Talk:History of the Internet/Archive 4

Internet vs. internet, summary style, cite templates
This article currently represents a history of the infrastructure and use of the Internet. The word Internet is taken to mean the current concept of the single global network in current use. Internet should only be capatalised when refering to the 'global' internet, which originates after NSFNet. Please be aware that prior to formation of this global 'Internet', the word 'internet' was used to refer to multiple networks and technologies. A paper published prior to this useage may refer to 'connecting to the internet', while refering a hypothetical technology or infrastructure. Try not to confuse these referals to mean the current global Internet.

This is an article with very wide scope, please use summary style. It is very likely that most additions to this page are worthy of, or already have, articles of their own dedicated to the topic. If you feel a particular subtopic that does not have its own article is worthy of it, then create one and link to it, Be Bold.

Specific technical history or development history belongs on the page of the technology concerned, not this page. For instance, development history specific to TCP/IP belongs on TCP-IP. Again, this might mean the creation of new articles.

Please use the appropriate cite templates, and inline link to these cites where appropriate in the text. See Footnotes and Cite sources.

--Barberio 12:15, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

This Is Not A Technical History. Specific technical issues, and detailed discussion of devlopment of the technologies (including 'competition' between different methodologies) belongs on articles specific to that technology. There are too many technologies developed for and involved with the current Global Internet for them to be included in a single article. Please either expand the pages for those technologies, or create them. --Barberio 13:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

"Internet should only be capatalised when refering to the 'global' internet, which originates after NSFNet. " The above statement is incorrect with respect to "originates after NSFnet". Both CSNET and NSFNET supported users in multiple countries and were 'global'. The statement should, like all wikipedia statements, either be appropriately backed up by references or removed from the guidelines. 38.127.208.3 (talk) 12:52, 30 November 2011 (UTC). The internet is the most useful thing on earth if no one figured out the way to make electricity we would .....DIED.....

Big Missing Item NOTE
While we all know Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore invented the internet along with inventing global warming, also in the 1990's, in fact the DARPANET was begun in 1968, when this note writer - wet willy sr - approved the DARPA contracts to use PDP8's to hook the first DARPANET up with contract let out of RADC (Rome Air Development Center) Griffis ARB, Rome, NY. : ))

Also missing the global OPARS network, hooking all the globe together in 1969, decades before you first show it, also approved by the CINCU, wet willy sr.

See also global OTH network, PAVEPAWS, Project Overlord, etc - all in the years 1968-69. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.230.159.228 (talk) 08:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Missing topics

 * First internet worm
 * subsequent worms
 * Point of lowest usage after dot-com collapse
 * Routing failures
 * congestion collapse
 * any mention of Van-Jacobsen
 * ICANN disputes of all kinds
 * pictures of different applications at different times (text based telnet / gopher / Mosaic)
 * any mention of UNIX and the importance of the integration of TCP-IP into it.

I think that there is too much focus on non-internet networks, which will have to be deleted to make space for what is missing. 62.121.101.201 23:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * First internet worm
 * subsequent worms
 * Valid topic. Should be included. Go ahead and research it, a simple summary can be added, but I feel this would be worthy of an entire article of its own to fully adress the topic.
 * Point of lowest usage after dot-com collapse
 * This is a figure that would be totaly speculative, or based on a sample of individual ISPs or colleges. If you have some non-anecdotal figures they would be usefull.
 * Routing failures
 * congestion collapse
 * any mention of Van-Jacobsen
 * These are specific technical issues more suited to TCP-IP. The article is a history of the Internet, not a history of TCP-IP development.
 * ICANN disputes of all kinds
 * These would be relevent to the ICANN article.
 * pictures of different applications at different times (text based telnet / gopher / Mosaic)
 * Images would be nice, but not too many.
 * any mention of UNIX and the importance of the integration of TCP-IP into it.
 * Again, this is more suited to TCP-IP


 * We've been over the 'non-internet networks' thing before. The networks included within this article made up the infrastructure of global networks prior to the Internet. X.25 in particular served as a fundamental infrastructure to the early growth. Fidonet and UUCP generated the systems and methods common in email and text based communications. To use an analogy, they are as important as the Articles of Confederation are to the history of the US Constitution. -Barberio 23:54, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

As some of you may know, the first message ever sent over ARPANET was supposed to be 'LOGIN' but the network crashed after the 'O.' Perhaps this interesting bit could be included in a 'Facts' or a 'Trivia' section. ->http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lk/LK/Inet/1stmesg.html
 * First Message

FLAW 360: 360 being the magic scale of pi,; there is that the number of the internet is 742 where mainframes are the majority of concern: in this way i found that 'video' takes up the most memory and it "slows" the mainframe into 247 equations, : in this way a sort of juke box which can equate the 290r of video footage set to 390 might help [come] there is that this is where they are trying to Hatch Mianframes with Servers over various attitudes... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.235.232 (talk) 10:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Asia, South America, Africa and Eastern Europe.
We need more information on the spread of the Internet over Africa and Asia.

At the moment, the only information I have on Africa is a single paper from 1991, when X.25 IPSS and 2400 baud modem UUCP links were still in use. 

I'd don't have any on South America, Asia and Easten Europe. --Barberio 16:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Lots of information added on Asia now. Still need some info on Eastern Europe and South Africa, but not found much. --Barberio 18:55, 25 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I've added some infrastructure material for Africa, Asia/Pacific, and Latin America, and sent messages to colleagues there inviting them to extend my edits. I can do this for Eastern Europe as well.


 * I remain concerned about the warning box that this is US-centric. The ARPANET was not limited to the US, although most of it was there and that early development was US funded. CERN has played a critical role. There are roughly continental infrastructure organizations everywhere but Antarctica. What does it take to reach consensus to present a neutral view? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Internetworking
"The goal of the researchers creating the Internet was to create a network of networks" --Ronda Hauben, "The Internet: On its International Origins and Collaborative Vision (A Work In Progress)", cited in the Notes. --Ancheta Wis 10:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Alohanet
There might be mention of the multiple architectures extant, such as Alohanet, which existed during the time when Bulletin Boards (BBSs) were the only conception that was user-oriented.

The competition of ideas, like the 7-layer protocol, which was supplanted by the simpler TCP/IP 4-layer stack, does not seem to be mentioned. There does not seem to be the sense that there could (and probably will) be other implementations. --Ancheta Wis 10:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * This article is not a specific technical history, nor a history of TCP/IP. An article on the history of TCP/IP development would be a suitable place for discussion of any competition of TCP/IP had with any other networking systems. (Not just OSI, but proposals such as Xerox Network Services.) I should also note that the OSI networking model for system design is still in use, since TCP/IP provided none. *Both* the OSI and TCP/IP standards provided technical methods used in the modern internet. However, this is a technical issue, and should be adressed in a technical history article. --Barberio 13:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Time to synchronize this article with rest of Wikipedia
First, we need to make sure that we're doing a history of the Internet, and wikipedia's [Internet] article reads "The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. " Now it is true that common use of the term also include World Wide Web, and a redirection pointer at the top for History of the World Wide Web is also in order. In any case, the article contains much cruft about the history of computing as opposed to networks / packet networking that needs to be struck out.

