ARPANET What is it, what is it for and how did this first primitive version of the Internet work?

Before the Internet was invented, remote communication was very precarious. Well, if we go back to ancient times, it took people months to receive important messages and news. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that this fact had improved somewhat with the invention of the telegraph.

In spite of that, this was not very comfortable that one can say, and as a man always has a desire for more, it did not take 20 years when a group of Scientists born in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Poland were working to build a communication network, the same one we know today as the Internet.

But the Internet had another name before, so if you want to meet him and learn more about this story that marked a before and after in the world, stay in this pleasant and simple article that we have prepared for you.

What is ARPANET and what is the purpose of this network that gave rise to what is today the Internet?

The transfer of digital data via packets is not something that has been around since the dawn of time, but obviously if it had some point of birth. Long before the World Wide Web and Internet protocols, there was a small network that made everything we know today possible.

The United States Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, better known as ARPANET, It was a small network that allowed remote communication and data transfer from computers. of some state institutions and universities in the United States.

Being the first college to have this technology that of California in Los Angeles UCLA. But let’s go to the true origin to understand later the evolution of this powerful network.

Source

In 1958 it is said that an engineer from the RAND corporation named Paul Baran, while developing a communications network proposed the idea of ​​a decentralized network that was capable of sending the information in fragments, what we know today as packets or files.

He wanted the security of this means of communication to be so high that it could survive nuclear attacks. Obviously this at that time was nothing more than simple theories, which were formally published in 1964.

A little earlier, precisely in April of the year 1963, a computer scientist very interested in the subject was also solving his own questions for the development of a global node network, he was Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider. Who managed to convince two distinguished members of the Project Research Agency, ARPA, of the potential of his idea in the long term.

During the same period of time, a doctoral candidate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, named Leonard Kleinrock, I was developing a thesis in which the proposed the transfer of messages in “packets” through an experimental telecommunications network.

Donald Davies a member of the UK National Physical Laboratory, approximately in 1966 began to inquire about the theories left in 1958 by the RAND engineer, and thus joined in this laborious activity.

This meant that in the 1960s there was 4 research centers working independently on the same project, and that later formed the first resting nodes for ARPANET information.

Evolution and History

For the year 1968, and several scientists from ARPA and MIT they had gathered the necessary information for the creation of the computer network and they had the project approved.

In 1969 everything began to work and that same year the first links were established between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute, October 29 being the date on which the first message was sent with the ARPANET.

Already in the 1970s, the Internet protocol began to be developed, and this it became fully established in the 1980s. Because the domain name system (DNS) did not yet exist, and because of the growing number of users, it was becoming difficult to find the information directories. So the first directory server was hosted on the node that was at Stanford University.

By 1983 it is said that there were already more than 500 computers from different government and academic entities from various parts of the world, including Norway and England; all connected to the network. It should be noted that the first speed records are measured at 50 kbits per second.

By the time ARPANET adapts to the new Internet protocol then it stops being called that and changes its name to International Network or Internet, for its acronym in English.

How did the first version of the Internet work when it was created?

The ARPANET’s operation was made possible by a network control program known as NCP. Which established the foundations of communication until the complete transition occurred in 1983, to what is now known as TCP/IP or Internet Protocol.

This protocol establishes the bases for the transfer of information and is the one in charge of solving the problems so that the information reaches from one node to another.

ARPANET and DNS Why is this protocol created?

More or less in the year 1983 the network was exploding everywhere, the server that hosted the domain names at Stanford was running out of capacity, so it was necessary to fix this before the ARPANET crashed, not to mention how tedious it must be to type the IP address every time you wanted to access information on the Internet.

Given this problem arises the DNS Protocol, that allowed assigning a unique domain name to each IP address, thus facilitating access to each of the pages that could be browsed at that time.

What are the main characteristics of the ARPANET network?

Really not many features What to highlight about ARPANET, Even so, there are some that we must mention in this article:

• It was a decentralized network, therefore, communication occurs without intermediaries.
• As it is a decentralized network, any computer can connect and disconnect without affecting the rest.
• It used NCP protocol.

ARPANET vs Internet How is one different from the other?

It is really very difficult to find substantive differences between the Internet and the ARPANET, because one ceased to exist and simply became the other. This also makes them difficult to compare, because everything that the Internet has been improving over the years cannot be measured with the incipient ARPANET.

In any case, the most remarkable thing is that the ARPANET protocol was NCP and it was very basic, and the Internet protocol is TCP/IP, one of the best known and used.

We can also note that the Internet has more than one protocol, including P2P “Peer to Peer”, or the FTP protocol “File Transfer Protocol” that works with all networks of this.