The Internet Explained (part 1)

The exponential growth of the Internet has been phenomenal. Or has it? Perhaps it is only to be
expected when the cumulative acts of creation culminate in the proliferation of Mankinds
greatest achievement: the ability to communicate but globally and with astonishing, lightning
speed. Once the preserve of the scientific and military communities, the Internet has now
blossomed into a vehicle of expression and research for the common person with hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of new pages being added to the World Wide Web every day and tens
of millions of searches being performed through our ubiquitous search engines, the likes of
Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other portals to the Internet delivering results to queries in our
incessant quest for information.

In the Beginning
Some 45 years ago the search for knowledge was no less insatiable but the storage, collation,
selection and retrieval technologies were rudimentary and the expense enormous by todays
standards. 65 years past, with WWII at an end and the might, energy and focused intellect of
galvanised nations waning war, the first computers were being built along with man-machine
interfaces. It is at this time that visionaries first hinted at the possibilities of extending human
intellect by automating mundane, repetitive processes, devolving them to machines. One such
man, Vannevar Bush, in his 1945 essay, As We May Think envisaged a time when a machine
called a memex might enhance human memory by the storage and retrieval of documents
linked by association, in much the same way as the cognitive processes of the brain link and
enforce memories by association.
Post-War Development
Bushs contribution to computing science, although remarkable, was far less critical than his
efforts to unite the military and scientific communities together with business leaders, resulting
in the birth of the National Defence Research Committee (NDRC) which was later to become the
Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). In short, Bush galvanised research into
technology as the key determinant in winning the Second World War and established respect for
science within the military.
A few years after the war the National Science Foundation (NSF) was setup, paving the way for
subsequent government backed scientific institutions and ensuring the American nations
commitment to scientific research. Then in 1958, perhaps in direct response to the Soviet launch
of Sputnik, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created, and, in 1962,
employed a psychologist by the name of Joseph Licklider. He built upon Bushs contributions by
presaging the development of the modern PC and computer networking, and was responsible for
penning Man Computer Interface, a paper on the symbiosis of man and machine.
Having acquired a computer from the US Air Force and heading up a couple of research teams,
he initiated research contracts with leading computer institutions and companies who would later
go on to form the ARPANET and lay down the foundations of the first networked computing

group. Together they overcame problems associated with connecting computers delivered from
different manufacturers whose disparate communications protocols meant direct communications
was unsustainable, if not impossible.
It is interesting to note that Lick was not primarily a computer man; he was a psychologist
interested in the functionality of human thought but his considerations on the working of the
human mind brought him into the fold of computing as a natural extension of his interest.
Other Key Players
Another key player, Douglas Engelbart, entered web history at this point. After gaining his Ph.D.
in electrical engineering and an Assistant Professorship at Berkeley, he setup a research
laboratory the Augmentation Research Center to examine the human interface and storage
and retrieval systems, producing NLS (oNLine System) with ARPA funding, the first system to
use hypertext (coined by Ted Nelson in 1965) for collation of documents and is credited as the
developer of the first mouse or pointing device.
All the while visionary minds were laying the groundwork for the Internet, the hardware giants
were consolidating their computing initiatives: Bell produced the first 300 baud commercial
modem, the Bell 103, sold by ATT; DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) released the PDP-8
mass-produced minicomputer; and the first live transatlantic TV broadcast took place via ATTs
Telstar 1 satellite.
Credit must be afforded another thinker, Paul Baran, for conceiving the use of packets, small
chunks of a message which could be reconstituted at destination, upon which current internet
transmission and reception is based. Working at the RAND Corporation and with funding from
government grants into Cold War technology, Baran examined the workings of data transmission
systems, specifically, their survivability in the advent of nuclear attack. He turned to the idea of
distributed networks comprising numerous interconnected nodes. Should one node fail the
remainder of the network would still function. Across this network his packets of information
would be routed and switched to take the optimum route and reconstructed at their destination
into the original whole message. Modern day packet switching is controlled automatically by
such routers.