63.170.69.237 (talk) 04:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The role of the ITU
The ITU (and its predecessors) insisted on the use of X.25 and other approved protocols like X.400 and X.500, which impeded interoperability with other networks. Where is this mentioned? --Ancheta Wis 10:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * We already mention X.25, and it's preference in use in Europe and Worldwide prior to large scale IP rollout. We definatly should not be mentioning the ITU as impeding interoperability. CCITT/ITU-T are simply a diferent standards recomendation track. I should note that we still use many of the ITU-T standards, notably X.509 and H.323. ITU standards have also provided almost all the system that home and small buisness users have used to connect with the internet. (V.21 through V.92 POTS modems or G.992 DSL lines)  We've been over this before, the development of a global network was not a competition between oposing networks or ideologies, but a melting pot of many networks and practices.
 * The ITU did not force people to use X.25. Research was offering widespread global internetworks tomorow, but there was a global X.25 network there for them to use almost right away. X.25 was the training wheel on a baby global network's first bike... --Barberio 13:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

RFC
Where is the mention of the use of the RFC as a dodge to circumvent the elaborate approval mechanisms in use by the Bell System and the ITU? --Ancheta Wis 10:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Find a cite to support this. --Barberio 13:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I need to find a specific comment for Dave Clark's "We don't believe in kings, presidents, or voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Mike O'Dell's http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg17986.html certainly give a sense. Incidentally, I've worked in the IETF and in the CCITT/ITU. The IETF is considerably more satisfying. I spent almost six years explaining how OSI and ISDN were the answer, but always regretted I couldn't pose the question they answered. Hcberkowitz 23:35, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Last obsticle to Featured Article status
We need a replacement for the Leonard Kleinrock & IMP image that is acceptable under Image use policy. --Barberio 10:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * (Copy of Email I received from Kleinrock --Barberio 01:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC))
 * Dear John,
 * The photo to which you refer was a photo taken for general use by the public and you are free to use it as you wish as part of public domain.
 * I am pleased to see your use of it and if you would like any help in any way regarding the "polishing" of the History of the Internet", please do not hesitate to contact me.
 * Regards,
 * Leonard Kleinrock

Paper driven WWW server?
The picture of "The first World Wide Web Server" shows a CRT display and an open manual with paper pages. It looks like the server required a human operator to look up directions for each operation. Is this unintentional, or a subtle joke slipped in by a sly editor? --Blainster 18:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * That's an unusual take on it! In fact, the computer depicted is a NeXT system; the first WWW was indeed developed on a NeXT, apparently this one. The printed document is some of Tim Berners-Lee's work, and the book is one that inspired it. This is all discussed on the image page itself. --FOo 20:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Oops, OK. I didn't notice the posted info. Unfortunately many of the small sized images in Wiki articles are not well lighted. The dark system unit doesn't show up very well. If someone could pop into the museum for an angled shot with a brighter flash, it would help. --Blainster 23:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Why no mention of p2p? (Or insert any other modern Internet use)
I have to admit that this was not a deliberate deselection of p2p when I made the re-write. I chose WWW and Email as the applications to mention because there are almost literaly the defining applications of the current Internet.

While p2p is an important technology, the wide spread social implications of it are still yet to be seen. Unlike the WWW, and e-mail, we have not yet seen how p2p is going to change social and economic functions, if at all. There are indications that it will, but crystal balls are not a subject for a history article. I think it is overly tempting to add p2p because it is the 'big name of the time'. However, as a history article, we should fight this.

Now, I use p2p applications every day, but I don't think they have yet penetrated global society in the way email and the WWW have. It would probably be a mistake to atempt to mention every recordable use or application on the internet. That way ends up with turning the article into a list. There is already such a list at List of Internet topics

So I'm going to propose a guideline. 'Historicaly notable applications or uses of the Internet should have had impact to the majority of internet users or fundamental implication in society at the time of their use'

--Barberio 22:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Reinsertion of the Use and Culture section
History of the Internet is an article likely to get  searches from many non-technical people. Without any Use and Culture section, there is nothing in the article they will understand. There is no other single article which covers the same topic, either. The history of the World Wide Web is NOT the History of the Internet. The WWW was only one of a number of competing methodologies until after the introduction of Mosaic. In 1994, most people were using Gopher, and had  scarcely heard of the  WWW, or of WAIS. An article which eliminates all mention of those competing  Internet  systems  does not serve its readers. --CGMullin 21:50, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It appears that this as well as much information on "Before the Internet" was removed, possibly due to vandalism. I do not see any of the removals justified by edit summaries therefore I am reverting to a good version. KWH 00:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Lycos
I cannot verify this and it seems to conflict with some other assertions. (This indicates only 390,000 documents in 1994.) Can someone give a cite?
 * "At the end of 1993, Lycos indexed a total of 800,000 web pages."

Also, claiming Lycos as the first search engine is dubious (Previous link only states "one of the earliest search engines", EiNet perhaps has a claim, and WAIS also bears mention.) Any better authorities on that? KWH 03:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been checking around in some related articles, notably the Search engine article, and also the WAIS, Archie search engine, and Gopher protocol articles, and have   made some corrections here. Lycos was FAR from the first search engine, it was just the first one to  make a lot of money for its creators. CGMullin 18:21, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

WebCrawler is the first crawler based search engine, that might be worth a sentence or two.--Scorpion451 05:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikilinks
I think I read somewhere that relevant words should be wikilinked only in their first appearence within any one article. And yet a lot of words are annoyingly linked all over the place, the main culprits being ARPANET, X.25 and TCP/IP.

Or am I making this up? PizzaMargherita 21:22, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * You are mistaken. Wikilinks should be repeated in lengthy articles. This allows the user to click a wikilink without having to scroll back to the first useage. --Barberio 21:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you please provide a reference to support this? Look here. It does explicitly say:
 * "[Do not link] Words that have been linked earlier in the article. This advice follows the standard practice of defining or explaining a term, or spelling out an acronym, on its first occurrence in a text and not subsequently."
 * PizzaMargherita 22:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm reverting this because this is a long article, and we should not force users to scroll up and down a lot. Users may even be linked in to a section of the article, so never see the 'first' use of the wikilink. This may be against the guideline, but the guideline appears to have been writen for average sized articles, not long ones. --Barberio 09:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * What do you mean "up and down a lot"? The article used to have links to TCP/IP and ARPANET in every single sentence. Surely that's not proper, is it?
 * What's the point of having guidelines if we only adhere to what they "appear" to us? How did you get the impression that the guideline I quoted applies only to "average sized articles"? PizzaMargherita 09:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, the article makes use of both "U.S." and "US" as adjectives. This is not only inconsistent and non-standard, but also unnecessary, since "American" would be unambiguous and accepted by both American English and Commonwealth English speakers. PizzaMargherita 21:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Please don't bring this here. This useage was prevelent in the article well before this became an issue on Manual of Style, and there is no reason to change it. --Barberio 21:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, I've brought it there. PizzaMargherita 22:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Since the guideline was changed without consensus, it's been restored, and I'll go about restoring links in the page as apropriate. --Barberio 08:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Brackets should not be used for sentence clauses.
Please please stop putting sentence clauses into brackets. This is not proper practice. This is a good use of the bracket - Johnston Kingly (86) won the shuffleboard cup. - while this is not - Johnston Kingly (The 86 year old plumber) won the shuffleboard cup. --Barberio 08:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Your example is slightly ironic in that is contradicts proper grammar not to have at least some sort of sentance clause explaining the apparently arbitrary number in parenthesis. page 86? Entry 86? Score at shuffleboard 86(very impressive!)--Scorpion451 05:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Barberio, you do not own this article
Barberio, please stop reverting perfectly valid edits with no justification. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 08:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * See above where I made the reason for this clear. For the umptenth time, I find myself asking you to be civil. --Barberio 10:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The bracket example you quote above is not relevant here. As user Bburton correctly points out, the current revision that you insist on keeping is not English.
 * "In Asia, having built JUNET a UUCP based network in 1984"
 * As for the hyphen in "X-based", Google confirms that we should use it, as we do in many other WP articles.
 * Therefore, the correct version is
 * "In Asia, having built JUNET (a UUCP-based network) in 1984"
 * Your requests for my being civil are baseless, so you might as well desist. Rather, your arrogance and your hysterical exclamation marks are not welcome here. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 10:49, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

