Discovering the Internet

The creation of the internet has made a huge impact on today’s world and has set a standard for how people live their lives in this present day.   The internet is a network of computers that connect people to one another and help share information to educate and assist with tasks.  There is a massive variety of different reasons and services the internet helps people including business matters, education, entertainment, and so forth.   A person in America can purchase an item at a lower cost from a business in Japan, a Canadian can read up on news that is going on in England, and a student studying abroad in Italy can still attend their class by simply connecting to the internet. 

The idea of the internet was first created through the idea that information can be shared and protected by connecting two or more computers.  First brought up by the government in the early 1960s, ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was to develop this idea of sharing information with the rest of the world with the help of packet switching, which is the sending of data in small batches  (called packets) instead of using a dedicated line which could be disrupted.  Two computers were connected in Massachusetts and California in 1965 through an experiment and helped set the stage for the continuation and development of the internet.  This single experiment started the ARPANET, the original internet. 

In 1972, researchers noticed that with the advancement and other types of this new process, there was no single protocol in which computers can handle all of this sharing of information.  Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf went on to create the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the internet Protocol (IP) which helped provide control flow of the packets being shared throughout all systems.  This protocol is still used today.  In the early 1990s, the very first web browser that used HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)  format, which creates pictures, different text, and links to web pages, were created to help give the public a connection to this new found technology.  The very first web browser created would be Netscape founded by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen.

Individuals and businesses connect to the internet by companies known as Internet Service Providers (ISP).  These companies include Time Warner, Verizon Fios, Earthlink, and NetZero.  They provide the service of connection with offering different types of speed, bandwidth, customer service, and tech support.  There are multiple ways people connect to the internet using the methods of dial up, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Cable, Satellite, and mobile wireless devices.  All of these different types of connections have their positives and negatives, but all in all, they help connect the individual to a vast collection of information that helps make life just a little bit easier.