ARPANET
Encyclopedia
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), was the world's first operational packet switching
network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet
. The network was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense
for use by its projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by Lawrence Roberts
of the Lincoln Laboratory
.
Packet switching, today the dominant basis for data communications worldwide, was a new concept at the time of the conception of the ARPANET. Data communications had been based on the idea of circuit switching
, as in the traditional telephone circuit, wherein a telephone call reserves a dedicated circuit for the duration of the communication session and communication is possible only between the two parties interconnected.
With packet switching, a data system could use one communications link to communicate with more than one machine by collecting data into datagram
s and transmit these as packets onto the attached network link, whenever the link is not in use. Thus, not only could the link be shared, much as a single post box
can be used to post letters to different destinations, but each packet could be routed independently of other packets.
J. C. R. Licklider
, of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), in August 1962, in memoranda discussing his concept for an “Intergalactic Computer Network”. Those ideas contained almost everything that composes the contemporary Internet
.
In the 1950s, the United States Department of Defense
was concerned about the ability to survive a nuclear first strike, due to U.S. nuclear forces' dependence on an effective communication network. Paul Baran
of the Rand Corporation concluded that the strongest communication system would be a computer network that would be able to break messages into units and then route each message unit along a functioning path to its ultimate destination, where the message units would be reassembled to form a copy of the original, coherent, whole message.
In October 1963, Licklider was appointed head of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control programs at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency — ARPA
(the initial ARPANET acronym). He then convinced Ivan Sutherland
and Bob Taylor
that this computer network concept was very important and merited development, although Licklider left ARPA before any contracts were let that worked on this concept.
Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor continued their interest in creating such a computer communications network, in part, to allow ARPA-sponsored researchers at various corporate
and academic
locales to put to use the computers ARPA was providing them, and, in part, to make new software and other computer science
results quickly and widely available. In his office, Taylor had three computer terminals, each connected to separate computers, which ARPA was funding: the first, for the System Development Corporation
(SDC) Q-32, in Santa Monica
; the second, for Project Genie
, at the University of California, Berkeley
; and the third, for Multics
, at MIT
. Taylor recalls the circumstance: "For each of these three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So, if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C., and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley, or M.I.T., about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in touch with them. I said, “Oh Man!”, it’s obvious what to do: If you have these three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go. That idea is the ARPANET".
Somewhat contemporaneously, several other people had (mostly independently) worked out the aspects of “packet switching”, with the first public demonstration presented by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), on August 5, 1968, in the United Kingdom .
(RFQ) was sent to 140 potential bidders. Most computer science companies regarded the ARPA–Taylor proposal as outlandish, and only twelve submitted bids to build the network; of the twelve, ARPA regarded only four as top-rank contractors. At year’s end, ARPA considered only two contractors, and awarded the contract to build the network to BBN Technologies
on April 7, 1969.
The initial, seven-man BBN team were much aided by the technical specificity of their response to the ARPA RFQ — and thus quickly produced the first working computers. This team was led by Frank Heart. The BBN-proposed network closely followed Taylor’s ARPA plan: a network composed of small computers called Interface Message Processor
s (IMPs), that functioned as gateways (today called routers) interconnecting local resources. At each site, the IMPs performed store-and-forward packet switching functions, and were interconnected with modems that were connected to leased line
s, initially running at . The host computers were connected to the IMPs via custom serial communication
interfaces. The system, including the hardware and the packet switching software, was designed and installed in nine months.
The first-generation IMPs were initially built by BBN Technologies using a rugged computer
version of the Honeywell
DDP-516 computer configured with of expandable core memory, and a 16-channel Direct Multiplex Control (DMC) direct memory access
unit. The DMC established custom interfaces with each of the host computers and modems. In addition to the front-panel lamps, the DDP-516 computer also features a special set of 24 indicator-lamps showing the status of the IMP communication channels. Each IMP could support up to four local hosts, and could communicate with up to six remote IMPs via leased lines.
. In A Brief History of the Internet, the Internet Society
describes the coalescing of the technical ideas that produced the ARPANET:
Although the ARPANET was designed to survive subordinate-network losses, the principal reason was that the switching nodes and network links were unreliable, even without any nuclear attacks. About the resource scarcity that spurred the creation of the ARPANET, Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967), said:
The initial ARPANET consisted of four IMPs:
The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969 from Boelter Hall 3420. Supervised by Prof. Leonard Kleinrock
, Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940
Host computer. The message text was the word "login"; the "l" and the "o" letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was "lo". About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full "login". The first permanent ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.
The contents of the first email
transmission in 1971 have been forgotten; in the Frequently Asked Questions section of his Web site, the sender, Ray Tomlinson, who sent the message between two computers sitting side-by-side, claims that the contents were "entirely forgettable, and I have, therefore, forgotten them", and speculates that the message likely was "QWERTYUIOP
" or some such.
