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An Introduc/on to Computer Networks

What the Internet is
A very brief history of networking
and the Internet
Nick McKeown
Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science, Stanford University

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Outline
Brief history of networking
Brief history of the Internet

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Fire Beacons
Carrier Pigeons
Human Messengers
Horse Relays

1,000 BC

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Flags
Semaphore telegraphs
Heliographs: suns
Chappe (France)
rays & reector
Edelcrantz (Sweden)
Telescopes
0

1800 AD

Telephone
Internet

Today

The Telegraph

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Four steps of inven/on

(2,000 BC) Systems to signal a small set of pre-dened
messages, e.g. beacons.
(1600s) Systems to transmit arbitrary messages, e.g. by
encoding the alphabet.
(1700s) Numeric codes for common words and phrases.
Compression.
(1700s) Codes for control signals. Protocols.
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Protocol Signals by 1800

1.
2.
3.
4.

Ini/aliza/on
Error control: erase, resend.
Rate control: faster/slower.
Flow control: stop/wait, selec/ve-repeat.

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Telephone networks in 1900

1. (1897) Alexander Graeme Bell made the rst
telephone call

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Outline
Brief history of Networking
Brief history of the Internet

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Parallel beginnings
J.C.R. Licklider describes an
Intergalac/c Network connec/ng
everyone on the globe.

Four nodes
interconnected
(UCLA, SRI, UCSB,
Utah)

RAND (Paul Baran)

Packet switching for
survivable networks.
MIT (Kleinrock) First
paper on packet
switching theory.
NPL, UK (Davies)
Packet network.

1960
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DARPA (Roberts)
plans for
ARPANET.
WAN connects two /me-
sharing computers

1965

1966

First IMPs (BBN).

1968
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TCP/IP
deployed
NSFNET, etc.

New networks appear:

IBM SNA, ALOHAnet,
Cyclades (France).

Cisco and IETF

started

Internehng and TCP

born (DARPA), led by
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.

1970
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1st Web browser

200 hosts on
ARPAnet

100,000 hosts
on Internet

1980

1990
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Useful References
1. The Early History of Data Networks
G. J. Holzmann, B. Pehrson, IEEE Press 1994.

2. The Design Philosophy of the

DARPA Internet Protocols.
D. Clark, ACM Sigcomm 1988
3. Brief History of the Internet
B. M. Leiner, V. Cerf, D. D. Clark et al.

hjp://www.internetsociety.org/internet/internet-51/history-internet/brief-history-internet

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<The End>

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