The Internet Turns 40

[greg334]

Yep it is 40 years ago that Professor Kleinrock and a team of scientist at UCLA made two computers ....

....wait a minute, the news I was reading just changed...

it seems the AP has made a big mistake, now ALGORE's name has appeared in place of Kleinrock's name in the article.

Yep it is 40 years ago that ALGORE and a team of scientists in his daddy's bedroom made two computers talk to each other, ushering in the age of the internet. The computers were simulated with socks made into sock puppets and the sceintists documented the experiment so ALGORE SR would fund more of his sons experiments and allow him to discover global warming.

 

[Moot]

Greg, for this wonderful post I award you 10,000 Moot Points. Yea, I know I have awarded Moot Points in the past and non have ever been redeemed. I'm guessing they are probably worthless. Although in the not so distant future you may be able to trade Moot Points for carbon credits.

But what the hey, you're from Michigan. Certainly you'll understand when I say it's the thought that counts. Enjoy your Moot Points. Just don't try and buy an APU, mohair seat covers or any other tangible object with them.

 

[greg334]

Wow something got past the censor....

Well anywho, thanks for the points, I will use them next time I am up in your neck of the woods.

 

[letzrockexpress]

I don't know what the actual definition of "The Internet" is but I know when I was a kid, probably in about 1968 or 69, My dad had a terminal that looked like a giant typewriter with a modem that, when you laid the phone receiver on it, called into the IBM mainframe in downtown Cleveland. He was able to access all kinds of calculations and information, albeit in Fortran. I think this qualifies as "internet" communications, effectively and definitely leaving Al Gore out of it.

 

[Moot]

In 1969 Al Gore was busy collaborating with Erich Segal on Love Story. Maybe it was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I forget.

 

[Turtle]

Connecting from a home terminal to a mainframe downtown (telecommunications) is a direct connection from one computer to another, not an interconnected network connection to a gateway. Matthew Broderick did that in War Games when he dialed into Protovision's computers to play games and stuff. Other than business use of leased lines and later modems for users to directly connect to the mainframe at work, the most popular use of modems were to connect directly to another computer's Bulletin Board System (BBS), where you could upload and download files, and leave messages, just like here in this Web Forum.

The Internet evolved (or devolved, depending on your viewpoint) from ARPANET, which was a military and university network of computers. UUCP was invented for Usenet, but it was a separate deal from ARPANET and the other various networks. It wasn't until TCP/IP was codified, enabling disparate networks to communicate with each other, that the Internet was born. The term "internet" is a shortened version of "internetworking", which is the Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP.

Still, the Internet was still a text-based communications medium until the Mosaic Browser was invented by a group of folks at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Funding for Mosaic research came from the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 - . A.K.A., The Gore Bill.

Al Gore is largely a caricature, but he's not all that wrong in stating that he invented the Internet (which he never actually said, BTW). He was highly tuned in to the potential of high speed telecommunications back in the early 70's, largely based on the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which was introduced by his father, and let to suburbia, a housing boom, and everybody became mobile. He reasoned the same thing could be done with an Information Superhighway. He saw the potential back then of what we are realizing today. He's a goober, but he was spot-on with the Internet and its potential. He was totally hooked, by the way, after hearing a presentation to Congress from Professor Kleinrock and his group at UCLA. Every since then, nearly everything he did also included the promotion of high speed telecommunications research.

 

[letzrockexpress]

Thanks for clearing that up Mr. Peabody...

 

[layoutshooter]

Do NOT forget that MUCH of that research was bought and paid for by the Defense Department. There was a pre-curser system that we used called MillNet. It was one of the first systems that Cisco was invoved in. They were assisted by Sun systems and Cray. If you have not had the chance to work on a Cray system you have REALLY missed something. Those machines were just flat COOL!!! As much as I disliked computers I LOVED to play with those. They had just came out with Cray III when I left. We had to FIGHT to get time on the Cray systems. It would take very detailed papers to justify you hour or so a month on one.

When I got my biggest award I had to "Sneak" some time on a Cray. One of my buddies that I knew overseas had two entire hours with a "break" for lunch. He ran my stuff instead of eating lunch. He got the same award for that work as I did. It was amazing watching that thing "crunch numbers" It could knock off a code that had a 30 million year "repeat rate" in an hour or so.

 

[Turtle]

Not that it matters, but Cicso wasn't founded until 1984, and didn't ship it's first product, a network router, until 1986. Cisco played no role in the early development of the military's computer technology. In response to Sputnik in 1957 (the greatest year ever because it was the year of the '57 Chevy, and me), ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was formed in 1958 as a Department of Defense agency tasked with never letting a technological surprise like Sputnik happen again, and furthermore, to ensure that the US military's technology stays superior to that of any of our enemies or potential enemies. The name was changed to DARPA (D for Defense), then back to ARPA, and now I think it's back to DARPA again. But it's all the same thing.