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
was connected to the network. Thereafter, the ARPANET grew: 9 IMPs by June 1970 and 13 IMPs by December 1970, then 18 by September 1971 (when the network included 23 university and government hosts); 29 IMPs by August 1972, and 40 by September 1973. By June 1974, there were 46 IMPs, and in July 1975, the network numbered 57 IMPs. By 1981, the number was 213 host computers, with another host connecting approximately every twenty days.
In 1973 a transatlantic satellite link connected the Norwegian Seismic Array
(NORSAR) to the ARPANET, making Norway the first country outside the US to be connected to the network. At about the same time a terrestrial circuit added a London IMP.
In 1975, the ARPANET was declared "operational". The Defense Communications Agency took control since ARPA was intended to fund advanced research.
In 1983, the ARPANET was split with U.S. military sites on their own Military Network (MILNET
) for unclassified defense department communications. The combination was called the Defense Data Network
(DDN).
Separating the civil and military networks reduced the 113-node ARPANET by 68 nodes. Gateways
relayed electronic mail between the two networks. MILNET later became the NIPRNet
.
1971 saw the start of the use of the non-ruggedized (and therefore significantly lighter) Honeywell 316
as an IMP.
It could also be configured as a Terminal Interface Processor (TIP), which provided terminal server
support for up to 63 ASCII
serial terminals through a multi-line controller in place of one of the hosts. The 316 featured a greater degree of integration than the 516, which made it less expensive and easier to maintain. The 316 was configured with 40 kB of core memory for a TIP. The size of core memory was later increased, to 32 kB for the IMPs, and 56 kB for TIPs, in 1973.
In 1975, BBN introduced IMP software running on the Pluribus
multi-processor. These appeared in a small number of sites. In 1981, BBN introduced IMP software running on its own C/30 processor product.
In 1983, TCP/IP protocols replaced NCP as the ARPANET’s principal protocol, and the ARPANET then became one subnet of the early Internet.
, but some IMPs remained in service as late as 1989.
The ARPANET Completion Report, jointly published by BBN
and ARPA, concludes that:
In the wake of ARPANET being formally decommissioned on February 28, 1990, Vinton Cerf wrote the following lamentation, entitled "Requiem of the ARPANET" :
Senator Albert Gore, Jr.
began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991
(commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by Leonard Kleinrock
, professor of computer science at UCLA. The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure
(NII) which Al Gore called the "information superhighway
". ARPANET was the subject of two IEEE Milestones, both dedicated in 2009.
, which defined the transmission of messages to an IMP. The message format was designed to work unambiguously with a broad range of computer architectures. An 1822 message essentially consisted of a message type, a numeric host address, and a data field. To send a data message to another host, the transmitting host formatted a data message containing the destination host's address and the data message being sent, and then transmitted the message through the 1822 hardware interface. The IMP then delivered the message to its destination address, either by delivering it to a locally connected host, or by delivering it to another IMP. When the message was ultimately delivered to the destination host, the receiving IMP would transmit a Ready for Next Message (RFNM) acknowledgement to the sending, host IMP.
Unlike modern Internet datagrams, the ARPANET was designed to reliably transmit 1822 messages, and to inform the host computer when it loses a message; the contemporary IP is unreliable, whereas the TCP
is reliable. Nonetheless, the 1822 protocol proved inadequate for handling multiple connections among different applications residing in a host computer. This problem was addressed with the Network Control Program
(NCP), which provided a standard method to establish reliable, flow-controlled, bidirectional communications links among different processes in different host computers. The NCP interface allowed application software
to connect across the ARPANET by implementing higher-level communication protocols, an early example of the protocol layering concept incorporated to the OSI model
. In 1983, TCP/IP protocols replaced NCP as the ARPANET’s principal protocol, and the ARPANET then became one component of the early Internet.
Packet switching
Packet switching is a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data – regardless of content, type, or structure – into suitably sized blocks, called packets. Packet switching features delivery of variable-bit-rate data streams over a shared network...
network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. The network was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
for use by its projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by Lawrence Roberts
Lawrence Roberts (scientist)
Lawrence G. Roberts received the Draper Prize in 2001 and the Principe de Asturias Award in 2002 "for the development of the Internet" along with Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, and Vinton Cerf....
of the Lincoln Laboratory
Lincoln Laboratory
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as...
.
Packet switching, today the dominant basis for data communications worldwide, was a new concept at the time of the conception of the ARPANET. Data communications had been based on the idea of circuit switching
Circuit switching
Circuit switching is a methodology of implementing a telecommunications network in which two network nodes establish a dedicated communications channel through the network before the nodes may communicate. The circuit guarantees the full bandwidth of the channel and remains connected for the...
, as in the traditional telephone circuit, wherein a telephone call reserves a dedicated circuit for the duration of the communication session and communication is possible only between the two parties interconnected.