UUCP and Usenet
Can someone please drop one sentence in the article explaining briefly the relationship between UUCP and Usenet? I don't think it's clear at the moment. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 08:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we want to go into UUCP and Usenet's links too closely here, assoiating the two, and directing attention to their articles is enough. We want to keep this in Summary Style. --Barberio 10:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * But surely a good article should be self-contained and should explain jargon. I'm not saying we should copy both articles, a few words would be enough to help understand how these two things are related, that's all. PizzaMargherita 06:57, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * 'Self contained' conflicts with 'Summary Style'. Summary Style is the prefered method for wide aspect articles on Wikipedia. --Barberio 08:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure of the question here. Newsgroups are applications that can run over UUCP or IP stacks. Is the question about NNTP or the basic structure of news? Hcberkowitz 23:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Text forum?
In "Email and Usenet—The growth of the text forum", is "forum" a typo for "form"? Either way, what does it mean? Thanks. PizzaMargherita 19:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * You're confused over what 'Forum' means? --Barberio 19:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, in this context specifically. PizzaMargherita 19:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a pretty common useage of the word 'Forum'. I'm not entirely sure what the confusion you have with it could be. --Barberio 20:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * If you actually visit the link you offered above, you will see that the word "Forum" has several "useage"s, none of which can possibly apply to email. Also I would avoid the term "forum" in this article without further clarifications due to the fact that "Internet forum" now commonly refers to web-based (note hyphen) applications. PizzaMargherita 20:54, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The most common useage of Forum as a word is 'place or method of debate and discussion'. How this could not apply to mailing lists, and usenet, I fail to understand. Since the article doesnt use 'internet forum' , that's an irelevent issue. 'Forum' is a common useage english word, and anyone can identify that 'text forum' means 'a method of discussion based on exchanging texts' simply from the context of the section.
 * And again, you should only use a hyphen for "something based" when there is posibility of the sentence being confusing without it. Ie 'A spider web based forum' is better as 'A spider web-based forum'. (Unless it's 'A spider-web based forum' using spider webs to send messages) But 'A web-based forum on spiders' is redundant use of a hyphen since context is clear. --Barberio 03:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The definition you quote is missing a key element, the word "public". Since Roman times, fora have been public places of discussion, which email in general is not.

Exactly because the article does not mention internet forums, the issue of ambiguity is not irrelevant. I propose we get rid of the whole "The growth of the text forum" phrase.

I challenge you to apply this made-up hyphen grammatical rule of yours to web-related WP articles and see how far you get. Come on, start with internet forum. PizzaMargherita 06:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Mailing lists, and usenet, most definatly were 'public' fora. I'm concerend you seem to be proposing subtantive changes to this article without understanding either the context or content. Could you please read the article, and the linked too articles before making sugestions. Also, 'Forum' explicitly does not imply public access. For instance, the Oxford Union is a private forum.
 * And I did not 'make up' the hyphen "rule". That's what a hyphen is, a tool for disambiguation. It's not always used, nor are there even clear "rules" as you imply, since it's use is entirly dependant on context. --Barberio 08:55, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Removing a meaningless "The growth of the text forum" from the title of the subsection hardly qualifies as a "subtantive" change.
 * I do not need to read the article, let alone the "linked too" articles, before making "sugestions", or even editing it for that matter. That's how Wikipedia works.
 * I could be similarly concerned that you seem to be editing WP while making grammatical mistakes and misspelling every other word. But I don't. More importantly, you seem to be owning this article (and its awards) and seem completely unable to cooperate with other people and accept other people's positions or reconsider your position even when proven wrong. This kind of attitude is frowned upon around here.
 * So are you going to take up the challenge?
 * PizzaMargherita 09:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Get a room, you two.  · rodii ·  02:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with this one? Everybody seems to enjoy the show, yet strangely nobody is commenting on any of the issues. PizzaMargherita 06:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Could be that everyone's bored shitless watching you two debate hyphenation, nitpick spelling and drag your personal dislike for each other from page to page.  &middot; rodii &middot;  17:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * There remains at least one ungrammatical sentence in the article (and it's not only about the hyphen) and one nonsensical subtitle. A user is preventing me and other users from rectifying this. If you are unconcerned, the "unwatch" button is right there. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 18:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * If, on the other hand, you care, you may want to correct the article yourself, as Barberio seems to treat your edits more leniently than mine, presumably as you suggest for personal reasons. PizzaMargherita 19:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Look, I don't understand Barberio either, but, c'mon, spelling flames and arguments about hyphenation are weak. There are in fact two standards in the the English-speaking (or English speaking) world. The older one, requiring hyphens, is now considered outdated by some authorities; however, others disagree. This is one of those arguments that just doesn't have a conclusive winner.
 * Personally, "Email and Usenet—The growth of the text forum" seems OK to me. In fact, it seems like a nice take on the emerging community that email and Usenet fostered. However, I agree that it may not communicate as effectively as it might. I can't come up with a better title, though--can you? Just decapitating it doesn't really help. I submit that it would be more constructive to rewrite either the title or the section than it would be to beat each other up about the whether the meaning of "forum" is obscure or not.
 * Finally, which sentence is it that's ungrammatical, in your opinion? I'll take a shot at editing the section, which is pretty choppy, but I'm not seeing the particular bit that concerns you.
 * The larger point here is that you and B. are having a flame war, not a constructive attempt to resolve differences, and you should try to step back a bit.  &middot; rodii &middot;  01:53, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I made some edits. It's still pretty choppy, though, and the idea behind the title--which I support--doesn't really come through. The problem as I see it is not the title, but the fact that it is implicitly arguing that the significance of email and Usenet was that they provided a forum (and by extension created a community)--and then the section text doesn't really pay off on that. It's just a bunch of facts without any real evaluation of their significance.  · rodii ·  02:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The pre existing text included references to 'discussion groups' which I feel is sufficient to introduce the idea. Disucssion in detail on implications of email and usenet belong on their own article pages. Since this has to be summary style, we should only introduce the subject, and provide means to find more, including wikilinks and references. --Barberio 09:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok thanks, we're getting somewhere. The ungrammatical sentence is
 * In Asia, having built JUNET a UUCP based network in 1984, Japan followed on by connecting [...]
 * User Bburton and I have tried to put it right, but were reverted. Actually, the whole sentence is a complete shambles, so if you could wave your wand on this one, that would be much appreciated.
 * As for the hyphen, there may not be a rule, but as I pointed out the overwhelming majority of occurrences of "web-based" (in both Google and Wikipedia itself) are spelled with a hyphen, which does nothing but improve readability. Also, in some cases (as Barberio himslef points out) it makes a sentence unambiguous, therefore we may as well keep it everywhere for consistency. PizzaMargherita 08:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The oft quoted Emmerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds". I removed those changes not just becuause of the extranious hypthen, but because it placed a sentence clause in brackets. Contrary to a common mistaken belife, this does not make a sentence any easier to read. Breaking sentence flow like this is very bad, as with over use of extranious punctuation. There likely is a better way to phrase that sentence, but those changes were not it. --Barberio 09:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * cood yoo pleas enliten uz wot daz "sentence clause" meen I ease stoopid and I cunt find deffinision anywear PizzaMargherita 10:13, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Another cheap shot. B. has indicated that he's dyslexic and spelling errors are hard for him to catch. Obviously we don't want them in article text, but there they can be silently fixed. Calling attention to it here is uncivil and creates bad feelings that are an obstacle to moving forward. Just let it go, please.  &middot; rodii &middot;  17:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Is there an illness that makes people make up grammatical definitions, grammatical rules, wikipedia rules, misquote people, be uncooperative, refuse to accept that they are wrong, own wikipedia articles, invoke consistency only when it suits them and revert edits that silently fix their dyslexia? That sentence is just not correct English. This article is a lost cause. Goodbye. PizzaMargherita 18:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not defending any of that, I'm just saying making fun of someone's spelling is not constructive.  &middot; rodii &middot;  18:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

So anyway, how is it the growth of "the" text forum? Surely email (which I must insist is not a forum) and usenet would make at least two separate fora, right? PizzaMargherita 16:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This is surely the generic use of "the" here--just as one might talk about the growth of "the" piano concerto or "the" internal combustion engine or "the" university. None of those uses implies there is just one of that kind. And the argument of the section, such as it is, is that mailing lists and Usenet constituted a public space for discussion and debate on the Internet. If you want to replace "e-mail" with "mailing lists" I wouldn't object.
 * Barberio, I understand this can't be an in-depth discussion, but in its present form it's an incoherent jumble of assertions without any focus. If the "thesis" of the section is indicated by the title, then it should be supported somewhere in the section. I know you feel it's "sufficient to introduce the idea", but other editors disagree. I think a little more depth, without unbalancing the article, would help make this section more coherent.  &middot; rodii &middot;  17:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Go ahead if you can think of a way to write that and remain terse. --Barberio 18:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Should This Internet Theorist Be Mentioned?
I've seen and read through a copy of Raymond S. Rodgers' obscure 1971 booklet Man in the Telesphere, which predicted an Internet-like network that would link computers and people globally, and which used the word "web" to describe this system. But should he and his booklet be mentioned in this article? I'm unsure that merely because someone predicted something makes them worthy of mention, particularly if few people listened to the prediction. On the other hand, it is an interesting bit of trivia, at the very least. Here's a link to a rather defensive web site about the topic THE 1971 PREDICTION OF THE "WEB" / TELESPHERE--Skb8721 15:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No mention of BBN ?
As BBN developed the first IMP and ran the ARPANET initially, there should be a mention of this.