ARPANET (part 2)
As computer hardware became available the challenge of connecting them to make better use of
the facilities became a focus for concern, ARPA engaged a young networking specialist, Larry
Roberts, to lead a team responsible for linking computers via telephone lines. Four university and
research sites would be connected and it was decided to build Interface Message Processors
(IMPs, devised by Wesley Clark), smaller computers talking a common language dedicated to
handle the interfacing between their hosts and the Network. Thus the first gateways were
constructed and the precursor to the Internet was born under the name of the ARPANET in 1969.

The 70s saw the emergence of the first networks. As the ARPANET grew it adopted Network
Control Protocol (NCP) on its host computers and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is released by the
Network Working Group as a user-transparent mechanism for sharing files between host
computers.
And, significantly, the first Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) is implemented, permitting
computer terminals to connect directly to ARPANET. Users at various sites could log on to the
Network and request data from a number of host computers.
Communications Protocols
In 1972 Vinton Cerf is called to the chairmanship of the newly-formed Inter-Networking Group
(INWG), a team setup to develop standards for the ARPANET. He and his team built upon their
NCP communications system and devised TCP (Transmission-Control Protocol) in an effort to
facilitate communications between the ever-growing number of networks now appearing
satellite, radio, ground-based like Ethernet, etc.
They conceived of a protocol that could be adopted by all gateway computers and hosts alike
which would eliminate the tedious process of developing specific interfaces to diverse systems.
They envisaged an envelope of information, a datagram, whose contents would be immaterial
to the transmission process, being processed and routed until they reached their destination and
only then opened and read by the recipient host computer. In this way different networks could
be linked together to form a network of networks.
By the late 70s the final protocol was developed - TCP/IP (Internet Protocol) - which would
become the standard for internet communications.

Ethernet
One final piece of computer networking came together under Bob Metcalfe: Ethernet
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/diagrams/ethernet-original/ He submitted a dissertation on
the ARPANET and packet switching networks for his Harvard graduate dissertation but was
disappointed to have his paper junked. After taking a position at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC) he read a paper on Alohanet, the university of Hawaiis radio network.
Alohanet was experiencing problems with packet collision (information was being lost due to the
nature of radio broadcasting). Metcalfe examined the problem then refined the principles of
packet collision, adopted cable as the communications medium, formed 3Com and marketed his
invention as Ethernet. The take-up was almost immediate and the 80s witnessed the explosion of
Local Area Networks (LANs). First educational establishments then businesses employed
Ethernet as the business communications networking standard, and once connected through
communications servers to the Internet, the World Wide Web was just an initiative away.

Birth of the Browser (part 3)

In fact, it was ready and waiting in the wings. Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Tim) wrote a program,
Enquire-Within-Upon-Everything , in 1980 whilst contracted to CERN, the particle physics
laboratory in Geneva. He needed some means to collate his own and his colleagues information
notes, statistics, results, papers the plethora of output generated by the mass of scientists both
at the institution and located across the globe at various research centres. The seed was sown and
upon his return to CERN after other research, he set to work to resolve the problems associated
with diverse communities of scientists sharing data between themselves, especially as many were
reluctant to take on the additional workload of structuring their output to accommodate CERNs
document architecture format.
By 1989, the Internet was well established, LANs proliferated in business - especially with the
introduction of personal computers (PC) - and the adoption of Microsofts ubiquitous Window
operating system meant a stable(-ish) platform for users to create, store and share information.
Tim Berners-Lee submitted a paper to CERNs board for evaluation, Information Management:
A Proposal, http://www.funet.fi/index/FUNET/history/internet/w3c/proposal.html wherein he
detailed and encouraged the adoption of hypertext as the means to manage and collate the vast
sum of information held by CERN and other scientific and business establishments. Sadly, it
sparked little interest but he persevered and in 1990 wrote the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP) along with a way of identifying unique document Internet addresses, the URI or unique
resource indicator. To view retrieved documents he wrote a browser, WorldWideWeb and to
store and transmit them, the first web server.