With packet switching, a data system could use one communications link to communicate with more than one machine by collecting data into datagram
Datagram
A datagram is a basic transfer unit associated with a packet-switched network in which the delivery, arrival time, and order are not guaranteed....
s and transmit these as packets onto the attached network link, whenever the link is not in use. Thus, not only could the link be shared, much as a single post box
Post box
A post box is a physical box into which members of the public can deposit outgoing mail intended for collection by the agents of a country's postal service...
can be used to post letters to different destinations, but each packet could be routed independently of other packets.
History
The earliest ideas for a computer network intended to allow general communications among computer users were formulated by computer scientistComputer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
J. C. R. Licklider
J. C. R. Licklider
Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider , known simply as J.C.R. or "Lick" was an American computer scientist, considered one of the most important figures in computer science and general computing history...
, of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), in August 1962, in memoranda discussing his concept for an “Intergalactic Computer Network”. Those ideas contained almost everything that composes the contemporary Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
In the 1950s, the United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
was concerned about the ability to survive a nuclear first strike, due to U.S. nuclear forces' dependence on an effective communication network. Paul Baran
Paul Baran
Paul Baran was a Polish American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks.He invented packet switching techniques, and went on to start several companies and develop other technologies that are an essential part of the Internet and other modern digital...
of the Rand Corporation concluded that the strongest communication system would be a computer network that would be able to break messages into units and then route each message unit along a functioning path to its ultimate destination, where the message units would be reassembled to form a copy of the original, coherent, whole message.
In October 1963, Licklider was appointed head of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control programs at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency — ARPA
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...
(the initial ARPANET acronym). He then convinced Ivan Sutherland
Ivan Sutherland
Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal...
and Bob Taylor
Robert Taylor (computer scientist)
Robert William Taylor , known as Bob Taylor, is an Internet pioneer, who led teams that made major contributions to the personal computer, and other related technologies....
that this computer network concept was very important and merited development, although Licklider left ARPA before any contracts were let that worked on this concept.
Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor continued their interest in creating such a computer communications network, in part, to allow ARPA-sponsored researchers at various corporate
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
and academic
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
locales to put to use the computers ARPA was providing them, and, in part, to make new software and other computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
results quickly and widely available. In his office, Taylor had three computer terminals, each connected to separate computers, which ARPA was funding: the first, for the System Development Corporation
System Development Corporation
System Development Corporation , based in Santa Monica, California, was considered the world's first computer software company.SDC started in 1955 as the systems engineering group for the SAGE air defense ground system at the RAND Corporation...
(SDC) Q-32, in Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
; the second, for Project Genie
Project Genie
Project Genie was a computer research project started in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley.It produced an early time-sharing system including the Berkeley Timesharing System, which was then commercialized as the SDS 940.-History:...
, at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
; and the third, for Multics
Multics
Multics was an influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964 in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
, at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. Taylor recalls the circumstance: "For each of these three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So, if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C., and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley, or M.I.T., about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in touch with them. I said, “Oh Man!”, it’s obvious what to do: If you have these three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go. That idea is the ARPANET".
Somewhat contemporaneously, several other people had (mostly independently) worked out the aspects of “packet switching”, with the first public demonstration presented by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), on August 5, 1968, in the United Kingdom .
Creation
By mid-1968, Taylor had prepared a complete plan for a computer network, and, after ARPA’s approval, a Request for QuotationRequest for Quotation
A request for quotation is a standard business process whose purpose is to invite suppliers into a bidding process to bid on specific products or services. RFQ, generally means the same thing as IFB ....
(RFQ) was sent to 140 potential bidders. Most computer science companies regarded the ARPA–Taylor proposal as outlandish, and only twelve submitted bids to build the network; of the twelve, ARPA regarded only four as top-rank contractors. At year’s end, ARPA considered only two contractors, and awarded the contract to build the network to BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
on April 7, 1969.
The initial, seven-man BBN team were much aided by the technical specificity of their response to the ARPA RFQ — and thus quickly produced the first working computers. This team was led by Frank Heart. The BBN-proposed network closely followed Taylor’s ARPA plan: a network composed of small computers called Interface Message Processor
Interface Message Processor
The Interface Message Processor was the packet-switching node used to interconnect participant networks to the ARPANET from the late 1960s to 1989. It was the first generation of gateways, which are known today as routers. An IMP was a ruggedized Honeywell DDP-516 minicomputer with...
s (IMPs), that functioned as gateways (today called routers) interconnecting local resources. At each site, the IMPs performed store-and-forward packet switching functions, and were interconnected with modems that were connected to leased line
Leased line
A leased line is a service contract between a provider and a customer, whereby the provider agrees to deliver a symmetric telecommunications line connecting two or more locations in exchange for a monthly rent . It is sometimes known as a 'Private Circuit' or 'Data Line' in the UK or as CDN in Italy...
s, initially running at . The host computers were connected to the IMPs via custom serial communication
Serial communication
In telecommunication and computer science, serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus. This is in contrast to parallel communication, where several bits are sent as a whole, on a link with several parallel channels...
interfaces. The system, including the hardware and the packet switching software, was designed and installed in nine months.
