Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
The earliest Packet Switching Network
Packet Switching – A method of grouping data that is transmitted to a digital network in packets.
First network to implement TCP/IP Suite.
Communications protocol similar to computer networks.
Precursor to the internet as we know it today, with aforementioned technology and protocols being the earliest foundations.
Established and activated in 1969, during the Cold War
The idea was to build a network of information and communication that could withstand any assault from the Soviet Union.
Also served to help Academics share vital research.
The ARPANET was conceived in 1963 as a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The brainchild of J.C.R Licklider, renowned computer scientist.
Appointed head of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control programs at Department of Defense’s (DOD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later renamed DARPA)
Licklider left the DOD in 1967, but his colleagues Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor continued his work.
Elizabeth Feinler created the first Resource Handbook for ARPANET in 1969 which led to the development of the ARPANET directory.
The directory was designed by Feinler and a team made up almost entirely of women.
They made it possible to navigate the ARPANET.
Taylor convinced the DOD to fund the project in 1966.
One million dollars was taken from the nations Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program.
Wesley Clark, an American physicist who is credited for designing the first modern personal computer (PC) was also involved
Clark came up with the idea of using minicomputers called Interface Message Processors (IMPs) to interface the network rather than the large mainframes that would be ARPANET nodes.
There were initially four of these IMPs.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
The Stanford Research Institute (SRI International)
University of Utah School for Computing
The first attempt at transmitting a message was unsuccessful, resulting in a system crash.
An hour later, the code was repaired and the message “login” was sent to SRI International.
The first successful message on the ARPANET was sent from UCLA at 10:30 pm PST on 29 October 1969.
The message of “login” was successfully sent from UCLA and received at SRI International in it’s entirety.
The first permanent ARPANET link was established on 21 November 1969, between the IMP’s at UCLA and SRI International.
By 5 December 1969, a four-node network was established.
IMP’s continued to grow and connect at a high rate.
ARPANET also began connecting outside of the United States in early seventies.
In 1973, satellite link connected the ARPANET to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR).
That same year, an IMP was connected in London.
By 1974, there were 46 IMPs across the globe.
By 1975, the number raised to 57 IMP’s.
Though ARPANET had been growing, connecting, and functioning for six years, the government “officially” declared it fully operational in 1975.
Operational control was handed over to the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) that same year.
Under the DCA, efforts began to give the U.S. Military their own network on the ARPANET to control.
In 1984 ARPANET was restructured and reworked.
This gave the U.S. military sites their own Military Network (MILNET) for unclassified defense department communications.
Gateways (routers as we know them today) were monitored by the DCA that connected ARPANET and MILNET.
These connections were called the Defense Data Network (DDN)
Later, in 1991, MILNET became Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET), and is still used by the DOD and U.S. Military to this day.
Though ARPANET was a precursor to the internet, it was a government program with government regulations.
It was illegal to send any messages over ARPANET that were not in direct support of government/Military interest or business.
The earliest forms of email were not to be used for commercial, political, or social gain in any way.
An algorithm was developed for the ARPANET to protect passwords in 1971.
The algorithm was later sequence by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to hash passwords in the Virtual Memory System (VMS) operating system and is still being used for this purpose.
In 1971, the first network e-mail was sent.
By 1973, e-mail constituted 75 percent of the ARPANET traffic.
Also in 1973, the first File Transfer Protocol (FTP) specifications were implemented, enabling file transfers over the ARPANET.
By 1977, the Network Voice Protocol (NVP) specifications were defined.
Due to technical difficulties however, conference calls over the ARPANET never worked well and were seldom used.
The proper tech for such uses was still two decades off
The starting point for host-to-host communication on the ARPANET in 1969 was the 1822 protocol.
1822 was the earliest form of routers, or gateways.
1822 was replaced with the Network Control Program (NCP), which provided a more reliable communications link among different processes in different host computers.
In 1983, NCP itself was dropped in favor of TCP/IP as mentioned before, laying way for the internet as we now know it.
After the implementation of TCP/IP’s, the ARPANET began to phase into a subnet of the internet.
The original IMP’s began to shut down as quickly as they originally sprung up.
By February of 1990, DARPA officially decommissioned the ARPANET.
In 1991, then Senator Al Gore, authored the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill”.
The bill was passed in December 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore and future President Clinton referred to as “the information superhighway”.