 * A T-shirt I've seen at IETF and NANOG meetings, as well as a .sig, reads "BBN. AS 1 and proud of it."

I too find this odd. They could also be considered part of the initial node along with UCLA and SRI, albeit for maintenance and monitoring purposes. A fine book that includes BBN's part in the development of ARPANET is Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. Yasgur (talk) 03:08, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This is not a history of ARPANET, but a history of the Internet. It's unfortunately common for the two to be conflated, but that's a mistake. Notably, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet is mistitled, in that it is a history primarily of the ARPANET not the Internet. --Barberio (talk) 21:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Sections 2, 3 and 4 of the article deal with ARPANET and it's development. As far as the book being mis-titled, I think most sources agree that the ARPANET was the main origin of the Internet.  Yasgur (talk) 21:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

CSNET was as early as ARPANEt, and it was definitely the Internet. If there's going to be references to ARPANET and CSNET, then BBN should be included in the article. (It's interesting that by the end of the article it's clear the the only organization with clear records of the earliest days of the Internet was BBN) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.116.217 (talk) 10:17, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The Internet goes mainstream
The article discusses the role of Windows 95 in the mainstreaming of the Internet, but that's not how I remember it at least. To my mind the first big step that drew media attention to the Internet and drove the expansion of the dial-up ISPs that made Internet access possible for mere mortals was the Mosaic web browser. Note that this is also how Internet tells it. &mdash; ciphergoth 09:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Zapped the entire section into a comment pending someone supporting it with cites. I think you're right in that this contradicts other information we have. The Internet was well on it's way to mainstream long before Windows 95. The popularity *of* winsock itself seems to indicate this. --Barberio 12:31, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The only cite for this is pretty sloppy looking. It appears to be notes from a lecture, and is riddled with formatting and context mistakes. The actual part of it refering to 1000% increase says "Claims were often made of a doubling every three or four months which corresponds to an annual growth rate of 1000%. Such growth rates did exist did hold during 1995 and 1996. However, growth slowed down to about 100% during 1997, which is in line to the average growth rate of  100% a year for the entire 30-year history of the internet.", which seems to be saying the records of growth are patchy, and that some measures claimed a doubling over periods of three months. This is then sloppily extrapolated to a "1000%" yearly increase. I don't think this is a clear cite of a growth spurt in 1995. --Barberio 22:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone find any information about the battle over commercialization that happend in the early 90s. I know there was a court case over one of the first commercial webiste and the Universities banned it. The court sided with the website. I remember this but can find no mention of it on the internet now. MindStalker 20:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)MindStalker

World View Tag
I do not think this article should be tagged. The Interent was created from the ARPANET and for years only existed in the USA being funded later by the National Science Foundation. As such the world view of this article is correct since the article itself correctly describes the history on the world view. Because the Internet was created in the USA and with funds from the NSF does not mean it is not correctly showing the world view.

Please reply to me regarding this on my talk page. I plan to begin work on this article shortly and will remove this tag if there are no objections. I am currently looking at and correcting supporting documents before I begin. --User: (talk • contribs • count) 13:11, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Radar station links
I will preface with this statement: the ARPANET was the first attempt at an internet-like network. I am not trying to rewrite history. However, I belive that it is important to note in the article at least briefly that the first proof of concept for the idea came from the linking of radar stations though phone line connections. This was a project in the United States Air Force in the mid-1960's. It only passed very simple messages and was, as I said, only a proof of concept before the full investment of the military into the ARPANET. It is however, a notable and little known point in the timeline of the internet, and deserves at least a brief mention.--Scorpion451 05:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Have you any references for this? I'm aware of communications used, for example, with SAGE, and those were certainly not packet switched. LOGBALNET might be an early competitor, although I'd have to refresh my memory that it was packet and not message switched. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The SAGE as first network is also asserted by Les Earnest who worked on it and other systems before settling on Stanford as place of employment. SAGE had pretty homogeneous hardware whereas the ARPAnet had diverse heterogeneous hardware and a population which occasionally kicked and screamed that they were being forced it it.  Even ex-Soviets make similar Cold War claims that they had an ARPAnet 2-4 years before 1969, but if SAGE is any indicator, they likely have a similar claim with their air defense system. Only careful qualification will resolve these distinctions. 143.232.210.38 (talk) 20:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Deceptive Drawing


I have removed this ridiculously out of scale drawing. Not only is it wrong, at first glance it looks like the areas of the boxes represent the actual ip address space. This is nothing short of deceptive. Right now this drawing offers nothing in the way of enlightenment and only serves to confuse. If we are to draw an accurate representation of the Ip address space, we would need to use a box that measures 2.8*10^14 pixels on each side. One pixel of that would be the IPv4 address space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.134.164.46 (talk) 03:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Strange edits to the article.
There seems to have made some odd edits to the top of the article, that left it in a very confused state. Including obliterating the lead, and replacing it with the top paragraph which made no sense as a lead, and then messing up the formatting. I assume this was the result of some bad fixes to repair vandal edits. Let's try to take a bit more care? --Barberio (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Having had to repair some considerable damage to the article, including blanked out sections and other vandal-edits that had been left uncorrected in this article since October, I'm even more disillusioned about Wikipedia than I was when I suspended my editing. --Barberio (talk) 23:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

strange reference
the article says In October 1962, Licklider was appointed head of the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, now known as DARPA, within the information processing office. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. As part of the information processing office's role, three network terminals had been installed: one for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, one for Project Genie at the University of California, Berkeley and one for the Multics project SHOPPING at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

I was at MIT and worked at Project MAC in the 60s and have not heard of "Project SHOPPING." Multics was not begun until 1964-65. The idea of "network terminals" being installed at DARPA is misleading, since there was no network other than the PSTN... and calling up one of these systems to use it was an adventure in tie lines and long distance operators.

I think the references to "project SHOPPING" and Multics should be removed or supported with better evidence and dates.

regards, tom (editor multicians.org)

Thvv (talk) 00:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Ugh. Another instance of people 'maintaining' the article while remaining ignorant of the subject. At some point someone messed this up. As I originally wrote it, it'd referred to the Compatible Time-Sharing System project. The 'three terminals' is a pretty well established as one of the prompters of ARPA interest in networking, and the linked N.Y.T. article used to support this with quote and citation made this pretty clear. Shame no one read that while maintaining the page. --Barberio (talk) 03:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Section on WWW out of place
I don't know why there is a paragraph on the WWW in an article on the Internet but it is out of place, has no sources and links to the actual internet article. Not to mention it might help perpertrate the idea that the web = the internet. If anyone has no objections i am going to delete it. DyloniusFunk (talk) 22:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Richard Robins (talk) 14:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)Seems like a good suggestion. I feel the History of the Internet page tries to cover far too much information in a limited space. There could be reference to key ideas and new pages created to cover these topics. The article ignores critical developments in the 1980s, which set the stage for rapid growth in the 1990s. There's no mention of the U.S. Government's privatization of the Internet in the early 90s that opened usage up.

You two are incompetent, the Web is one of the most important and famous systems carried by the Internet. Of course it should be there. 209.148.247.171 (talk) 05:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Error regarding Verio
"best internet"(or Verio) is listed as opening commercial access to the west coast in 1986, but this is obviously not true. Even the link provided by the editor shows the date to be 1996 1 --Zsieg (talk) 00:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The citation provided by the editor doesn't claim that they were the first commercial dial-up west coast ISP in 1996, but the editor does. Further, it is trivial to show that Earthlink predates them in 1995 and if memory serves, other dial-up providers existed locally prior to that. 173.50.179.45 (talk) 19:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Where is Licklider? The Internet is not a protocol, it's a concept.
The current state of this article is deplorable. Whoever wrote it is not only ignorant of the Internet but also is ignorant in general about the nature of scientific discovery and creation.