The first-generation IMPs were initially built by BBN Technologies using a rugged computer
Rugged computer
A rugged computer is a computer specifically designed to reliably operate in harsh usage environments and conditions, such as strong vibrations, extreme temperatures and wet or dusty conditions...
version of the Honeywell
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....
DDP-516 computer configured with of expandable core memory, and a 16-channel Direct Multiplex Control (DMC) direct memory access
Direct memory access
Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....
unit. The DMC established custom interfaces with each of the host computers and modems. In addition to the front-panel lamps, the DDP-516 computer also features a special set of 24 indicator-lamps showing the status of the IMP communication channels. Each IMP could support up to four local hosts, and could communicate with up to six remote IMPs via leased lines.
Misconceptions of design goals
Common ARPANET lore posits that the computer network was designed to survive a nuclear attackNuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
. In A Brief History of the Internet, the Internet Society
Internet Society
The Internet Society or ISOC is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 to provide direction in Internet related standards, education, and policy...
describes the coalescing of the technical ideas that produced the ARPANET:
- It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started, claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.
Although the ARPANET was designed to survive subordinate-network losses, the principal reason was that the switching nodes and network links were unreliable, even without any nuclear attacks. About the resource scarcity that spurred the creation of the ARPANET, Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967), said:
- The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA’s mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them.
ARPANET deployed
- University of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesThe University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA), where Leonard KleinrockLeonard KleinrockLeonard Kleinrock is an American engineer and computer scientist. A computer science professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, he made several important contributions to the field of computer networking, in particular to the theoretical side of computer networking...
had established a Network Measurement Center, with an SDSScientific Data SystemsScientific Data Systems, or SDS, was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky, a veteran of Packard Bell and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was an early adopter of integrated circuits in computer design and the first to employ silicon...
Sigma 7 being the first computer attached to it; - The Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research CenterAugmentation Research CenterStanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center was founded in the 1960s by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come out of ARC was the revolutionary oN-Line...
, where Douglas EngelbartDouglas EngelbartDouglas Carl Engelbart is an American inventor, and an early computer and internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges of human-computer interaction, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs...
had created the ground-breaking NLSNLS (computer system)NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute during the 1960s...
system, a very important early hypertextHypertextHypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
system (with the SDS 940SDS 940The SDS 940 was Scientific Data Systems' first machine designed to support time sharing directly, and was based on the SDS 930's 24-bit CPU built primarily of integrated circuits. It was announced in February 1966 and shipped in April, becoming a major part of Tymshare's expansion during the 1960s...
that ran NLS, named "Genie", being the first host attached); - University of California, Santa BarbaraUniversity of California, Santa BarbaraThe University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
(UCSB), with the CullerGlen CullerGlen Jacob Culler was a professor of electrical engineering and an important early innovator in the development of the Internet. Culler joined the University of California, Santa Barbara mathematics faculty in 1959 and helped put the campus in the forefront of what would become the field of...
-Fried Interactive Mathematics Centre's IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
360/75, running OS/MVT being the machine attached; - The University of UtahUniversity of UtahThe University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
's Computer Science Department, where Ivan SutherlandIvan SutherlandIvan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal...
had moved, running a DECDigital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
PDP-10PDP-10The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
running TENEXTOPS-20The TOPS-20 operating system by Digital Equipment Corporation was the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. TOPS-20 began in 1969 as the TENEX operating system of Bolt, Beranek and Newman...
.
The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969 from Boelter Hall 3420. Supervised by Prof. Leonard Kleinrock
Leonard Kleinrock
Leonard Kleinrock is an American engineer and computer scientist. A computer science professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, he made several important contributions to the field of computer networking, in particular to the theoretical side of computer networking...
, Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940
SDS 940
The SDS 940 was Scientific Data Systems' first machine designed to support time sharing directly, and was based on the SDS 930's 24-bit CPU built primarily of integrated circuits. It was announced in February 1966 and shipped in April, becoming a major part of Tymshare's expansion during the 1960s...
Host computer. The message text was the word "login"; the "l" and the "o" letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was "lo". About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full "login". The first permanent ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.
The contents of the first email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
transmission in 1971 have been forgotten; in the Frequently Asked Questions section of his Web site, the sender, Ray Tomlinson, who sent the message between two computers sitting side-by-side, claims that the contents were "entirely forgettable, and I have, therefore, forgotten them", and speculates that the message likely was "QWERTYUIOP
QWERTY
QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters appearing in the topleft letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the...
" or some such.
Growth and evolution
In March, 1970, the ARPANET reached the east coast of the United States, when an IMP at BBNBBN Technologies
BBN Technologies is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
was connected to the network. Thereafter, the ARPANET grew: 9 IMPs by June 1970 and 13 IMPs by December 1970, then 18 by September 1971 (when the network included 23 university and government hosts); 29 IMPs by August 1972, and 40 by September 1973. By June 1974, there were 46 IMPs, and in July 1975, the network numbered 57 IMPs. By 1981, the number was 213 host computers, with another host connecting approximately every twenty days.