The World Wide Web

CERN remained diffident to his system so Berners-Lee took the next logical step: distribute web
server and browser software on the Internet. The spontaneous take-up by computer enthusiasts
was immediate and the World Wide Web came into being.
The browser he created was tied to a specific make of computer, the NeXT; what was required
was a browser suited to different machines and operating systems like Unix, the PC and the Mac,
specifically so that businesses and governments, who were increasingly using the Web to manage
their public information, could guarantee their users could use it.
Soon browsers for different platforms started appearing, Erwise and Viola for Unix, Samba for
Macintosh and Mosaic for Unix, Mac and PC, created by Marc Andreessen whilst at the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
Mosaic took off in popularity to such an extent that it made front page of the New York Times
technical section in late 1993, and soon CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy begin offering dial-up
internet access.
Andreessen and Jim Clark (founder of Silicon Graphics Inc.) decided to form a new company,
Mosaic Communications Corporation, to develop a successor to Mosaic. Since the original

program belonged to the university of Illinois and was built with their time and money, they had
to start from scratch. He and Clark set about assembling a team of developers drawn from
NCSA. Netscape Navigator was born and by 1996 3-quarters of web surfers used it.

The Internet in Practice (part 4)

So how does the Internet work? It is important to remember the Internet is a network of
computer networks interconnected by communications lines of various compositions and speeds.
Interspersed across this immense network are routers which either guide traffic to specific
destinations or keep it within well defined areas. This vastness of scale can be distilled into two
basic actions: requests for information and the servicing of such requests, which forms the
relationship between the two types of computer using the Internet: clients and servers. Whether
connected to a local area network (LAN) at a place of business or attached by cable modem from
home, computers requesting information across a network or the Web are generally regarded as
clients; machines supplying the information are servers. In practice the distinction is less
polarised, with many computers both requesting and delivering information, but the premise
forms the basis of the Internet.
Servers often perform specific duties: web servers hosting websites, email servers forwarding
and collecting email, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers uploading and downloading files.

Web Access
Access to the Web for home users is achieved by dial-up modem, cable (broadband or ADSL) or
wireless connection to their ISP (Internet Service Provider); business users will typically be
connected to a local area network and gain access via a communications server or gateway,
which is again linked through an ISP to the Web. ISPs themselves may be connected to larger
ISPs, leasing high speed fibre-optic communications lines. Each of these forms a gateway to the
Web with the largest maintaining the backbones of the Web through which run the international
pipes connecting the worlds networks.
Addressing the Web

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is the governing set of protocols used
for transmitting information over the Internet. It establishes and manages the connection between
two computers and the packets of data sent between them.
Each computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address assigned to it, either
dynamically at the moment of connection or for a period of a day or so, or (for all intents and
purposes) a fixed or static address like that assigned to a web or name server hosting websites.
The current version of IP, version 4, allows for 4.3 billion unique addresses thought more than
adequate a few years ago but, as there are now only a billion left, no longer sufficient to address
not only the volume of new users and hosts coming online but also the influx of new
technologies demanding attendant IP addresses such as those associated with smart internetenabled machines like auto-ordering fridges, Pepsi dispensers and media centres and now

internet phones. However, the shortfall is being remedied with the emergence of IPv6 and its 340
billion billion billion address slots which not guarantees practically limitless web access but also
offers intrinsic unbreakable security encryption levels.
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers is the non-profit North
American organisation responsible for Internet IP address space allocation and DNS
management, among other technical management functions.
Most users have no need to know the unique identities of computers with which they
communicate since software deals with this on their PC, they simply address their email to
whomever or logon to their shared network drive and drill down folders to load a file to work on.
An IP address looks like 194.79.28.133, a cluster of four numbers known as octets. People dont
think of addresses in such a way although they have been forced to for some time with phone
and cell numbers and their PINs for credit cards but, as with email, use names as mnemonics.
As the Internet grew, it became obvious users seeking specific machines would need some
method of identifying and recalling computers quite apart from IP addresses.

Domain Name System (part 5)