The Internet is an information highway, not a protocol. Whoever does not understand what information scientifically is should go and read up on it not waste our time here with childish amateur gossip. --209.148.247.171 (talk) 05:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Licklider's contribution is specifically in the second main body paragraph "Three terminals and an ARPA". --Barberio (talk) 21:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Suggested change
The main page seems impervious to editing so I place my suggested change here.

Early in the article, a reference is made to the internet being accessed by scientists on all 7 continents (obviously, including Antarctica).

Under the continent-by-continent section, this sentence seems quite jarring: The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), headquartered in Australia, manages IP address allocation for the continent.

I suggest the sentence be revised to end: "...for the vast region including its two continents."

As geographic background, the Asia-Pacific region includes roughly half of the world's surface, so the use of "vast" may be appropriate.

thanksErtdfgcvb (talk) 10:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Definition of "North America"
Further to my comment an hour ago, I suggest that the references to North America under the "Worldwide Online Population Forecast" subheading be clarified. North America is traditionally defined as the mainland from Alaska and Canada in the north down to include Panama in the south, plus the Caribbean islands. A more recent, and confusing, use of the NA term especially popular in business matters, uses NA as meaning only the USA plus Canada. For instance, the telephone country code 001 is often referred to as North America when it is, in fact, not the full continent.

I suspect that this latter two-nation definition is the one used in this article. If so, I suggest that a notation be added after the first use of the term "North America", such as "(defined as the USA plus Canada)" or perhaps "restricted to".

So, the fundamental question is whether Mexico, the six states of Central America, and the Caribbean are included in the statistics cited. If not, NA should be clearly defined.

Statistics cited with extreme precision, such as "1.1%", become meaningless if they apply to an area that is vague, misleading or uncertain.

ThanksErtdfgcvb (talk) 11:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Revert Vandalism Please
It appears that the last good version of this page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_Internet&oldid=257453748

Could someone please look at the diff and correct the changes. I'm still new to this so I don't feel comfortable changing the article myself.

Thanks.

192.88.212.43 (talk) 17:09, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I have done it. Thank you for pointing it out. ... disco spinster   talk  17:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

End-to-end principle
I just listened to a lecture where the speaker insisted a lot on the "End-to-end principle", it reminded me of a video I saw earlier:

[]

at 5:30, they explain that this was the idea of a project that is not mentionned in your article: Cyclades, by an institute called Inria. Is this relelvant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.46.49.98 (talk) 01:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, for such an important subject, the language is a bit rubbish.
"The history of the Internet began with the ARPANET and connected mainframe computers on dedicated connections. The second stage involved adding desktop PCs which connected through telephone wires. The third stage was adding wireless connections to laptop computers. And currently the Internet is evolving to allow mobile phone"

That's it? Not even a full stop on the end? This is garbage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.47.139 (talk) 15:05, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Paragraph removed as inaccurate, spurious and as mentioned not very well written. --Barberio (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Same text in two sections
Both the "Main developments in Internet history" and the "Before the Internet" sections say The research led to the development of several packet-switched networking solutions in the late 1960s and 1970s,[1] including ARPANET and the X.25 protocols. Additionally, public access and hobbyist networking systems grew in popularity, including unix-to-unix copy (UUCP) and FidoNet. They were however still disjointed separate networks, served only by limited gateways between networks. This led to the application of packet switching to develop a protocol for inter-networking, where multiple different networks could be joined together into a super-framework of networks. By defining a simple common network system, the Internet protocol suite, the concept of the network could be separated from its physical implementation. This spread of inter-network began to form into the idea of a global inter-network that would be called 'The Internet', and this began to quickly spread as existing networks were converted to become compatible with this. This spread quickly across the advanced telecommunication networks of the western world, and then began to penetrate into the rest of the world as it became the de-facto international standard and global network. However, the disparity of growth led to a digital divide that is still a concern today.

That should either be removed or rewritten from/in one of the sections. Urdna (talk) 16:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Map caption
My edit comment got truncated, so here's the full version. Notice all the boxes labelled "Other gateway"? Those are all non-BBN routers. (Many were Fuzzballs, if you remember them.) So that new caption is incorrect.

And thanks for reminding me why I quit Wikipedia. Noel (talk) 20:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * They're the ones that BBN knew of. They're may have been others, you can't identify this as a definitive map of 'the Internet', especially as it only maps a lower-case i 'the internet' prior to the global upper-case i 'the Internet'.
 * As I said then, and as I will say again, the best evidence you have is that this is a map of the gateways BBN knew of, at an indeterminate time in the mid 80s. It *may* be a map of the entire internet, it *may* be a map of the gateways that connect to BBN hardware. We don't know, and can't say one way or the other without some establishing evidence of that. And I quote the email cited on it's talk page, "It is of (what BBN thought) was the Internet when BBN was responsible for the overall operations", note the "What BBN thought". That's a pretty large disclaimer, and you need to clarify in any caption that it's BBN's view of an early internet, which may not reflect items outside of BBNs control or direct sight.
 * Now, I know you consider yourself an expert, but the rules here are clear, Wikipedia does not take 'Expert Testimony'. Get your opinion published somewhere authoritative, perhaps a peer reviewed journal, and we could accept it as a cite. But you can't just say "It Is So!" in comments here and use that as support. And we have had this debate over your views about the article and your expert standing before, and gone through mediation, and you tried to take it to Arbitration and your case was rejected.
 * If you have a cite that supports this being a map of a Capital I Global Internet, rather than a lower case i BBN internet, then provide it. Otherwise, we need to make sure that the caption doesn't represent it as something we can't demonstrate it to be. --Barberio (talk) 13:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Additionally I'd like to remind you Noel, that "internet" as a word was going through a period of redefinition of the term between 1985-1986. Prior to some point then, 'internet' mean simply a network using any internetworking technology. This changed to then mean any network using the IP protocols. And then at some point after that the idea of a global capital I Internet started to be used. It is unsure where in that period the map comes from, so we need to be careful in how terminology was used to describe it. --Barberio (talk) 15:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The date of the map is now known pretty exactly (and this has been discussed before: it was presented at the second IETF meeting, in April 1986. (See the Proceedings.)
 * The routing system back then was considerably different (no BGP, for instance), and as a result the network operations people at BBN did have a pretty good idea of where everything was. There was some (hidden) detail that they didn't know of (such as subnet routers inside MIT), but since this was before NAT arrived, if someone had a core router with a routing table for the entire network, by definition they had a complete list of everything that was in the network, and where it was connected to the core. Since the routing protocol was EGP, which did not support cycles in the topology (i.e. the topology was restricted to a tree, rooted in the networks that BBN ran), that ensures that any such map would be pretty complete.
 * The term "Internet" (although we weren't careful about the case disambiguation at that point) was used to mean 'the large-scale operational network' as early as 1978 (and probably before that, but '78 is well before the date of that map, which is all am focused on at the moment) - see, for instance, IEN No. 46, "A Proposal For Addressing And Routing In The Internet", from June, 1978. I see from reviewing a few things that this whole name thing is another one of your pet peeves, and it's equally bogus as all the rest - as 3 minutes worth of research in early IENs would have shown. What on earth do you think we called it before the time when you think we supposedly started calling it 'the Internet' - the 'frammistan'? 'The internet' was the natural name to use.
 * Oh, and I don't think there was ever an arbitration case. There's certainly no mention of it either on any of the pages here, or on my talk pages.
 * And the moon's still not made of green cheese. Noel (talk) 03:56, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Uncited material
Over time, a lot of uncited material has been added to the article, which has resulted in the loss of the 'good article' mark. We need to go through the article to first mark out uncited claims with fact to give to flag where we need to find a cite. Some current website cites have also been reported to no longer be available, so a check over current cites is needed. --Barberio (talk) 14:06, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * One problem here is that some material is referenced, in texts in the article's References section, but without inline references which means that they appear as unreferenced statements. Since I don't have those books to hand, I can't say what parts of the text they were being used to reference, should anyone have a copy, it would help if they could identify the sections they would have been used to reference. --Barberio (talk) 18:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Request for people who have copies of any of the following publications.

