A Brief History of the Internet
ARPANET: The Beginning
The U.S. Department of Defense laid the foundation of the Internet
roughly 30 years ago with a network called ARPANET. But the general
public didn't use the Internet much until after the development
of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. As recently as June 1993,
there were only 130 Web sites. Now there are millions. Here's a
quick look at how it all came to be.
Tim Berners-Lee: Father of the Web
The World Wide Web came into being in 1991, thanks to developer
Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle
Physics, also known as Conseil Européenne pour la Recherche
Nucléaire (CERN). The CERN team created the protocol based
on hypertext that makes it possible to connect content on the Web
with hyperlinks. Berners-Lee now directs the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C), a group of industry and university representatives that oversees
the standards of Web technology.
Early on, the Internet was limited to noncommercial
uses because its backbone was provided largely by the National Science
Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and
the U.S. Department of Energy, and funding came from the government.
But as independent networks began to spring up, users could access
commercial Web sites without using the government-funded network.
By the end of 1992, the first commercial online service provider,
Delphi, offered full Internet access to its subscribers, and several
other providers followed.
In June 1993, the Web boasted just 130 sites. By
a year later, the number had risen to nearly 3,000. As of April
1998, there were more than 2.2 million sites on the Web.
Who's in Control Here?
No one authority controls the World Wide Web. Today's Web site authoring
tools allow virtually anyone who has access to a computer and the
Internet to post a Web site and contribute to the definition of
what this medium is and what it can do. But the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) does oversee the development of Web technology.
You shape the Web
According to the developer of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee,
"The dream behind the Web is of a common information space
in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality
is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything,
be it personal, local, or global, be it draft or highly polished."
With the development of tools that allow us to create
Web sites without having any knowledge of hypertext markup language
(HTML), this dream is being realized. If you read the "Creating
a Web Site" chapter, you can be one of the forces shaping this
"common information space."
World Wide Web Consortium
Keeping an eye on the standards of Web technology is W3C, formed
by Berners-Lee in 1994. An international group of industry and university
representatives, W3C promotes the Web by developing common protocols
for transmitting information over the Internet. The consortium provides
information, reference code, and prototype and sample applications
to developers and users. It is hosted by the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science in the United States,
the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique
in Europe, and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan.
What Are Domains?
Domains divide World Wide Web sites into categories based on the
nature of their owner, and they form part of a site's address, or
uniform resource locator (URL). Common top-level domains are:
- .com-For commercial enterprises.
- .org-For nonprofit organizations.
- .net-For networks.
- .edu-For educational institutions.
- .gov-For government organizations.
- .mil-For military services.
- .int-For organizations established by international treaty.
Additional three-letter and four-letter top-level
domains have been proposed, and some are likely to be implemented.
Each country linked to the Web has a two-letter top-level domain. Combase can register a domain name for you.
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