The network that became known as the Internet began as a project of the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1969 the department's Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) established a wide-area network with two nodes using leased lines called ARPANET, which was called an internetwork, or a network of networks, which was shortened to the term internet. The nodes on this network were universities and private research facilities working under ARPA contracts. The thought was that researchers could better share data if the communication was easier.
At first, the network was a raw data transfer device with none of the applications users now take for granted. The applications came later, out of need. By 1972, for example, enough nodes existed that users needed the ability to send text messages about the state and future expansion of the network. Because of this need, someone wrote a program that allowed text messages to be sent from one node to another. Electronic mail was born.
While ARPANET quickly gained popularity in research and academic circles, many years passed before the public at large became aware of it. This delay may have been a good thing because the network was created, in part, to test the ideas of internetworking as well as to use them.
The design and protocols of the network went through many iterations, some of which were so fundamental as to cause a flag day, which in computer science jargon is a change that is not backwards compatible, thus requiring all users to implement the change on the same day. Such changes were trouble enough when there were only a few nodes on the network, but would be almost impossible now.
ARPANET spawned imitators, creating internetworks for those not working for ARPA. Soon it seemed every group of researchers had its own internet. One internet, for instance, was devoted to magnetic fusion researchers working for the U.S. Department of Energy. Another new internet was NSFNET, founded in 1986 by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The original purpose of this network was to connect five supercomputers that the foundation had commissioned at schools across the country, but this goal was quickly amended to support all forms of scholastic use. The NSFNET used the protocols of the ARPANET but had a much larger scope. It eventually reached every major college and university and became publicly known in a way ARPANET never was.
These developments soon attracted commercial interest. Even at this early stage, it was easy to see possibilities in the technology well apart from campus use. The NSFNET charter, though, limited its use strictly to academic pursuits. In response, private companies developed their own networks to allow commercial traffic. When they arrived, the Internet, with a capital I, was born. The current Internet refers to the worldwide network that developed out of the NSFNET project. The term internet, with a small i, is a generic term for a network that connects other networks.
Because these private networks captured all of the burgeoning commercial traffic, they quickly grew in capacity, to the point where the original internets that inspired them were superfluous. Eventually both the ARPANET and NSFNET were dissolved, leaving all traffic in the hands of commercial networks.
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