Invention

The Internet

Software Engineering

The internet is a global network of interconnected computer networks that communicate using a common set of protocols, allowing any two connected computers to exchange data regardless of what kind of local network each belongs to. Its direct ancestor, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, known as ARPANET, sent its first message between two computers in 1969, and the network of networks in the modern sense took shape when ARPANET adopted the TCP or IP protocol suite in 1983.

Facts

Disputed

Year

1969 1

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, ARPANET, sent its first message between two computers in 1969, and is generally credited as the internet direct ancestor. The internet in the modern sense, a network of networks using a common protocol, is more precisely dated to January 1983, when ARPANET adopted the TCP or IP protocol suite and allowed separate networks to interconnect. Which date marks the internet true beginning depends on whether the test is the first packet switched network or the first genuinely internetworked one.

Patent or First-Use Date

1969-10-29 1

First message sent over the ARPANET, from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute, October 29, 1969.

Significance

The internet became the infrastructure for the World Wide Web, electronic mail and nearly every subsequent form of digital communication and commerce, by linking previously separate computer networks into a single global network. 1

FAQs

How did ARPANET send data between computers?

ARPANET split data into equal-size packets instead of sending it whole.

ARPANET used a then new idea called packet switching, which was its major characteristic. Packet switching breaks up the data to be sent from one computer to another into pieces called packets, which are message units of equal size.

Connections