 * Abbate, Janet. Inventing the Internet. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
 * Campbell-Kelly, Martin; Aspray, William. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: BasicBooks, 1996.
 * Graham, Ian S. The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1995.
 * Krol, Ed. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet, 1987.
 * Krol, Ed. Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog. O'Reilly & Associates, 1992.
 * Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks, September, 1991.

These texts were used as references in the creation of the History of the Internet article. However, they were added to the article at a time when there was no accepted system of inline citation, and there is no link between the references and what they are cited to support. This leaves some parts of the article apparently uncited, but supposedly supported by these texts.

Can someone with these texts please read over the article, and identify the sections and statements that are supported by these texts.

Thanks in advance. --Barberio (talk) 20:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hitchhiker's guide is RFC 1118. Kbrose (talk) 22:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The HTML sourcebook is on Google Books with snippet views enabled:
 * You can get pages of "Inventing the Internet" at.
 * Snippet view makes it hard to show that something is NOT in the book, but it allows one to verify a specific quotation by searching for it.
 * Scientific American's own backissues only go back to 2000, but scientificamericanpast.com seems to offer articles for 99 cents a pop. I also may have a copy in my basement.... will have to check later. --Alvestrand (talk) 08:13, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Internet and the World Wide Web
The orirgins of the internet and the world wide web are unusual in the history of commerical media. What makes them unusual and what qualities does that impact to the media???? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.44.120 (talk) 03:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Do your own homework, bucko. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.44.254.86 (talk) 16:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Book:Internet
I recently added a chapter (Precursors and early dev.) in that book, but I don't know if I got everything, or if I gave some things undue prominence compared to others. Feedback? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:08, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Semiprotected
I counted 15 vandalism edits since October 1st, most of them by IPs. As a result I've semiprotected the article. Please let me know if anyone disagrees. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 00:38, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Unbalanced
This article gives way too much coverage to other networks (fido) and copy utilities (UUCP) and way too little to ARPANET. The internet is directly based on ARPANET, but not on FIDO or UUCP. It's making the others seem just as important, when they are not. The internet would not exist without ARPANET. It would exist without FIDO or UUCP, etc. 75.25.101.110 (talk) 03:24, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Utter nonsense, the internet was a logical development of the technology, and was being developed concurrently and with significant cooperation in many locales, notably California & London. The first packet on ARPANET in the USA was sent October 1969, the Mark I networks first packet in the UK was ~4 months later, and the Merit network 3 years later. All had (although exchanged ideas) developed independantly, all would have happened had the others not existed, all would have, and indeed did, lead to national networks. 92.16.98.208 (talk) 22:15, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * This issue has elicited a lot of aggravation over the years. Here's my take (as someone who worked on the development of the Internet from 1977 until now - not that this is citable in the article, but it is given to give editors/readers some idea of how much weight to put on my views).
 * The most important direct technical predecessor of the Internet was the CYCLADES network. In the mid-70s DARPA was funding a number of networking technologies (packet radio, satellite, LAN) and needed a way to tie them all together, and that's what drove the development of TCP/IP, and the Internet. In addition to CYCLADES, the people from Xerox PARC, with their PUP protocol family and network, were also an important technical feed.
 * In terms of the sheer logistics, etc, the ARPANET was key. The people involved in developing TCP/IP used the ARPANET (principally email, but also FTP to some degree) to keep in touch. We also used the ARPANET as the main long-haul network to tie various sites doing early Internet work together. (The SATNET was used a bit, but it was not the heart of the system.) See the map File:Internet map in February 82.jpg to see how critical the ARPANET was to tying everything in the early Internet together.
 * Next, consider the applications the early Internet ran - TELNET, FTP and email (specifically, SMTP) - in most cases, basically identical to the variants which ran over NCP on the ARPANET. For example, RFC-765, the first TCP/IP FTP spec (from June 1980, although we'd been using it over TCP/IP for some time at that point) is basically a very lightly tweaked version of RFC-542, the NCP version of the protocol.
 * Finally, go look at the RFC series, which is pure ARPANET/NCP to begin with, and starts to shade over into Internet-TCP/IP in the 700's, and is still the repository for TCP/IP-Internet technical documents.
 * Yes, the Internet has picked up influences from lots of other places (UUCP, etc) along the way, but the heart of the system is principally an ARPANET descendant, up until the development of the Web (which is Internet specific and sui generis, although of course inspired by Memex and Hypertext).
 * Would the Internet have happened without the ARPANET? This is a pointless question. Would the atomic bomb have happened without Einstein? Who knows? Who cares that much? History didn't happen that way.
 * I refuse to touch the article itself - been there, done that. Someone else can use this to inform any rewrite they wish to take. For references/verifiability, refer to the Hafner/Abbate books (especially the latter, which is a respected academic work, although the Hafner book, although done by a journalist, is equally reliable, although not as well footnoted). Noel (talk) 02:23, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Introduction
The introduction here seems a little too big for a Wikipedia article. Can it be shortened in any way? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rredwell (talk • contribs) 13:31, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ - The intro is shorter now, but may still be too long. What do others think? I don't think I left anything important out that isn't covered in more detail in the rest of the article. Jeff Ogden (talk) 03:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 62.31.226.48, 31 December 2010
edit semi-protected

Would someone like to correct the spelling of the word "lose" (as in: ... temporarily 'lose' contact because they move ... ) in the following paragraph?:

Communication with spacecraft beyond earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-point links through the Deep Space Network. Each such data link must be manually scheduled and configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new network protocol, Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) which automates this process, allows networking of spaceborn transmission nodes, and takes the fact into account that spacecraft can temporarily loose - PLEASE CHANGE TO LOSE - contact because they move behind the Moon or planets, or because space "weather" disrupts the connection. Under such conditions, DTN retransmits data packages instead of dropping them, as the standard TCP/IP internet protocol does. NASA conducted the first field test of what it calls the "deep space internet" in November 2008.[31]

There's quite a succinct explanation of the definitions and the difference between lose and loose on the following web page: http://www.ross.net/notes/loose.shtml

Thanks!

62.31.226.48 (talk) 04:48, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Cyber cobra (talk) 05:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Please wfy IPTO
"IPTO" is mentioned several times in the text, but is neither linked nor spelled out. It should link to Information Processing Techniques Office. 72.208.145.184 (talk) 22:18, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

✅ --Kvng (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Error regarding the date for the Computer Science Network (CSNET)
In the second paragraph, the article says, "Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1994 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) developed the Computer Science Network (CSNET) and again in 1986 when NSFNET provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations." It doesn't make sense that something happened "in 1994" "and again in 1986."

According to the article on the [|Computer Science Network (CSNET)], it was "developed starting in the late 1970s" and "was funded by the National Science Foundation for an initial three-year period from 1981 to 1984." So perhaps the article should be changed to read:

"Access to the ARPANET was expanded in the early 1980s when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET) and again in 1986 when NSFNET provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations."

--Sandy Schuman (talk) 17:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The first date should have been 1984 rather 1994. It was right in the main body of the article, but not in the newly shortened intro. Thanks for catching this. I fixed it. Jeff Ogden (talk) 19:17, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

No references in last paragraph of search engine section
The last paragraph in the search engine section is unreferenced (after the first sentence) and seems to be promotion for Bing. Ryanb808 (talk) 21:08, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. I made some changes that I think should address the issue. I shortened the information on Bing, added an internal link to the Bing article, and added two refs. Jeff Ogden (talk) 02:28, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Seopfer, 9 April 2011

 * The History of the Internet According to Itself: A Synthesis of Online Internet Histories Available at the Turn of the Century

