the history of the internet and its current state
...to each other privately like normal mail but instantaneously and free, and had been in existence since nearly the dawn of the ARPANET. In 1990 the ARPANET is closed. By that time the ARPANET was only one network in the large number of networks that made up “the net” so the internet did not suffer. In 1991 the ban on business activity on the internet is lifted, which marked the start of E-Commerce. The very first tool used on the network by businesses was e-mail. The inclusion of business activity on the net and the endless potential businesses saw in it would rocket the internet into maturity over the next decade. In the early 90’s the World Wide Web (WWW) project came into being. The Word Wide Web project aimed to link every site on the internet through the universal protocol Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). HTML would enable “linking”, a way of organizing and accessing data from simply selecting a button on a web page. This protocol is the backbone of the modern internet. Around the mid 90’s a large number of telecommunications companies were offering internet access via there newly renovated networks. Also, programs called “Web Browsers” came into being. Web browsers allow a person with little knowledge of the internet to access its contents through an all inclusive graphical interface that handles most of the necessary procedures to manage a connection to the internet, as well as manages the user’s activities on the internet. They also provided users with the option to search for certain items and view them. The invention of web browsers and the offering of internet service from telecommunications companies made it possible for millions of lay-people to go online. The new user friendliness of the internet caused an explosion of content and service to be posted on the net. Web sites and web users multiplied with blistering speed from the mid to late 90’s. As the net grew in size the services it provided widened in scope. Users could order products from automated web sites as if they were catalogs, read up to date news articles from around the world, and share information and data of all types. The internet influence on life in developed countries was huge. People no longer had to pay high costs to communicate instantly by telephone over long distances. All aspects of communication could happen instantaneously. Commerce was affected greatly. Business workings were sped up at a tremendous pace. This renaissance of communication was dubbed “The Information Age”. In 1999 a program called Napster was released. Napster was a file sharing program that created a massive network out of all the computers running it. The network was user friendly and let anyone on the network share and access files from any other computer. A large percentage of the files being shared were copy written material like software and music. The concept of people sharing and copying copy written material over the internet was not new, but the file sharing network set up by this program made it extremely easy and wide spread. The practice of sharing and downloading copy written material became extremely popular, mostly because a user could get material instantly and for free rather than traveling to a store and paying for the item. This marked a turning point in commerce the world over, from that point on anything non-physical (video, music, software, text) could be downloaded for free if the seeker desired it. This practice crippled the music industry in less than 4 years, and threatens countless other entertainment and software companies. As connection speeds get faster due to improvements to the networks, other forms of media fall victim to the practice of file sharing. At the current time over half of America’s internet users have a “high speed” internet connection and the rest of the developed world is following fast. Users with high speed connections (100KB per second or more) can down load an entire music album in less than 30 min, or an entire DVD’s worth of material in less than 4 hours. Professional software that otherwise would cost in thousands of dollars can be had for no cost and can be down loaded in less than a day. III. Services/Programs Email Email existed pre-ARPANET, as a simple message posting system used on networks of terminals connected to mainframes. In the mid 50’s when many Universities where conducting research on mainframes the mainframe could have up to a 100 people who used it. They would access the mainframe from a terminal that was not part of the mainframe, merely connected to it. The terminals couldn’t process data themselves, they only controlled the mainframe. It would be like having one PC with multiple keyboards and monitors connected to it. A system of messaging was developed so the different users could leave messages on the mainframe for each other to read later. After the setup of the ARPANET a man named Ray Tomlinson invented the form of Email we use today. He conceived a way to address messages much like regular mail; with the name of the person the message was being sent to and the name of the computer they would access it from. This way the message could be routed by a separate entity on the network, rather than sent directly to the recipient by the sender. He chose the “@” symbol to separate the name of the recipient from the name of the computer. Email was the first service made specifically for the ARPANET. It quickly became the most used aspect of the ARPANET and instigated the refocus of the ARPANET towards communication. Email is still the most often used aspect of the modern internet, it is over 40 years old, and has used pretty much the same