The Domain Name System (DNS) http://www.netbsd.org/guide/en/chap-dns.html was conceived
in 1984, basically a lookup translation table converting machine readable IP addresses into
human understandable names. Locating a website by its name www.yourbusiness.co.uk rather
than entering 123.23.48.146 in the browser address bar makes eminently more sense. These
translation tables name servers - are dotted across the Internet and contain specific references
to website/IP addresses on their own local list, pointers to other name servers who may be able to
locate the desired computer should it not be found locally and a cache (temporary list) of recently
requested domain names.
Name servers are maintained and updated on a daily basis as IP addresses change or are added
when new websites come online. Millions of people and automated systems maintain this
distributed naming system worldwide and it is accessed by billions of surfers each day,
requesting not just websites but email addresses and FTP servers. It is the biggest and most
active distributed database in the world. There are special name servers called root servers which
hold the addresses of all the Top-Level Domains (TLDs like .com, .co.uk, .net. .org, etc.). These
are frequently interrogated whenever an unknown domain name (website) is requested and point
the requesting name server to the address of the server holding the translation table or map for
the requested website.
Obviously a single name server holding all internet addresses would be immediately brought to
its knees so there are several servers duplicating domain addresses at various levels of the system
and hundreds of thousands worldwide which, as well as speeding up the process of web access,
serve as a layer of inbuilt redundancy should local failure occur.

All name servers are not updated immediately - which is why a new website is not instantly
visible across the Internet. Additions to name server lists take time to propagate around the world
but are usually achieved within a day or two.

Domain Management
Various organizations are responsible for individual TLDs, ensuring duplicate domain names
cannot exist. These often country-specific organisations employ registrars, businesses accredited
to register and lease domain names to companies and individuals.
Nowadays the registration process is automated and remarkably simple. Choose a domain name,
check it is not already registered, select the lease period (no, you dont actually own the domain
but the right to use it for a period of time, a minimum of one or two years) and pay for it.
The domain is then added to the registrars local domain name server and propagated to the
worlds root name servers. Whether a website exists for the domain is immaterial, its potential
existence and location is described and forwarded. Web hosting companies may or may not be
registrars which means a domain may be registered with one company but hosted made visible
to the Internet through a web server by another. In this instance, the domain will be registered
and a change must be made to the default name servers list to point to another set of name
servers owned by the hosting company.
Website Development

Actually building a website is another matter. With the creation of HTML (HyperText Markup
Language), Sir Tim Berners-Lee offered developers the opportunity to apply special tags to
describe the structure and shape of documents web pages. The initial minimal set has been
supplemented to include about 90 tags serving different purposes such as presenting headings,
titles and lists to embedded multimedia and graphical objects though not without some disdain
since Berners-Lee at one time was at odds with Netscape for introducing the image tag which he
felt was making the Web frivolous.
Once a website or indeed any internet destined documents have been constructed they are
invariably transferred to the host server by means of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) by opening a
channel to the web server using either a browser connection string, for instance,
ftp.yourdomain.com entered into a browser address bar or via a dedicated FTP client, a software
program designed specifically for the bi-directional transfer of files. Some are standalone, some
are an inbuilt feature of website design programs.

Driving the Web (part 6)

Visionaries in the scientific, military and business industries contributed to the World Wide Web
as we now know it. Certainly, many individuals observed altruistic notions of a communications
medium for Mankind but there is no denying the United States and international war
governments sponsored the research initiatives behind its initial development, funding their

countries respective war and Cold War efforts and eventually recognising, perhaps reluctantly,
the critical contributions of their peoples academic and scientific communities.
The World Wide Web is not the Internet, it is a subset, designed specifically for the universal
interchange and dissemination of information, although the terms have become synonymous to
many users. To put it another way, all internet users have access to the Web but not conversely
since some areas of the Internet are restricted access many scientific, military, educational and
business networks require privileged access to non public areas, areas often dedicated to research
and development.

Internet2
One such area is Internet2, a subscription-only multidiscipline consortium of high-speed
networks connected (at least in the United States) by an ultra high-speed backbone, formed for
the investigation, creation and deployment of cutting edge internet technology. It links some
200+ United States universities in addition to scientific communities, governments and business,
many of whom pay some $30,000 in annual membership fees plus an annual connection fee
(where a point-of-presence is available) to Abilene, the company providing a 10 Gigabit fibreoptic, high-speed router transmission infrastructure, which may amount to hundreds of thousands
of dollars. It further extends to research centres in other countries via high-speed links.
One reason for the creation of such and similar ultra high-speed networks is a direct result of
scientific research where, with regards to particle physics for instance, vast quantities of data are
generated, data requiring many months or even years to transmit at conventional speeds. A far
less extreme reason is for transmission of broadcast quality video and streaming multimedia files
big business a la video on demand.
Faster Communications