Seopfer (talk) 22:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. — Bility (talk) 02:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Effect of US legislation
What effect did the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 have on the creation of the Internet? Did it help the Internet come into being? Did it promote use of the Internet by private individuals, research institutions, or the US government? --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:39, 30 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Given that the Internet existed for quite some time before 1991 (more below), it certainly did not "help the Internet come into being". It did (I believe) play a moderately significant role in the growth of the Internet.
 * The exact date for the 'creation' of the Internet depends on whether one means the first demo the creation, or the first use of the Internet (i.e. people who weren't networking researchers just trying to get their own work done with it). For instance, one of the first actual uses of the Internet at MIT was to print files from the MIT-Multics time-sharing machine (in building 39) on a printer attached to the MIT-CSR timesharing Unix machine (in the Tech Square building), the date of which I attempted to pin down accurately a while ago, and as best I can tell seems to have been circa the end of 1980. The Internet attained major production use by January 1983, of course, when NCP was turned off on the ARPANET and almost everyone had to switch to using TCP/IP.
 * RFC-1296, "Internet Growth (1981-1991)", records some important early data on Internet growth, and it shows it had 313,000 hosts as of October, 1990. Another history, Hobbes' Internet Timeline, records 2,063 networks as of that date.
 * As to the other question...
 * The NSFNET and regional networks (such as SURANet, BARRNET, etc) (which existed before that Act, see National Science Foundation Network for more) were most important in producing use of the Internet by research institution and individuals in the US (to which the 1991 Act applied), but in two stages. At first, the NSFNET was usable only by institutions which had some sort of government connection; later policy evolution (the details of which escape me) opened it up to general, commercial use.
 * The 1991 Act transformed the old NSFNET into something called the National Research and Education Network (for which we don't have a page, alas).
 * There isn't really a good history for this aspect of the growth of the Internet, alas. To start with, though, you can check out Inventing the Internet, by Janet Abbate, which covers the early part of this process briefly. Also, The History of the Internet According to Itself, which has (scattered) coverage of this topic.
 * Of course, this is all US-specific. Growth of the Internet in other countries is a whole separate topic. At the very earliest stages all those networks were connected to the US Internet, which still had usage restictions. As networks elsewhere connected directly to each other, and at roughly the same time US usage restrictions were easing, use overseas become more general too.
 * My sense (based on no careful checking) is that the '91 Act provided a useful chunk of money and encouragement, and it also popularized the Internet somewhat, but that it wasn't crucial - the Internet was growing quickly before it, and probably would have continued to do so. But that quickly becomes 'hypothetical alternative history', the kind of thing I dumped on above. So I'll just leave it at saying the Internet (and the NSFNET and regionals, along with the start of commercialization) predated the '91 Act, but that it provided useful money and popularization. Noel (talk) 04:42, 23 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The Act provided crucial funding for the NSFNET for the 1992 to 1995 period; this funding was necessary so that NSFNET could continue to grow while the commercial networks were built and interconnected at the various NAPs per the NSFNET recomposition architecture (which was effectively NSFgetting out of the backbone business) led by Peter Ford/LANL & Bob Aiken/NSF - ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/bgpdepl/bgpdepl-minutes-92mar.txt    Without the Act, it is uncertain if NSFNET would have been able to handle the traffic while the commercial networks were getting established and interconnected.  174.79.123.226 (talk) 05:26, 23 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This doesn't disagree majorly (sic, I know) with what I wrote: It did .. play a moderately significant role in the growth of the Internet. ... the '91 Act provided a useful chunk of money. Where we diverge is on the hypothetical of what would have happened without it - which is an inevitably nebulous 'alternative history' debate. But just two points: First, it's hard to know what would have happened with the NSF backbone, absent that money. Would they have found more money somewhere else, allowing some/all as much growth in it as actually happened? Who knows. Second, even if the NSFNet had bogged down, the utility of such a global ubiquitous network was by then obvious to everyone, so I'm pretty sure the Internet would have succeeded anyway - just by a slightly different, albeit possibly slightly slower, path. Noel (talk) 20:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry to disagree, but we're not talking about alternate histories here, we're discussing the actual history. In '91, there were only a handful of networks that ran default-free (NSFNET/ANS, Alternet/UUNET, Sprintlink, PSInet, Cerfnet, NSI, ESNET & EBONE) and routing policy was predominantly set by the NSFNET's EGP central database.  BGP transition was underway, but most providers still had to rely on NSFNET as their default route of last resort.  It was the architecture of NAPs and multiple backbones introduced by the IINREN work by Ford (et al) , all of which was done under the HPCC funding which enabled commercialization/privatization and therefore growth of the Internet.   This is the reality of what occurred; if you'd like to suggest that the evolution would have happened anyway because of (whatever), feel free, but that's equivalent to stating we should omit Bell Labs & Thompson and Ritchie from the history of Unix because MIT's Multics 'inevitably' would have created Unix anyway...   TcomptonMA (talk) 02:33, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * We all agree that the NSFNET (and the money given to it) played a significant role. What would have happened without that money is speculation - on all sides. The growth data on the Internet's growth, before the NSFNET, however, is what actually happened.
 * (And your UNIX/Multics analogy is flawed along several axes. First, I never said that we should leave the NSFNet out, or that it wasn't important: in fact, if you'll look, I started by saying "It did ... play a moderately significant role in the growth of the Internet". Second, Unix and Multics are only slightly related, and very dissimilar (DMR himself described Unix as "in essence a modern implementation of MIT's CTSS system", actually), and Unix was thus not an 'inevitable' descendant of Multics; TCP and IP, however, were identical before and after the NSFNET - totally at the other end of the relationship scale.) Noel (talk) 05:46, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

opening of the internet to the public?
I seem to remember the average person (in my country) wasn't able to get onto the internet until around 1992 or so... before then the only people with access were in universities. Why not have a section on the social aspect of the history of the internet? Frankly, the internet's major importance is a social phenomenon, and it'd be nice to have something about that in this article. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 01:28, 23 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I have felt for quite some time that we needed separate Technical history of the Internet and History of the Internet articles; the latter could cover topics like the one you mention (which I agree we need to cover), and the former could cover the plumbing (which is something else I think we need to cover, although of course fewer people will be interested in that). Noel (talk) 18:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Does the article Sociology of the Internet help any? Could it be adapted to do some or all of what you are after? Or how about the article on the History of the World Wide Web? Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 20:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The idea of creating a separate Technical history of the Internet article and refocusing the existing History of the Internet article doesn't appeal to me. I think it would be better to create a separate new article or adapt/expand another existing article to cover the "Social history of the Internet". The current History of the Internet article does have some content that tries to address some of these issues as well. That could be expanded/reorganized to do a better job and include a reference to a new article whose main focus would be to deal with the "social history" in more detail. We could also work to shorten parts of the existing History of the Internet article by pushing details off into the many sub-articles. Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 20:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Glaring Omission- entire 1990's
This article is missing the ENTIRE 1990's. The whole point of an internet history article to me is how today's major websites: yahoo, google, wikipedia, myspace, etc, came about. The history of search engines, of memes, of filesharing, of everything in the whole 1990-2010 span which is ABSENT from this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.253.217.83 (talk) 03:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think it is fair to say that the entire 1990s are absent from the article. The timeline that is part of the article has 35 entries from the 1990s, almost twice as many as for any other decade. The main article talks about the World Wide Web and Search engines and has links to more detailed articles on History of the World Wide Web, Search engines, and Web directories plus links to a Timeline of popular Internet services and a List of Internet phenomena. Yahoo!, Altavista, Google, and Bing are all mentioned, although most of the details are left to other articles. Wikipedia and Myspace together with IMDb, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Hotmail, Babel Fish, LinkedIn, Skype, the ITunes Store, Facebook, Podcasts, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Google Earth, and Google Street View are mentioned in the timeline, but not in the main article. The timeline links to more detailed articles on each. The article should probably say more about file sharing, although the timeline does mention Napster. Jeff Ogden (talk) 04:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅ - I finally added a section on file sharing and will try to add to it a bit more over the next few days. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 20:11, 30 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I think that ONE of the points of an Internet history article is to talk some about the major websites, but that isn't the "whole point" or even the main point of the article. The article is already pretty long, so for me the real question is how much detail to include in this article and how much to leave to the other more detailed sub-articles? Other questions: (i) Do the existing sub-articles adequately cover the major websites and how they came to be? (ii) Does this article do an adequate job of leading people to the relevant sub-articles? (iii) Are there more services that should be listed in the main article and/or the timeline? Jeff Ogden (talk) 04:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)


 * The problem as I see it is that the 'history of the Internet' covers one heck of a lot of ground, and it's almost inevitable that in an article of reasonable length, either everything is are going to be covered in the most cursory way possible, or some things are going to be left out. Heck, Abbate wrote a whole book on the subject - and it stopped in about 1990 or so! (Too lazy to take it off the shelf to check to make sure of the exact date...) It almost of necessity has to be split up into a number of sub-articles, and the main 'History of the Internet' article is going to have to say 'we can't cover the whole history of the Internet in one article, this it just a brief outline, with links to articles that cover various aspects in more detail'. Noel (talk) 04:05, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Peter Kirstein
Please make 'Peter Kirstein' (one occurrence) link to the Peter T. Kirstein page. Why isn't this article editable so that I could do it myself? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.43.184 (talk) 19:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Done. The article is semi-protected so only people with accounts can edit it, because there was too much vandalism, and people got tired of fixing it. Just get an account - anyone can. Noel (talk) 05:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Internet Governance sections errata

 * ''Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Voluntary technical standards are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). "

-- Not quite correct. These parameter spaces (DNS, IP) are also under the IETF, but per RFC2860, ICANN coordinates policy development in these spaces.