Military research and development into computer technology has always been a close relationship with universities. The first published dream of having a widespread and wide-band telecommunications system came in 1960 out of ARPA. The dream became an actrual need 2 years later when research terminals were set up at a company in Santa Monica, one at Berkeley, and one at MIT, and the ARPA Director of Information Processing (where all the really kewl research was done) got frustrated by having to use a different terminal to communicate with each location, rather than being able to use just the one terminal to communicate with everybody all at once.

This led Paul Baran of the Rand Corporation and Leonard Kleinrock of MIT to develop an idea put forth by Donald Davies of the UK's National Physical Laboratory of packet-switching, where data was sent via small packets, with redundant information and individual packet routing information contained within each packet. This eliminated single-point data failures and enabled packets to be sent from one terminal to any number of other terminals. ARPA, now DARPA, brought in MIT, UCLA and Stanford and created the first packet-switching network, called ARPANET, in 1969, and for all intents and purposes, that's the birth of the Internet right there. The University of Utah and UC Santa Barbara were quickly added, and after that a new host was added on an average of every 20 days to where by 1981 there were more than 200 network nodes. ARPANET was the technical core of what would become the Internet, as everything the Internet is today is still based on that core.

Thanks for clearing that up Mr. Peabody...

Uhm, Mr Peabody is a fictional dog, and an insufferable genius. I am neither a fictional dog nor a genius. I'm merely insufferable. I also do not have a pet boy.

 

[letzrockexpress]

Not that it matters, but Cicso wasn't founded until 1984, and didn't ship it's first product, a network router, until 1986. Cisco played no role in the early development of the military's computer technology. In response to Sputnik in 1957 (the greatest year ever because it was the year of the '57 Chevy, and me), ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was formed in 1958 as a Department of Defense agency tasked with never letting a technological surprise like Sputnik happen again, and furthermore, to ensure that the US military's technology stays superior to that of any of our enemies or potential enemies. The name was changed to DARPA (D for Defense), then back to ARPA, and now I think it's back to DARPA again. But it's all the same thing.

Military research and development into computer technology has always been a close relationship with universities. The first published dream of having a widespread and wide-band telecommunications system came in 1960 out of ARPA. The dream became an actrual need 2 years later when research terminals were set up at a company in Santa Monica, one at Berkeley, and one at MIT, and the ARPA Director of Information Processing (where all the really kewl research was done) got frustrated by having to use a different terminal to communicate with each location, rather than being able to use just the one terminal to communicate with everybody all at once.

This led Paul Baran of the Rand Corporation and Leonard Kleinrock of MIT to develop an idea put forth by Donald Davies of the UK's National Physical Laboratory of packet-switching, where data was sent via small packets, with redundant information and individual packet routing information contained within each packet. This eliminated single-point data failures and enabled packets to be sent from one terminal to any number of other terminals. ARPA, now DARPA, brought in MIT, UCLA and Stanford and created the first packet-switching network, called ARPANET, in 1969, and for all intents and purposes, that's the birth of the Internet right there. The University of Utah and UC Santa Barbara were quickly added, and after that a new host was added on an average of every 20 days to where by 1981 there were more than 200 network nodes. ARPANET was the technical core of what would become the Internet, as everything the Internet is today is still based on that core.


Uhm, Mr Peabody is a fictional dog, and an insufferable genius. I am neither a fictional dog nor a genius. I'm merely insufferable. I also do not have a pet boy.

Am I to understand that Mr. layoutshooter is disseminating information that may not be correct?

 

[OntarioVanMan]

No...Layout was just young and impressionable..he was brainwashed by the military that they did it first!!

It wasn't his fault...because he was taught not to question but just do it...

 

[layoutshooter]

NO, Cisco, at that time, as I believe that Cray still is, was a company (it did NOT have a name at that time) that had the Defense department as it's sole customer. Cray's and early Cisco had their research budgets paid for in total by the Defense department. In fact, the first "internet" experiments were paid for by the Defense Department. ARPANET was the name of the "Net" that was funded by the D.O.D's Advanced Research Projects Agency. (see linked story below)

The Defense Department had SEVERAL projects that were classified at that time that led to "Private" companies being formed, Cisco was one of those.

Cray started as a DOD only company but soon was allowed to sell obsolete stripped down models to the general public but only after NSA, it was at least as 2002 their responsibility to clear systems for sale.

The pre-cursor group of people who formed Cisco was working at several D.O.D. sites as early as 1978. That was the first time I met some of them, they were installing equipment at our site in England. Cisco, as you all know it, was formalized later.