Bandwidth, the capacity of a network to carry information, depends on a number of factors

which are predetermined and usually hardware limiting. The transport protocol managing
movement of data (packets) around the Web, TCP/IP, is a variable factor. A user may well enjoy
a high-speed broadband link to their ISP but from there outwards there is no guaranteeing the
speed or capacity of subsequent internet connections to the streaming video server you
subscribed to.
As mentioned earlier, TCP/IP was developed in the mid-70s and governs all Internet
communications. It has remained largely unchanged. Its strength and weakness lies in its
ability to adjust data transmission to meet internet conditions, namely congestion, transmission
urgency and quality. It does this by sending re-requests for information when it doesnt receive
confirmation of receipt by a certain time but it doubles the wait time after each re-request in
response to net congestion algorithms. This is often why file downloads may begin with a burst
of activity then speed deteriorates to frustrating slowness.
In response to this a new approach has been developed to using TCP: FAST or Fast Active queue
Scalable Transmission protocol. FAST dynamically adjusts transmission speeds in response to

how quickly it receives acknowledgements of successful packet transmission and has managed
spectacular sustained transfer speeds. This is not to say FAST increases bandwidth largely
fixed by physical hardware limitations (and, of course, set to maximums by lease costs) but it
does increase efficiency from a typical 25% to upwards of 95%.
Big business players like Microsoft and Disney have shown keen interest in its development
especially now that digital media has come of age. And the beauty of FAST is its implementation
does not require specialised client-based software or hardware upgrades; existing computers will
be able to make use of it immediately upon its release (although current versions do not support
Windows-based servers).

Future Development (part 7)

As penetration and uptake of high-speed internet connections reaches more and more homes and
the efficiency of data transfer increases, so the Internet will subsume all digital broadcasting
mediums. It will also transmit household and business utility readings, convey automated dairy
produce replenishment requests initiated by intelligent fridges triggered by microchip-embedded
product sell-by dates, blow-away conventional phone traffic and, once wireless or wi-fi hotspots
proliferate, eliminate cell phone congestion.
Multiplayer real-time online games have recently taken off in a huge way now that broadband
reception plus video compression techniques have reached a maturing plateau. Entire conceptual
universes sprinkled with strange and wonderful planets populated by alien life forms occupy tens
of thousands of people every month as they battle to win tokens, weapons and supremacy of
these surreal landscapes.

The Politics of the Internet

But the enthusiasm and capability to deliver such technology, now practicable, may be blunted
by the politics of the Internet. The United States effectively controls the Internet through ICANN
who administer the IP addresses and root name servers for domains. Requests for an international
domain governing body made at a three-day UN World Summit on the Information Society in
November 2005 in Tunis went unresolved save for an agreement to form an Internet Governance
Forum. There is no doubt the United States is reluctant to relinquish control of such a powerful
medium as the Internet and perhaps distrustful of the competency of a mixed international body
to administrate it efficiently or securely.
The coming decade will no doubt usher in the next generation of both ultra high-speed
communications and the software and digital media able to exploit it. But for some it is a chilling
thought that the Internet will become the communications platform of the world. Why? Because
even though it is becoming ever more speedy and reliable, it is also prone to attack. Not as
envisaged in the Cold War years from nuclear missiles whose electromagnetic pulses would
render the router controlling microchips dead but by attacks from within, attacks by hackers,
criminals or terrorist groups intent on crippling it.

The Internet does have an innate redundancy but the very speed with which files may be
transmitted means it can take just milliseconds for thousands of computers to be infected by a
virus. Firewalls and sophisticated anti-proliferation contingency firmware in routers go only so
far to preventing such attacks.
Internet Identities

Perhaps the introduction of unique internet identities assigned to individuals would go some way
to thwarting cyber criminals. Internet access would be granted once the user could be identified
personally and all originating packet traffic for the session duration would hold their encrypted
signature in much the same way as the TCP/IP envelope contains addressing information.
Attempts to commit malicious acts might then be traced to the individual and not the originating
computer, and act as a deterrent. How contentious an issue internet identities is depends on an
individuals stance on civil liberties; how effective it is depends on the ingenuity of
implementation, ease of use and, as ever, human fallibility.