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Chapter 13
The Internet (the Net) Environment

Top 10 ways to pose as a jaded Net vet:

10.When  referring to browsers, use the preferred spelling “Netscrape” and “Internet Exploder.” (You, of course, use Lynx.)
9.You’re  male? Call yourself d00d. Female? Grrl.
8.Refer  to online services only when you absolutely have to, and when you do, use these preferred spellings: America OnHold, Plodigy, Compu$erve, and Microsoft Notwork.
7.If  you use the term “digerati,” make it clear you are being ironic.
6.Change  your sig to read, “I have Neiman-Marcus cookie recipes”
5.Change  your alternative sig to read: “Of course, Mondo 2000 did it first.”
4.  Want to change your sig? Never use one you’ve seen somewhere else.
3.  Spell the “cool” k-e-w-l.
2.  Spell the word “kewl” k-0-0-l with two zeroes.
1.  Avoid discussions about the relative merits of the MacOS, Windows and OS/2. Just mention casually that if it doesn’t grep, it’s not a real computer.

— c|net (http://cnet.com)


Author's Note:  For explanations of http and .com, read this chapter. For explanations of Lynx, digerati, and grep, refer to the end of this chapter. If you thoroughly understand all of these terms, you may skip this chapter.

The Internet has captured the imagination of the U.S, and of the world! From its early beginnings as DARPANET, linking a select few military and R&D facilities, it has grown to comprise thousands of networks and millions of users in more than a hundred countries. The Internet is the “kudzu” of networks, growing like the uncontrollable weed of Southern infamy.

The Internet truly was the Information Superhighway, long before the term was coined. While it was actually more of a private road, it was characterized by a sense of freedom that was truly unparalleled. That early network stood apart by virtue of its providing free and open access to information—that characteristic remains today as the hallmark of the Internet. The Internet is a network of networks, and has become a Global Village, much as envisioned by Marshall McLuhan. In some sense, at least, The Internet is The Information Superhighway!

The Internet Defined

The Internet is a global network of networks currently linking over 60,000 networks and spanning over 150 countries. According to Network Wizards the number of connected hosts nearly doubled in 1996, to almost 9.5 million (Table 13.1). There are well over 35 million users, with a growth rate that exceeds 15% per month, according to some estimates. Figure 1.1 provides a graphic view of the growth of the Internet (there were only four hosts in 1969). E-mail, the most popular application, is estimate to account for well over one billion messages and over one trillion bytes (1TB) of data per month.

Table 13.1 Internet Domain Survey, January 1996: Number of Hosts, Domains and Nets. Source: Network Wizards (http://www.nw.com)

Network Class
Date Hosts Domains Replied to Ping*A (Large) B (Medium) C (Small)

Jan 96 9,472,000 240,000 1,682,000 92 5,655 87,924
Jul 95 6,642,000 120,000 1,149,000 91 5,390 56,057
Jan 95 4,852,000 71,000 970,000 91 4,979 34,340
Oct 94 3,864,000 56,000 1,024,000 93 4,831 32,098
Jul 94 3,212,000 46,000 707,000 89 4,493 20,628
Jan 94 2,217,000 30,000 576,000 74 4,043 16,422
Oct 93 2,056,000 28,000 69 3,849 12,615
Jul 93 1,776,000 26,000 464,000 67 3,728 9,972
Apr 93 1,486,000 22,000 421,000 58 3,409 6,255
Jan 93 1,313,000 21,000 54 3,206 4,998


*Estimated by pinging 1% of all hosts


Figure 13.1  Growth in Internet hosts.(Sources: Network Wizards (http://www.nw.com) and Mark Gibbs, Gibbs & Co.).

The Internet is grounded in the U.S. Department of Defense ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork), which began in 1969 as a means of linking personnel and systems involved in various computer science and military research projects. ARPANET, and its successor DARPANET (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork) were developed to be totally fail-safe. The distribution of computing power and the redundancy of the data switches and computer links were all intended to provide a meshed computer network that could withstand a nuclear strike

In the early 1970s, work began at Stanford University on a set of internetworking protocols designed to prove connectivity among the ARPANET computers. In May 1974, Vinton G. Cerf (Stanford University) and Robert E. Kahn (Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Department of Defense) published “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication” in the IEEE Transactions on Communications [13-1]. That concept became known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). Development work on the protocols was completed in 1980, and in 1983 the Office of the Secretary of Defense mandated that ARPANET users accept the new set of computer protocols, which became the standard for ARPANET. In order to encourage colleges and universities to transition to TCP/IP, DARPA eased the implementation process for Berkeley Software Distribution, commonly known as BSD UNIX or Berkeley UNIX, a version of the UNIX operating system which they mostly ran at the time. Toward that end, DARPA funded Bolt Baranek and Newman (BBN) to implement the TCP/IP protocols with Berkeley UNIX; this approach filled an internetworking protocol void and formed the foundation for the Internet [13-2].

In late 1983, ARPANET was split into two unclassified networks, DARPANET (Defense ARPANET) and MILNET (MILitary NETwork). Although ARPANET was officially retired in June, 1990, the Internet has survived. TCP/IP has been enhanced recently and currently enjoys wide popularity in education, research and development, and commercial applications.


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