The History of The Internet

I recently compiled my view of Internet history by extracting data points from video scripts and other sources. You can view the complete text, which is open for use and forking: networking/internet/history of the internet. While it is unlikely that any human can keep all the "facts" about the Internet swapped into consciousness, and even less likely that everyone would agree on those facts, that does not prevent us from reviewing history to see what lessons can be learned.

Below is the non-AI written preface to this history, highlighting some things that stood out to me:

• The emergence of transistors, memory, and other technologies gave rise to the human imagination of store and forward networks and their manifestation by the end of the same decade.
• The role of the military, academia, and research in the evolution of the Internet, though significantly the movement of key initiatives to civilian control, and the sheer joy of connecting and sharing as a significant driving force.
• Keeping the Internet closed restricted its growth during a period when networking was expanding in corporate use cases. Conversely, opening the Internet to commercial traffic catalyzed global expansion for businesses and consumers.
• The success of Apple, Microsoft, and UNIX graphical user interfaces means the Internet explosion only happens with HTTP/HTML and the web browser.
• Indeed, the success of the PC as a terminal in every home also ensures that the Internet has something to talk to. Later, of course, mobile devices will as well.
• The confluence of technology, private investment, public investment, research, standards bodies, and human leadership in the evolution of a global phenomenon.

Again, the full text is here: networking/internet/history of the internet, and the preface is below.

Preface

The story of the Internet is commonly viewed through the lens of its founders and critical institutions, such as standards bodies like the IETF. Why not? It is a great story; that lens alone is more than most humans could reasonably be expected to chew off. The story you read here will be similar for all the stated reasons - who can keep all the history in their consciousness at what time, and how many people can agree on it?

At the same time, stepping back just a little from that lens opens the landscape of innovation to a few other domains. The evolution of the transistor and the modem in the 1950s must have given rise to both the possibilities of computers to come and the joy of communications over distance, first experienced through the telegraph and telephone. The confluence of multiple people in the early 1960s, across various countries and organizations, working independently on ideas that would inform networks to come, must undoubtedly have been stimulated by the evolution of computers and communications implied for the future.

What these visionaries saw coming, "store and forward" communications (computers with memory), were not realized until the end of the 1960s - 1962 Atlas Virtual Memory, 1968 DRAM patent, 1969 1 Kb RAM chip. Yet earlier forms of memory and transistors were already present in the 1950s, hinting at what was to come. While I can only speculate what engineers might have reasonably implied about the future in the 1960s, I can confidently say that without the evolution of CPU and memory technology, the Internet would not have happened when it did. The explosion of personal computing and workstation technology in the 1980s made the compelling value of Internet Architecture evident to all - the ability of a single network to support a limitless number of applications and services. Some of that would have been clear to corporate network users but a smaller scope.

Between the late 1960s and the late 1980s, corporations made significant investments in networking, using technology from companies like IBM and DEC, while the Internet remained relatively small. However, during the 1980s, several key things occurred. The U.S. Department of Defense adopted TCP/IP; the UNIX operating system used TCP/IP as its default networking stack, NSFNET and then UUNET and PSINET emerged, and critically, Vint Cerf convinced MCI to connect its mail service to what we now think of as the Internet, transforming the backbone from a network limited to academia, research, government agencies, and large government contractors to a network poised to carry all network traffic.

A somewhat closed Internet held its growth back while opening up the "Internet" led to explosive growth. The following story does not explore the issue of openness in any depth, yet it is essential to note that the progress of openness across many aspects of I.T. is one of the most compelling story arcs of the last 50 years. Was it predestined that everything that came together in the 1980s would happen then? I am not persuaded it was. Fundamental technology innovations are the catalysts of inflections in history. So, too, are the decisions of individuals and organizations.

The Apple MacIntosh, with its graphical user interface, was released in 1984, followed by Microsoft Windows in 1990. UNIX systems also had various GUIs during this time. When consumers get used to an experience, they come to expect it. It is difficult to imagine the Internet exploding without a graphical interface. I have no idea whether someone else would have developed a graphical interface if Tim Berners-Lee had not. However, Berners-Lee did, and the rest is history. The work by Tim Berners-Lee, the decision by Cern to make that work available to the world, and the follow-on work that resulted in Mosaic put enough pieces in place for a world of corporate and consumer content makers to come into focus. The human-readable approach of HTML stands today in stark contrast to the byte codes sent to remote computers by technologies such as IBM's 3270 terminals, developed for companies' budgets when networking bandwidth and compute technology were scarce and expensive. HTML also starkly contrasted with the binary X protocol used in the UNIX X Windows approach to remote windowing. Even into the 2000s, there were industry conversations about whether protocols like HTML and XML were too verbose and too inefficient. History did not pay attention. HTML was the right approach at the right time. Occasionally, genius is assisted by good timing.

The explosion of the Internet has been aided by underlying communications infrastructure: the telephone network, TDM circuits --> Ethernet circuits, ISDN, DWDM, DSL, Cable Modems, Cell networks, Satellites, undersea cables, and more. Some of this investment occurred before the Internet exploded, and some happened because it exploded. All these technologies have played a critical role in the Internet as we know it today.

The following story is dominated by the software and standards that provide a slice of the Internet's history. However, through this preface, I hope readers will also consider that fundamental breakthroughs in computer hardware technology, communications technology, the contributions by both private and public institutions, the decisions made by individuals and organizations, the timing of events, and the confluence of events, are also compelling aspects of the history of the Internet.