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Creation of the Internet

During the 1950s, communications researchers realized that there was a need to allow general communication between users of various computers and communications networks. This led to research into decentralized networks, queuing theory, and packet switching. The development of ARPANET in the United States would lead to technical developments that made it the centre point for the development of the Net.

An important step in the Internet's development was the National Science Foundation's (NSF) construction of a university network backbone, the NSFNet, in 1986. It was then followed by the opening of the network to commercial interests in 1995. Important disparate networks that have successfully entered the Net include Usenet, Bitnet and the various commercial X.25 networks.

The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 Tim Berners-Lee publicized his new World Wide Web project, two years after he had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. In 1993 the Mosaic web browser version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Net. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Net successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks such as FidoNet have remained separate). This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.

Through keyword-driven web research using search engines like Google, millions worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data.

Some companies and individuals have adopted the use of 'web-logs' or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organisations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. A current example of this practice is Microsoft, via whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Internet".