History Of The Internet
The first TCP/IP-wide area network was created on January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older protocols to TCP/IP.
In 1984, the National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of a 1.5 megabit/second network which became known as NSFNET. In 1989 the US Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial MCI Mail system.
Soon after, other commercial e-mail services were connected such as OnTyme, Telemail, and CompuServe. Three Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were also created: UUNET, PSINET, and CERFNET. More and more seperate networks were created that eventually interconnected with this large, growing network of networks.
The ability of TCP/IP to work over virtually any pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth, although the rapid growth of the Internet was due primarily to the availability of commercial routers from companies such as Cisco Systems, Proteon and Juniper, the availability of commercial Ethernet equipment for local-area networking and the widespread implementation of TCP/IP on the UNIX operating system.
Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost a decade, the network did not gain public face until the 1990s. On August 6, 1991, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, (CERN), which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
By 1996 usage of the word “Internet” had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a reference to the World Wide Web. Over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks have remained seperate).
