ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet, was an academic research project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the military known for funding ambitious research projects without immediate commercial or military applications. Initially, the network only connected the University of Utah with three research centers in California. ARPANET was a test of a then-novel technology called packet-switching, which breaks data into small "packets" so they can be transmitted efficiently across the network. It also had a more practical goal: allowing more efficient use of expensive computing resources. Computer scientists sometimes used ARPA money to buy computers, and the agency hoped that ARPANET would allow universities to share these expensive resources more efficiently. One of the first ARPANET applications was Telnet, which allowed a researcher at one ARPANET site to log into a computer at another site.
By the end of 1970, ARPANET had grown to 13 nodes, including East Coast schools like Harvard and MIT. Among the early nodes was Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN), an engineering consulting company that did the engineering work required to build ARPANET. Each ARPANET site had a router known as an Interface Message Processor. These cost $82,200, or half a million dollars in today's money.
In 1973, the ARPANET became international, with a satellite link connecting Norway and London to the other nodes in the United States. Hawaii also joined the network by satellite. At this point, the network had around 40 nodes. New ARPANET applications had begun to emerge. Email was invented in 1971 by a BBN engineer named Ray Tomlinson, who also invented the use of the "@" symbol in email addresses. The File Transfer Protocol, which is still used today, allowed ARPANET users to send files to each other.
As the ARPANET entered its second decade, it was still largely confined to the United States. Academic institutions depended on federal funding to join the network, so the number of nodes expanded slowly. By 1982, the network only had about 100 nodes. But that was enough to support a vibrant online community. Long before Facebook and Twitter, ARPANET allowed computer scientists who had access to the network to stay in touch. A new bulletin board system called Usenet was invented in 1980 and caught on quickly. Usenet was organized by topic, allowing users to swap programming tips, recipes, jokes, opinions about science fiction, and much more.
Originally, the entire ARPANET was managed by the military. But network operators realized that a centralized network would eventually become unmanageable if it continued to grow. They decided that the network should be reorganized as a decentralized "network of networks." Under this scheme, different networks would be controlled by different organizations, but all the networks able to communicate using shared standards, forming a shared "internet." The military asked the computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf to develop new networking standards to make this possible. The result was a set of standards known as TCP/IP. These standards specified the basic format of data packets transmitted across the internet. On January 1, 1983, the ARPANET switched to using TCP/IP, marking the birth of the modern internet. The switch to TCP/IP didn't make much difference from a user perspective — applications like email and Telnet worked about the same as they had before. But the new standard paved the way for much faster network growth by lowering the barrier to entry for new networks. One of the first new networks to connect to the new internet was CSNET, which was funded by the National Science Foundation to link computer science departments across the country. This map shows the location of ARPANET and CSNET nodes (labeled "Phonenet"), which after 1983 communicated with each other using TCP/IP. By the time the ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990, it was just one of many networks that comprised the internet. Today, the internet is made up of more than 40,000 different networks. These networks still communicate with each other using the TCP/IP standards Cerf and Kahn developed in the 1970s.
In 1993, the internet was still dominated by the United States but it was becoming a truly global network. This is a map of information flow on Usenet, an bulletin board application that allowed users to swap recipes, jokes, programming tips, and more.
In 1994, the Clinton Administration privatized the internet backbone. Commercial firms took over the job of carrying long-distance internet traffic, allowing the government-funded NSFNET to be decommissioned. Officials were careful to ensure that no single company controlled too much of the backbone, helping to create a competitive market for internet connectivity that still exists today. These four maps illustrate how the market had evolved by the turn of the century. Four of the largest private long-distance network providers were UUNet, AT&T, Sprint, and Level 3. Each had its own nationwide (and global) network, and they competed with each other to provide long-distance connectivity to smaller networks. UUNet became part of WorldCom in 1996, and became part of Verizon in 2006. Today, Verizon operates one of the world's largest internet backbones, in competition with AT&T, Sprint, Level 3 and many other companies.
By 2000, almost half of Americans were on the internet, but ordinary people in most other countries had not yet joined the network. There were fewer than 400 million internet users worldwide. Since then, the internet has gone from an American network to a truly global one. This map illustrates how the internet came first to wealthy countries, then to middle-income countries, and finally to poor countries. Today, there are more than 2.5 billion internet users, and hundreds of millions of new users are joining each year.
There are two basic ways people can log onto the internet: through a fixed broadband connection at home or in an office and via a wireless connection on a cell phone or tablet. This data from the International Telecommunications Union shows how popular fixed internet access is around the world. It shows internet access is widespread in most parts of the world, but is still fairly scarce in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Fixed internet access allows multiple devices in a customer's home to access the internet. Fixed connections are also ideal for streaming-video services such as Netflix because they tend to have greater capacity than wireless networks.
In the developed world, people usually got fixed internet access first and obtained mobile internet devices later. But some developing countries are skipping the construction of fixed broadband networks altogether. This is cost-effective because a single cell phone tower can provide service to hundreds of customers. For examle, 2.7 percent of Egyptians have fixed broadband service at home, but 10 times as many Egyptians have internet access using a cell phone. The story is similar in Ghana, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, South Africa, and Nigeria. Mobile internet access can have profound implications for people in isolated areas. Farmers can use mobile phones to learn about recent market developments, increasing the amount they can get for their crops. Some mobile phone operators also offer sophisticated payment capabilities, allowing people who don't have access to the conventional banking system to make electronic payments. A few wealthy countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Sweden, that have more mobile internet subscriptions than people. Some customers have two more or smartphones, tablets, or other connected mobile devices.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close