These days we take the internet for granted. It is facilitates a cheap means of communication via e-mail and real time messaging. All this are taken now as part of our lives. We couldn’t imagine a world without the internet.
Welcome to the the history of the internet
The internet is in reality a world wide network of computers. The great grand parent of the internet is the ARPA network of the US Department of Defense which linked ARPA funded research institutions. This was the 1960s’. The maximum bandwidth rate ( which is the capacity of data transfer ) available was than the stunning 56kb/s.
The protocols which means the set of rules for computers to communicate with each other was TCP ( transmission control protocol ) and Internet Protocol. Other protocols such as FTP ( file transfer protocol ) appeared a little later.
The communication between the computers were through packet switched data which mean data is sent as packets.
In 1971 Intel Corporation introduced the microprocessor. Computer manufacturers’ began to use the Intel processor line up.
In 1981 IBM invented there personal computer based on Intel processors.
During these times companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Cisco, and Compaq appeared. These companies are now giants in the IT industry. They all helped develop the internet.
The internet around these times were difficult to use and was available through protocols like TCP/IP,FTP,POP2, Telnet and so on.
Electronic mail ( e-mail ) was available during these times and cost about 50 cents per e-mail. This is much cheaper than post and courier service of sending letters to communicate.
In 1988 the IRC ( Internet Relay Chat ) was invented by Jarkko Oikarinen and this initiated easy to use real time chatting between individuals using small IRC client programs. IRC is also a protocol. Chatting IRC requires an IRC server and a resident program on the user machine called an IRC client. The worlds’ most famous IRC client is mIRC which was released by Khaled Mardam Bey in 1995.
In 1989 Tim Berners Lee created the worlds’ first web server, HTML ( hypertext markup language ) and a small command line browser. In 1991 the worlds first web site was online. In 1993 Marc Andreessen created Mosaic which was almost the worlds first graphical browser which means it has user interface and is just like a Windows program. The internet exploded in use due to this in 1993. Andreessen found Netscape in 1994 which released the Netscape Navigator browser to the world. In 1995 Microsoft released its own browser the Internet Explorer bundled with Windows 95.
In 1994 the worlds first search engine appeared. It was yahoo and was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo.
In 1995 Sun Microsystems released Java Technology to the world and the it added dynamic content ( animation, video, audio, and so on ) to the web pages.
In 1996 Sabeer Bhatia created the first web mail which is hotmail. Prior to this, e-mail ( electronic mail ) was based in ISP provided POP3 ( Post Office Protocol 3 ) and required a separate program ( like Outlook express ) to read e-mail. Hotmail is the oldest web mail and Microsoft bought hotmail for 400 million USD in 1997.
In 1997 HTML editors appeared. HTML is a markup language created by first Tim Berners Lee and its’ rules are set by World Wide Web Consortium which is an organization found by the afore mentioned in 1994. The first editors were Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Before this web pages had to be hand coded with HTML. This was a cumbersome task and productivity increased with the release of these editors.
In 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google which used a new methodology of internet search. Google expanded and is now the worlds’ largest internet company and one of the largest software companies.
In 2003 Myspace which is social networking web site appeared. It is now the worlds’ second most famous social networking web site. Prior to this other social utility sites like hi5 and tagged were in existence.
The same year, in 2003 the term Web 2.0 was mentioned by Eric Knorr.
Web 2.0 means a new way of using the internet in which the user is able to modify and interact what he or she is using. Facebook ( which was launched in 2006 ), Myspace, Blogger, Twitter, Amazon, and Ebay are all examples of Web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 can be described as a conversation while Web 1.0 ( referred to as brochure web ) is a one way speech...In Web 2.0 users can modify, update and participate and create content of the web sites they visit
Today we can’t live without the internet. It has become a very important means of communication. We live in a world which has shrunk by using the internet.
Windows Live, Yahoo, Google and web browsers Firefox and Internet Explorer are used by us every day.
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