In 1973 a transatlantic satellite link connected the Norwegian Seismic Array
NORSAR
NORSAR or Norwegian Seismic Array was established in 1968 as part of the Norwegian-US agreement for the detection of earthquakes and nuclear explosions. NORSAR was the first non-US site included in ARPANET in 1973...
(NORSAR) to the ARPANET, making Norway the first country outside the US to be connected to the network. At about the same time a terrestrial circuit added a London IMP.
In 1975, the ARPANET was declared "operational". The Defense Communications Agency took control since ARPA was intended to fund advanced research.
In 1983, the ARPANET was split with U.S. military sites on their own Military Network (MILNET
MILNET
In computer networking, MILNET was the name given to the part of the ARPANET internetwork designated for unclassified United States Department of Defense traffic....
) for unclassified defense department communications. The combination was called the Defense Data Network
Defense Data Network
The Defense Data Network was a computer networking effort of the United States Department of Defense from 1983 through 1995.-History:In 1975, the Defense Communication Agency took over operation of the ARPANET as it became an operational tool instead of a research project. In 1983, plans for a...
(DDN).
Separating the civil and military networks reduced the 113-node ARPANET by 68 nodes. Gateways
Gateway (telecommunications)
In telecommunications, the term gateway has the following meaning:*In a communications network, a network node equipped for interfacing with another network that uses different protocols....
relayed electronic mail between the two networks. MILNET later became the NIPRNet
NIPRNet
The Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network is used to exchange sensitive but unclassified information between "internal" users as well as providing users access to the Internet. NIPRNet is composed of Internet Protocol routers owned by the United States Department of Defense...
.
Technology
Support for inter-IMP circuits of up to 230.4 kbit/s was added in 1970, although considerations of cost and IMP processing power meant this capability was not actively used.1971 saw the start of the use of the non-ruggedized (and therefore significantly lighter) Honeywell 316
Honeywell 316
The Honeywell 316 was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by Honeywell starting in 1969. It is part of the Series 16 which includes the Models 116, 316, 416, 516 and 716. They were commonly used for data acquisition and control, remote message concentration, clinical laboratory systems and...
as an IMP.
It could also be configured as a Terminal Interface Processor (TIP), which provided terminal server
Terminal server
A terminal server enables organizations to connect devices with an RS-232, RS-422 or RS-485 serial interface to a local area network . Products marketed as terminal servers can be very simple devices that do not offer any security functionality, such as data encryption and user authentication...
support for up to 63 ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
serial terminals through a multi-line controller in place of one of the hosts. The 316 featured a greater degree of integration than the 516, which made it less expensive and easier to maintain. The 316 was configured with 40 kB of core memory for a TIP. The size of core memory was later increased, to 32 kB for the IMPs, and 56 kB for TIPs, in 1973.
In 1975, BBN introduced IMP software running on the Pluribus
Pluribus
The Pluribus multiprocessor was an early multi-processor computer designed by BBN for use as a packet switch in the ARPANET. Its design later influenced the BBN Butterfly computer....
multi-processor. These appeared in a small number of sites. In 1981, BBN introduced IMP software running on its own C/30 processor product.
In 1983, TCP/IP protocols replaced NCP as the ARPANET’s principal protocol, and the ARPANET then became one subnet of the early Internet.
Shutdown and legacy
The original IMPs and TIPs were phased out as the ARPANET was shut down after the introduction of the NSFNetNSFNet
The National Science Foundation Network was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation beginning in 1985 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States...
, but some IMPs remained in service as late as 1989.
The ARPANET Completion Report, jointly published by BBN
BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
and ARPA, concludes that:
- ... it is somewhat fitting to end on the note that the ARPANET program has had a strong and direct feedback into the support and strength of computer science, from which the network, itself, sprang.
In the wake of ARPANET being formally decommissioned on February 28, 1990, Vinton Cerf wrote the following lamentation, entitled "Requiem of the ARPANET" :
It was the first, and being first, was best,
but now we lay it down to ever rest.
Now pause with me a moment, shed some tears.
For auld lang syneAuld Lang Syne"Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song . It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world; its traditional use being to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight...
, for love, for years and years
of faithful service, duty done, I weep.
Lay down thy packet, now, O friend, and sleep.
-Vinton Cerf
Senator Albert Gore, Jr.
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991
High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991
The High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 is an Act of Congress promulgated in the 102nd United States Congress as on 1991-12-09...
(commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by Leonard Kleinrock
Leonard Kleinrock
Leonard Kleinrock is an American engineer and computer scientist. A computer science professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, he made several important contributions to the field of computer networking, in particular to the theoretical side of computer networking...
, professor of computer science at UCLA. The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure
National Information Infrastructure
The National Information Infrastructure was the product of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. It was a telecommunications policy buzzword, which was popularized during the Clinton Administration under the leadership of Vice-President Al Gore...
