This free online book is aimed at people already familiar with using the Internet, who want to know how and why it works. This work isn’t designed for programmers or others who want to make Internet technology. When we say technology we don’t just mean the software and hardware, but also the human components which are an integral part of the overall system of the Internet.
Book Description
The Internet is a worldwide collection of computer networks that began as a single network that was originally created in 1969 by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), a U.S. government agency that was far more interested in creating projects that would survive a nuclear war than in creating anything useful for the civilian population.
In its original form, ARPANET, the U.S. government hoped to create a network of computers that would allow communication between government agencies and certain educational centers that would be able to survive a nuclear explosion. It is doubtful that the original founders of ARPANET foresaw what we now know as “the Internet.” From its humble beginnings as a military project, the ARPANET grew slowly throughout the 70’s and 80’s as a community of academics accomplished the truly monumental task of hammering out the building blocks of this new, open, modular conglomeration of networks.
The various protocols, including IP, TCP, DNS, POP, and SMTP, took shape over the years, and by the time the World Wide Web (HTML and HTTP) was created in the early 90’s, this “Internet” had become a fully functional, fairly robust system of network communication, able to support this new pair of protocols which eventually turned the Internet into a household word.
Table of Contents
- The Internet
- The Web
- Usenet
- IRC
- Remote Access