 * Since at this point in history most of the growth on the Internet was coming from non-military sources, it was decided that the Department of Defense would no longer fund registration services outside of the .mil TLD. In 1993 the U.S. National Science Foundation, after a competitive bidding process in 1992, created the InterNIC to manage the allocations of addresses and management of the address databases, and awarded the contract to three organizations. Registration Services would be provided by Network Solutions; Directory and Database Services would be provided by AT&T; and Information Services would be provided by General Atomics. In 1998 both IANA and InterNIC were reorganized under the control of ICANN, a California non-profit corporation contracted by the United States Department of Commerce to manage a number of Internet-related tasks. The role of operating the DNS system was privatized and opened up to competition, while the central management of name allocations would be awarded on a contract tender basis.

-- This only notes the DNS transition; IP responsibility was delegated to RIPE, then APNIC, then by NSF from the above INTERNIC to ARIN, then after ICANN LACNIC and Afrinic RIRs were formed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.149.252.200 (talk) 14:54, 30 March 2012‎


 * Isn't this talk section now resolved with the additional Internic/Rir material?? (although the new material still lacks many links other known wiki entries) 68.48.171.239 (talk) 06:55, 13 April 2012 (UTC)



Why was content [containing alleged stats on % share of info transmitted via the Internet] deleted?
Why was the following content deleted by SudoGhost at 23:34 on 28 June 2011 with the comment "Reverted to revision 436773896 by Ohnoitsjamie: Please use talk page before restoring this material.."?


 * It is estimated that the Internet only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007.

Jeff Ogden (talk) 04:45, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ Having received no response, I have restored the deleted text (slightly reworded) and with a somewhat expanded ref. Jeff Ogden (talk) 22:29, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Replying to Jeff Ogden and others concerned: I just deleted that section as the claim is not supported by the source cited. Claim: "It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication. By 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet. "

The table of contents for the cited paper shows the cited pages have to do w/ storage, and don't concern the given stats: C Storage ............................................................................. 50 C.2 Films for cinema and TV ........................................................................ 58 C.2.2 Cinematographic Films: performance ......................................................... 60 C.2.3 TV Films and TV episodes: performance ...................................................... 62 C.2.4 Content compression ............................................................................ 64 C.3 Analog Photography ............................................................................. 64 C.3.1 Negatives: performance ........................................................................ 64 C.3.2 Printed photos: performance .................................................................. 65

Given the subject matter of the 254 pg paper, the info may be in it somewhere, but I couldn't find it by searching. Hopefully some expert can clear this up, as I want to know. According to the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego, of all Bytes received by consumers, 17 times as many are received via TV compared with the Internet. And when measured in hours, TV is more than double than the Internet, and approaching double when measured in words. hmi.ucsd.edu/pdf/HMI_2009_ConsumerReport_Dec9_2009.pdf (p. 27) Gorkelobb (talk) 01:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Without taking a position on whether the cited source supports the claim, I want to point out that the article specified "two-way" communication. Your source and statement above are about broadcast television, which is one-way communication. --Tgeairn (talk) 01:55, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Tgeairn's distinction is an important one. However, the Wiki article needs to make factual claims backed by reliable sources. I just skimmed the pages in section D (Communication) of Hilbert/Lopez (the most relevant section) and didn't find the numbers/stats to back up the claim, though I may have missed it. I did find this statement, which has nothing to do w/ % share in 2-way comms, but is curiously similar to the Wiki article claim as far as growth and 97% in 2007, though it may be a coincidence: "In 1986, 14% of the total number of land lines in use around the world were digital, and in 2007 some 97% (23)" (p. 154). After skimming section D, I'm less inclined to think the info is in the paper, as it seems to deal w/ each medium section by section without directly or indirectly comparing them, including by % share. Perhaps the info was derived, but the cited pg #s are clearly wrong, and if the claim can't be supported with Hilbert/Lopez or some other credible source, it should be removed from the article. Also, the paper repeatedly references an ITU database, but the kind of stats given in the claim I removed (which are the kind of stats I'm interested in), aren't on this ITU page http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/ They may be in the ITU database available by purchase. Gorkelobb (talk) 02:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Two more points: 1) As I think about it, it seems very unlikely to be true that in 2007 97% of ALL telecomm'd info was carried over the Net. This means that 3% is carried via the PSTN (which intersects w/ cell phone networks), 2-way radio comms, satellite, etc. According to the ITU link above, cell phone subscriptions were more than double internet subscriptions and rising faster. Internet traffic thru cell nets has been rising, but i find it difficult to believe that it dwarfs voice comms to the degree implied by the claim. 2)Even if it is discovered that Hilbert/Lopez supports the claim, the statements could be worded more clearly/helpfully. The first sentence clearly specifies 2-way comms, but the second does not, though it is implied in context. Also, no reference is made to geographic area; does this refer to the world, the US or some other country or region? No info is given to make that clear, though one might *assume* it's the world, given the title of Hilbert/Lopez.Gorkelobb (talk) 02:42, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Stats bearing on orig claim: According to the Bohn/Short UCSD paper i cited above: "We estimate that Americans averaged 1.6 hours per day conducting two-way communication, of which 57 percent was via the Internet, with the rest of the time on cellular or landline telephones. Correspondingly, the Internet provides 79 percent of the bytes and 73 percent of the words in two-way communication. The Internet is so important for two-way communications because of its unique technical characteristics, including a nearly universal network, very low variable costs, and the ability to handle both real-time and delayed activity" (p. 28). hmi.ucsd.edu/pdf/HMI_2009_ConsumerReport_Dec9_2009.pdf Seems like this aspect of the Internet is worth it's own section, maybe not in the History article,  or even its own page. It's a minor issue in the research I'm currently doing, and don't know when/if I'll pursue it, though it's something I'm curious about: What are the amount/proportions of data being transmitted thru the various telecom media, how are these media being used by govt/bus/consumers, how has this changed over time, etc.Gorkelobb (talk) 19:23, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Apparent Nonsense Statements
"In 1982 the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981…."
 * 1981 happened BEFORE 1982! (EnochBethany (talk) 03:05, 1 June 2012 (UTC))
 * The original ARPANET didn't use TCP/IP. --Alvestrand (talk) 03:58, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Poor structure
The Network Control Protocol (NCP) should be introduced earlier than where it as cited as Jon Postel's RFC. NCP needs to be mentioned in the History of the Internet section to make clear that a decade of experience passed before the advent of TCP. This is an effective feature which which filters out people who claim knowledge from that period of time. 64.9.237.38 (talk) 21:42, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The DNS is only really mentioned in passing, yet it is a significant factor that determines the functionality and evolution of the Net, and much more relevant to the Internet per se that "search engines", which are merely applications. I don't have time to address this, but it seems that it some text should be inserted. Nexus501 (talk) 21:59, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Supporting Esperanto as a turning point
Was there such a browser? Have noticed a peremptory violation out there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.10.57.86 (talk) 05:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 20 September 2012
"ICANA begins accepting applications for new generic top-level domain names" should be corrected to "ICANN begins accepting applications for new generic top-level domain names"

38.101.255.135 (talk) 05:44, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Corrected. Thanks for letting us know!