History of the Internet

What started as a "Galactic Network" concept way back in the sixties resulted in ARPANET and finally in the form we know as the Internet. Originally this concept was intended to provide connectivity between Government agencies and universities, now it provides connectivity from anywhere on Earth and elsewhere. Several protocols evolved over the period of time and the primary protocol of the Net - TCP/IPTransmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol forms the fundamental core of the Internet.

The primary central Authority to coordinate the workings of the Internet was the Network Information Center (NIC) from 2which emerged the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Mostly the new connectivity revolved around Email and Usenet from which it went ahead to include a kind of World Library - Gopher and WWW. In the year 1991, Tim Berners-Lee implemented a Network based Hyper Text concept which finally became the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as we know today.

Once the volume of the published material increased to such a large extent, it became imperative that some kind of search facility was required - the birth of Search Engines. Internet is arguably the major invention of the late 20th century which changed the fundamental perception of information dissemination across the World.

In this series of articles related to the Internet, we will explore more concepts and how they relate to our lives.