The 1990s saw the emergence of the Internet as a dominant
communications media but actually its beginnings can be traced back to the late 1960s. The Internet started out as an
idea born within the Rand Corporation, America’s premier
think-tank for Cold War strategy. The Defense Department
wanted to create a method for communications of defense
command and control information in a post-nuclear world. It
required a decentralized network that could function even if
several nodes were destroyed. Ultimately, a request for proposal
was issued from the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency for a packet-switching network that DARPA was planning
to build. Several graduate students and faculty at the
University of California–Los Angeles presented a proposal to
DARPA for establishing a communications network model
known as the ARPANET project. There were no formal standards
written for ARPANET, so a method of documentation
was devised: the RFC or Request for Comment. (This method
continues today and throughout this book, references to RFC
numbers will be made.) By December of 1969, a four-node
network was working and by 1972, thirty-seven nodes were
working in the ARPANET. The network enabled researchers
across the country to share computational resources.
Somewhere along the way, an interesting observation took
place that the ARPANET was really a government subsidized
person-to-person communications service more than a sharing
of resources. The advent of personal user accounts enabled an
electronic mail service. Shortly after this the mailing list was
invented, which enabled the broadcasting of messages to large
numbers of users simultaneously. Researchers could now communicate
personally or share ideas with a group. ARPANET in
its infancy was shared by academic institutions and their financial
backers, the Department of Defense. The network grew
throughout the 1970s because of its ability to add nodes using
many different computers as long as they “spoke” the same language
of ARPANET. The original language was Network
Communications Protocol (NCP) but it was superseded by
TCP/IP in the early 1980s. Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) breaks each message into packets at the source and then
reassembles them at the destination. Each packet contains a
source and destination address so that Internet Protocol (IP) can route the packets through multiple nodes and multiple networks
successfully, even if the nodes or networks operate with
different standards.
The principles behind TCP/IP and the Internet are that
data can go many different paths. Figure 1-3 shows how two
different data sources, A and B, can travel along separate paths
1 and 2, through multiple nodes (n), and them come together
at the destination.
Concurrent to the development of this vast network of
supercomputers was the invention of the personal computer in
the early 1980s. Suddenly thousands of individuals had access
to a computer on their desktop or in their homes. This played
heavily in expanding the ARPANET although it remained
closely controlled until 1983, when the Defense Department
split off the MILNET. By this time many groups of people had
access to computers and through the simplicity of TCP/IP public-
domain protocols, they could link to the network and essentially
add another node. Thus the “network of networks” was
created which ultimately became known as the Internet.
By 1984 the National Science Foundation (NSF) jumped
into the fray, promoting technological advances for ARPANET.
Faster speeds were achieved through upgraded links and newer
supercomputers. Other government agencies joined in expanding
the network and the cumulative knowledge base of information.
A method of identifying users was devised to create
domains with unique identifiers such as com, gov, org, mil, edu, and net. At the same time two-letter country designations such
as uk, dl, and fr were created because the network now crossed
international boundaries. By 1989, ARPANET passed into history,
a victim of its own success. The birth of the Internet had
occurred as a result of many people’s long, arduous hours of
research and development. It was not invented by a politician
as some would like us to believe!
The 1990s saw explosive growth in the Internet, with hundreds
of companies supplying enabling technology, thousands
of companies providing service, and even more users sharing
the combined wealth of knowledge on the Internet. By 1993
there were over 1.3 million computers connected to the
Internet. Today there over 20 million hosts and 500 million
users, sharing ideas and knowledge, swapping emails, and buying
and selling through e-commerce.
The explosive use of the Internet during the 1990s could be
compared to other momentous events such as the invention of
the wheel, the Industrial Revolution, and the invention of the
transistor or integrated circuit. No single “invention” or “revolution”
has affected our lives more than the Internet. A whole
new generation has grown up with access to the ’Net, accepting
its promise to communicate with anyone, anywhere. That
same generation considers the cellular phone a necessity and
would not go anywhere without it.
Although the original intended use of the Internet was file
sharing and electronic mail, it soon became apparent that it
really was a tool to connect people to people. It created the
world’s largest, easily accessible marketplace and gave birth to
e-commerce. The under-25 age group represents a huge market
segment, and an entire industry has grown-up in the “dot
com” market segment catering to the needs of these Internet
users. However, until recently, this was a “tethered” connection.
If the Internet could be extended beyond wired connections,
it could be accessed anytime and anywhere.
This brings us back full circle to wireless technologies and
raises the question, “How can I access the Internet from
where I am at this moment? How do we put all of this together
to benefit us?” Let’s consult our crystal ball to look into the future. We know that the Internet will expand our horizons
and opportunities for new services. We also know that wireless
communications is becoming very popular and that data rates
are increasing. Added to all of this, we can know wireless user
location thanks to GPS. An application environment to connect
the wireless user to the Internet is ready. All that the
Wireless Internet needs are applications to drive user adoption.
For service providers, developing and launching these
applications is a gamble. If user satisfaction is low, the
Wireless Internet will be a huge disaster. The financial implications
will be staggering to the world economy, considering
that service providers have committed billions of dollars on
licenses, infrastructure, and development all predicated on
the success of the Wireless Internet.