Nothing is a clear cut as many would want to think it is. Without the military the internet would have taken years longer to come about and companies like Cray and Cisco might not even exsist in the form that we know them today.

NSA, and CIA to a lessor extent, was the driving force for computer development. It was a common site to have real "nerds and geeks", the sterotype kind that you read about, walking around the halls of NSA sites. They were as strange as you can picture. Some never combed their hair, some never brushed their teeth, and most needed people to "interpet" for them when they had to interact with us "normal" people.

Yes, what you all know as Cisco, was involved in the military experiments that became what we all know and love as the internet. Turtle's information was a correct as possible given that fact that he, as most, have nothing but open source material to work with. His "facts" are 100% correct, they are just not "ALL" of the facts. Those military projects of that time emcompased far more of what we know as the "private sector" than most know about. Cisco's "public" birth was only 5-6 years after their "private" birth. The same people, the same offices, just not the "name" Cisco.

No, OVM, I was NOT brainwashed. First, you have to have a brain to have it washed!!! LOL!! Second, I was as much as a pain in the rear when I worked in that business as I am now!! I questioned EVERYTHING!! I was taught in grade school to ALWAYS question things that were told to me. I used to drive my bosses nuts!! I "forced" them to give me "reasons" for everything. They hated that.



Internet Turns 40: First Message Crashed System

 

[OntarioVanMan]

Now you've gone and done it Joe...Turtle has a mission for the weekend.. to research your facts...*L*

 

[layoutshooter]

Everyone must have a goal, OVM. Mine for this weekend is to take advantage of the Florida weather and get my "slushbusters" put on. I am also going to install an external XM radio antenna with will require taking my dash apart. LUCKY ME!! IF I get it all done today I will try to get a bit of fishing in tomorrow.

 

[OntarioVanMan]

And my goal is to needle (nag) you all weekend...*LOL*

I have to put on my slushbusters as well..but it is drizzling here in NC.

 

[layoutshooter]

You can "Nag" or "Needle" all you want. If my being alive gives your life a purpose I have done my good deed for the day!! LOL!!
We are looking at sunshine and 85 today. A GOOD day to install the "busters". I am going to have some breakfast soon then head out to the truck.

We normally park right by my mother-in-laws place by a Kmart. We did NOT want to do that this time because of Hallowene and Devils night. We paid to park it at a truck stop that has security. That $20 allowed me to sleep better last night.

 

[Turtle]

No, I don't need to research his facts. For the most part, he and I are saying the same thing, it's just that I'm giving actual credit to where it belongs, instead of slanting things to one side or the other. It's true that nothing is as clear cut as many would want to think it is, but just the same, things aren't all that cloaked and daggered as some would want us to believe, either.

Until his untimely death a few years ago (at just 45 years old) I was good friends with Jim Ellis, one of the two primary inventors of Usenet. He got me hooked on computer telecommunications in 1980 when he moved from Duke University to the Super Computing Center at Carnegie-Mellon (and later worked for Sun out of his home in Pittsburgh). Usenet was invented so that university computers who were not yet ARPANET nodes could communicate with each other via UUCP, sending e-mails, messages and file transfers over the network. As a side effect of Usenet and UUCP it was discovered that non-ARPANET nodes could seamlessly communicate with ARPANET computers, and visa versa, and thus ARPANET became the foundation for what we see today.

Usenet was invented in 1979, and by the end of 1980, when Jim moved to Carnegie-Mellon, it was quickly becoming the primary method of sharing information around the globe. Even the folks at ARPA was using it. That's when Jim and I met, and shortly thereafter I was loaned a Commodore PET computer to access the net from home, and later got my own Commodore 64. I've seen the development of the Internet from some very early stages, how Usenet and ARPA impacted each other, even had some minor input and impact on a few things (I did a lot of alpha and beta testing of protocols and procedures), and know well the history, how it developed, and why.

 

[layoutshooter]

I don't know if "Slant" is a good word, but yes, we are speaking of events that took place much like we both are talking about. You know some people that were involved and I others. It is not the clear cut progression that history books like to make it out to be. There were MANY gray areas where people, the military and quasi-private companies overlaped and evoled from. The important thing is that it happened. Other wise we could not spend hours in here arguring over useless things!!!

 

[letzrockexpress]

First, you have to have a brain to have it washed!!!

Ha! Evidence. A new toy for the memory banks.....

 

[layoutshooter]

Glad I could be of some service to you, Rocket. Anytime I can help you make fun of myself or others I feel I have done a good deed. Don't want you to stress too hard looking for new ways to ridicule. I know how stressful that can be.