Evolution of the Internet Introduction The Internet is possibly the greatest agent of change in human history. This paper briefly explains its evolution. Discussion The Internet began as a resource for the U.S. military “as a means of allowing a community of computers to share information over distance” (“Birth of the Internet”). It‟s now generally believed that further development was urged in order to have the new medium‟s research capability as much as it was for military use (“Birth of the Internet”). The network was first set up by an organization known as the “Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA),” which in 1967 asked the Stanford Research Institute located in Menlo Park, California, to “design the system” (“Birth of the Internet”). Researchers at Stanford had a system designed within a year, which APRA then “contracted out for implementation” (“Birth of the Internet”). In August of 1969 the “first two nodes were installed at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute,” but the two machines didn‟t make contact until two months later (“Birth of the Internet”). Then, at 10.30 p.m. on October 29, 1969,
UCLA engineering professor Leonard Kleinrock and student Charley Kline attempted to send a message from one Honeywell computer to a similar unit 600 kilometres away at Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto. The connection speed was 50 kb/s (“Birth of the Internet‟).
Ironically enough, they wanted to send the word “login” as the first message, but the system crashed when they hit the letter “g,” cutting the message to “lo” (“Birth of the Internet”). It was a somewhat rocky beginning, and critics will note that systems have been cr