(NII) which Al Gore called the "information superhighway
Information superhighway
The information superhighway or infobahnwas a popular term used through the 1990s to refer to digital communication systems and the Internet telecommunications network. It is associated with United States Senator and later Vice-President Al Gore....
". ARPANET was the subject of two IEEE Milestones, both dedicated in 2009.
Software and protocols
The starting point for host-to-host communication on the ARPANET was the 1822 protocol BBN Report 1822BBN Report 1822
BBN Report 1822 specifies the method for connecting a host computer to an ARPANET router, called an Interface Message Processor . This connection and protocol is generally referred to as 1822, the report number....
, which defined the transmission of messages to an IMP. The message format was designed to work unambiguously with a broad range of computer architectures. An 1822 message essentially consisted of a message type, a numeric host address, and a data field. To send a data message to another host, the transmitting host formatted a data message containing the destination host's address and the data message being sent, and then transmitted the message through the 1822 hardware interface. The IMP then delivered the message to its destination address, either by delivering it to a locally connected host, or by delivering it to another IMP. When the message was ultimately delivered to the destination host, the receiving IMP would transmit a Ready for Next Message (RFNM) acknowledgement to the sending, host IMP.
Unlike modern Internet datagrams, the ARPANET was designed to reliably transmit 1822 messages, and to inform the host computer when it loses a message; the contemporary IP is unreliable, whereas the TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...
is reliable. Nonetheless, the 1822 protocol proved inadequate for handling multiple connections among different applications residing in a host computer. This problem was addressed with the Network Control Program
Network Control Program
The Network Control Program provided the middle layers of the protocol stack running on host computers of the ARPANET, the predecessor to the modern Internet...
(NCP), which provided a standard method to establish reliable, flow-controlled, bidirectional communications links among different processes in different host computers. The NCP interface allowed application software
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
to connect across the ARPANET by implementing higher-level communication protocols, an early example of the protocol layering concept incorporated to the OSI model
OSI model
The Open Systems Interconnection model is a product of the Open Systems Interconnection effort at the International Organization for Standardization. It is a prescription of characterizing and standardizing the functions of a communications system in terms of abstraction layers. Similar...
. In 1983, TCP/IP protocols replaced NCP as the ARPANET’s principal protocol, and the ARPANET then became one component of the early Internet.
Network applications
NCP provided a standard set of network services that could be shared by several applications running on a single host computer. This led to the evolution of application protocols that operated, more or less, independently of the underlying network service. When the ARPANET migrated to the Internet protocols in 1983, the major application protocols migrated with it.- E-mail: In 1971, Ray TomlinsonRay TomlinsonRaymond Samuel Tomlinson is a programmer who implemented an email system in 1971 on the ARPANET. Email had been previously sent on other networks such as AUTODIN and PLATO. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to the ARPAnet...
, of BBN sent the first network e-mailE-mailElectronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
. By 1973, e-mail constituted 75 percent of ARPANET traffic.
- File transfer: By 1973, the File Transfer Protocol (FTPFile Transfer ProtocolFile Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
) specification had been defined and implemented, enabling file transfers over the ARPANET.
- Voice traffic: The Network Voice ProtocolNetwork Voice ProtocolThe Network Voice Protocol was a pioneering computer network protocol for transporting human speech over packetized communications networks...
(NVP) specifications were defined in 1977 (RFC 741), then implemented, but, because of technical shortcomings, conference callConference callA conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference calls may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party...
s over the ARPANET never worked well; the contemporary Voice over Internet Protocol (packet voice) was decades away.
Contemporary
- A 1969 Walt Disney movie, The Computer Wore Tennis ShoesThe Computer Wore Tennis ShoesThe Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is a Disney film from 1969, starring Alan Hewitt, Kurt Russell, Frank Webb, and Joe Flynn. It is released by Buena Vista Distribution Company....
- A 1985 episode of the U.S. television sitcom BensonBenson (TV series)Benson is an American television sitcom which aired from September 13, 1979, to April 19, 1986, on ABC. The series was a spin-off from the soap opera parody Soap ; however, Benson discarded the...
includes a scene in which ARPANET is accessed. This is believed to be the first incidence of a popular TV show referencing the Internet or its progenitors.
Post-ARPANET
- In Let the Great World Spin: A Novel, published in 2009 but set in 1974 and written by Colum McCannColum McCannColum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He is a Professor of Contemporary Literature at European Graduate School and Professor of Fiction at CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing with fellow novelists Peter Carey, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize,...
, a character named The Kid and others use ARPANET from a Palo Alto computer to dial phone booths in New York City in order to hear descriptions of Philippe PetitPhilippe PetitPhilippe Petit is a French high-wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, on 7 August 1974...
's tight rope walk between the World Trade CenterWorld Trade CenterThe original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
Towers. - In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake EaterMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eateris an award-winning stealth action video game directed by Hideo Kojima. Snake Eater was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan and published by Konami for the PlayStation 2, and was released on November 17, 2004 in North America; December 16, 2004 in Japan; March 4, 2005 in Europe; and on...