protocol ever since its creation. There are several different ways modern internet users can use Email. The most popular way up until net access became wide spread in the late 90’s was to use programs that could let you compose your Email and read your Email without being online. This was necessary because at the time accessing Email servers could be expensive due to having to reach them via long distance phone calls. With offline readers one could spend as little amount of time as possible on phone lines racking up high bills. One of the most popular Email offline programs was Microsoft Outlook, a program that is still used to this day. Over time Email evolved to include attachments. Attachments are simply files that aren’t text that are sent with the Email. The file could be anything, from a picture to be viewed on the recipient’s computer to sensitive documents. Today most people access Email via web sites that host the space and software needed to use Email. Accessing Email through a website is more secure than accessing it directly from your computer because Email has grown into a favorite means of virus infection from virus makers. By accessing Email through a website you are given an extra layer of protection. Telnet Telnet was made in the 80’s but is a protocol which is still industry standard which lets user’s access data or programs on other computers through the network and manipulate them as if they were on your own computer. The Telnet protocol is revolutionary because it transfers the burden of being able to handle large amounts of data from the access computer or to the provider computer. Instead of having many powerful computers doing the same thing you could now hove one computer powerful enough that could be accessed by multiple less powerful, less expensive computers from all over the world. It lets users change and manipulate the contents of foreign computer with their own over the internet. IRC In 1988 Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was conceived by Jarkko Oikarinen. IRC allowed people to converse in real time through messages sent over the internet. Instead of individual messages that would have to be posted and read and responded to later or sent over email, users of IRC could open a private channel and post messages that could be read instantly and responded to instantly. It also allowed multiple users to have a text based real time conversation. Meeting could take place over large distances without expensive phone costs. This form of communication has been termed “Instant Messaging” and is perhaps the most used tool on the internet after Email. This form of communication stunned the phone industry and has initiated a shift from focus on phone service to focus on Internet provision. FTP One of the major breakthroughs for ARPANET during the 70’s was the invention of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) which standardizes transfer systems for ease of use. This protocol is still used to this day. Prior to the invention of FTP the members sharing data would have to agree of standards and set up there systems to send and receive data on a transfer to transfer basis. Universal standards for the Internet are critical to streamlining use as they make it possible for every computer to converse with every other computer without modulation which takes time and would limit networks. WWW The World Wide Web project was started in the early 90’s as a way to link every network on earth via a certain indexing protocol. The project was started to create a truly massive network of data so that any of it could be searched and used by even a lay person. When the WWW was conceived they planned on using programs called “browsers” to access the WWW. Netscape Navigator In 1994 a man named Jim Clark had just graduated from Illinois University where he had worked on a web browser project called “Mosaic”. When he graduated he formed Netscape Communications and made Netscape Navigator a browser advanced for its time. It quickly became one of the most popular Web browser on the market and the success Netscape enjoyed because of its browsers success brought the company great fortune. Netscape has since lost most of the market share it once owned due to aggressive implementation of Microsoft Internet Explorer over the years. Netscape is a large service provider now. Microsoft Internet Explorer Microsoft originally licensed code from Netscape to make its own browser. Although Netscape continued to release better browsers than Microsoft at first, Microsoft eventually surpassed Netscape with Internet Explorer 4.0. Internet Explorer 4 became the preferred browser above all others and remains in that spot to this day. Today Internet Explorer has an estimated 80% market share of the browser field. Microsoft has often been the target of scorn for its practice of integrating Internet Explorer with Windows, and thus shutting out most other browser makers from gaining market share on Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer can not be uninstalled from Windows. Search Engines The number one most visited site on the Internet is Yahoo. Yahoo is what is known as a “search engine”. Users can search the entire net using key words or phrases. The search engine returns a list of web sites that pertain to the word or phrase that the user searched for. The results are listed as links that will take the user directly to the site they select from the list. Search engines are very powerful entities on the internet; they can promote certain sites, news stories, ideas, and services. One of the most controversial actions of search engines is search placement advertising. In search placement advertising the search ...