans for its new T1
lines, which would be finished by 1988. Soon after the completion of the T1
backbone, traffic increased so quickly that plans immediately began on upgrading
the network again. The same year the concept of the T3, a 45 Mbps was introduced
to the public. While the T3 lines were being constructed, the Department of
Defense disbanded the ARPANET and the T1 and later T3 backbone replaced ARPANET.
The original 50Kbs lines of ARPANET were taken out of service. In 1990 ARPANET
was replaced by the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), the same
company that founded the t1 and t3, to connect its supercomputers to regional
networks. In my opinion I think the government did an excellent job in
developing the Internet. Essentially, the ARPANET can be viewed as the embryo
from which the Internet grew. The government fostered and encouraged the growth
of private Internet corporations. Today the Internet spans across all 7
continents and connects the whole world with some clicks of a mouse and typing
at the keyboard.

Bibliography1.)Casting the Net: From Arpanet to Internet and Beyond (Unix and Open
Systems Series) Peter H. Salus / Paperback / Published 1995 2.) Building the
Arpanet: Unpublished Source Documents of the First Peter Salus(Editor) /
Hardcover / Published 1998