, a character named Sigint takes part in the development of ARPANET after the events depicted in the game. - The Doctor WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
Past Doctor AdventuresPast Doctor AdventuresThe Past Doctor Adventures were a series of spin-off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and published under the BBC Books imprint. For most of their existence, they were published side-by-side with the Eighth Doctor Adventures...
novel Blue BoxBlue Box (Doctor Who)Blue Box is a BBC Books original novel written by Kate Orman and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Sixth Doctor and Peri, written from a first-person perspective by a fictional journalist, in a similar manner to Who Killed Kennedy by...
, written in 2003 but set in 1981, includes a character predicting that by the year 2000 there will be four hundred machines connected to ARPANET. - There is an electronic musicElectronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
artist known as Arpanet, Gerald Donald, one of the members of DrexciyaDrexciyaDrexciya was an electronic music band from Detroit, Michigan. The late James Stinson was the only officially identified member of Drexciya, but it was considered an open secret that he had a partner, Gerald Donald.- Style :...
. The artist's 2002 album Wireless Internet features commentary on the expansion of the internet via wireless communication, with songs such as NTT DoCoMoNTT DoCoMois the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan. The name is officially an abbreviation of the phrase, "do communications over the mobile network", and is also from a compound word dokomo, meaning "everywhere" in Japanese. Docomo provides phone, video phone , i-mode , and mail services...
, dedicated to the mobile communications giant based in Japan. - In numerous The X-FilesThe X-FilesThe X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
episodes ARPANET is referenced and usually hackedHacker (computer security)In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
into by The Lone GunmenThe Lone GunmenThe Lone Gunmen are a trio of fictional characters, Richard "Ringo" Langly, Melvin Frohike and John Fitzgerald Byers, who have recurring roles on the American television series The X-Files. They also starred in a short-lived spin-off, also called The Lone Gunmen. The name was derived from the lone...
. This is most noticeable in the episode "Unusual SuspectsUnusual Suspects"Unusual Suspects" is the third episode of the fifth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Kim Manners and aired in the United States on November 16, 1997 on the Fox network...
". - Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's 2009 novel Inherent ViceInherent ViceInherent Vice is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, originally published in August 2009.-Title:The term "inherent vice" is a legal tenet referring to a "hidden defect of a good or property which of itself is the cause of its deterioration, damage, or wastage...
, set in southern California circa 1970, contains a character who accesses the "ARPAnet" throughout the course of the book. - The viral marketing campaign for the video game Resistance 2Resistance 2Resistance 2 is a science fiction first person shooter video game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. The game was released in North America on November 4, 2008, Japan on November 13, 2008, and in Europe on November 28, 2008...
features a website similar in design and purpose to ARPANET, called SRPANET.
See also
- Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource SharingComputer Networks: The Heralds of Resource SharingComputer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing is a documentary film from 1972, produced by Steven King and directed/edited by Peter Chvany, about ARPANET. It features many of the most important names in computer networking.Speaking parts:...
— 1972 documentary film - AMPRNetAMPRNetThe AMPRNet is a name used by amateur radio operators for computer networks connected over amateur radio. Other names for the network include IPv4 Network 44/8 and Network 44...
- Project CybersynProject CybersynProject Cybersyn was a Chilean attempt at real-time computer-controlled planned economy in the years 1970–1973 . It was essentially a network of telex machines that linked factories with a single computer centre in Santiago, which controlled them using principles of cybernetics...
— 1970 Chilean national net project - .arpa.arpaThe domain name arpa is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is used exclusively for technical infrastructure purposes...
Further reading
- Arthur Norberg, Judy E. O'Neill, Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962–1982 (Johns Hopkins University, 1996) pp. 153–196
- A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade (Bolt, Beranek and Newman, 1981)
- Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, 1996) ISBN 0-7434-6837-6
- Janet Abbate, Inventing the InternetInventing the InternetInventing the Internet is a book written by Janet Abbate. MIT Press published the book in 1999. It is in print with ISBN 0-262-51115-0. The book might be useful to a person interested in the history of packet switching, and possibly other communications paradigms, as well.The following is a copy of...
(MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999) pp. 36–111 - Michael A. BanksMichael A. BanksMichael A. Banks is a science fiction writer and editor. He is perhaps best known for nonfiction works about the genre and collaborations with Mack Reynolds. Banks has several other novels to his credit, Michael A. Banks (born 1951) is a science fiction writer and editor. He is perhaps best...
On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders (APress/Springer Verlag, 2008) ISBN 1-4302-0869-4 - Peter H. SalusPeter H. SalusPeter H. Salus is a linguist, computer scientist, historian of technology, author in many fields, and an editor of books and journals. He has conducted research in germanistics, language acquisition, and computer languages...
, Casting the Net: from ARPANET to Internet and Beyond (Addison-Wesley, 1995) - M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (Viking, New York, 2001)
- The Computer History Museum, SRI International, and BBN Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of First ARPANET Transmission, SRI International, October 29, 2009
Detailed technical reference works
- Larry RobertsLawrence Roberts (scientist)Lawrence G. Roberts received the Draper Prize in 2001 and the Principe de Asturias Award in 2002 "for the development of the Internet" along with Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, and Vinton Cerf....
and Tom Merrill, Toward a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers (Fall AFIPS Conference, October 1966) - Larry Roberts, Multiple computer networks and intercomputer communication (ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles. October 1967)
- D. W. Davies, K. A. Bartlett, R. A. Scantlebury, and P. T. Wilkinson. A digital communications network for computers giving rapid response at remote terminals (ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. October 1967)
- Larry Roberts and Barry Wessler, Computer Network Development to Achieve Resource Sharing (Proceedings of the Spring Joint Computer Conference, Atlantic City, New Jersey – May 1970 )
- Frank Heart, Robert KahnBob KahnRobert Elliot Kahn is an American Internet pioneer, engineer and computer scientist, who, along with Vinton G. Cerf, invented the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol , the fundamental communication protocols at the heart of the Internet.-Career:After receiving a B.E.E...
, Severo OrnsteinSevero OrnsteinSevero M. Ornstein is a retired computer scientist and son of Russian-American composer Leo Ornstein. In 1955 he joined MIT's Lincoln Laboratory as a programmer and designer for the SAGE air-defense system. He later joined the TX-2 group and became a member of the team that designed the LINC. He...
, William CrowtherWilliam CrowtherWilliam Crowther is a computer programmer and caver. He is best known as the co-creator of Colossal Cave Adventure, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of game design and created a new game genre, text adventures.-Biography:During the early 1970s Crowther worked at defense...
, David Walden, The Interface Message Processor for the ARPA Computer Network (1970 Spring Joint Computer Conference, AFIPS Proc. Vol. 36, pp. 551–567, 1970) - Stephen Carr, Stephen Crocker, Vinton CerfVint CerfVinton Gray "Vint" Cerf is an American computer scientist, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with American computer scientist Bob Kahn...
. Host-Host Communication Protocol in the ARPA Network (1970 Spring Joint Computer Conference, AFIPS Proc. Vol 36, pp. 589–598, 1970) - Severo Ornstein, Frank Heart, William Crowther, S. B. Russell, H. K. Rising, and A. Michel, The Terminal IMP for the ARPA Computer Network (1972 Spring Joint Computer Conference, AFIPS Proc. Vol. 40, pp. 243–254, 1972)
- John McQuillan, William Crowther, Bernard Cosell, David Walden, and Frank Heart, Improvements in the Design and Performance of the ARPA Network (1972 Fall Joint Computer Conference, AFIPS Proc. Vol. 41, Pt. 2, pp. 741–754, 1972)
- Feinler, Elizabeth J.; Postel, Jonathan B.Jon PostelJonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards...
ARPANET Protocol Handbook, NIC 7104 (Network Information Center (NIC), SRI International, Menlo Park, January, 1978) - Lawrence Roberts, The Evolution of Packet Switching (Proceedings of the IEEE, November, 1978)
- Larry Roberts, The ARPANET & Computer Networks (Sept 1986 ACM )
External links
- ARPANET Maps 1969 to 1977
- Oral history interview with Robert E. Kahn, Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Focuses on Kahn's role in the development of computer networking from 1967 through the early 1980s. Beginning with his work at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), Kahn discusses his involvement as the ARPANET proposal was being written and then implemented, and his role in the public demonstration of the ARPANET. The interview continues into Kahn's involvement with networking when he moves to IPTO in 1972, where he was responsible for the administrative and technical evolution of the ARPANET, including programs in packet radio, the development of a new network protocol (TCP/IP), and the switch to TCP/IP to connect multiple networks. - Oral history interview with Vinton Cerf. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Cerf describes his involvement with the ARPA network, and his relationships with Bolt Beranek and Newman, Robert Kahn, Lawrence Roberts, and the Network Working Group. - Oral history interview with Paul Baran. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Baran describes his work at RAND, and discusses his interaction with the group at ARPA who were responsible for the later development of the ARPANET. - Oral history interview with Leonard Kleinrock. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Kleinrock discusses his work on the ARPANET. - Oral history interview with Larry Roberts. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. - Oral history interview with Stephen Lukasik. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Lukasik discusses his tenure at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the development of computer networks and the ARPANET. - Looking back at the ARPANET effort
- The Computer History Museum Images of ARPANET from 1964 onwards.
- A Brief History of the Internet
- Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet
- Leonard Kleinrock's Personal History/Biography
- Personal anecdote of the first message ever sent over the ARPANET
- Len Kleinrock on the Origins (subscribers only)
- Internet Chronology by Larry Roberts
- The Faces in Front of the Monitors
- Doug Engelbart's Role in ARPANET History