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EACH MARCH, JULY, AND NOVEMBER, we are I reminded that the Internet is not quite the mature, stable technology that it seems to I be. We rely on the Internet as an essential tool for our economic, social, educational, and political lives. But when the Internet Engineering Task Force meets every four months at an open conference that bounces from continent to continent, more than 1,000 people from around the world gather with change on their minds. Their vision of the global network that all humanity shares is dynamic, evolving, and continuously improving. Their efforts combine with the contributions of myriad others to ensure that the Internet always works but is never done, never complete.

The Domain Name System (DNS) was the major milestone in the Internet between the advent of the IP/TCP, internet, and the web. Any Internet user gets a glimpse of it every time they see a URL. What is perhaps less realized is how much the creation of the DNS enabled development and evolution of the Internet and Internet applications such as the World Wide Web (Web) - something that has become manifestly clear to us through our several decades of research on the origins of the Internet. The following contribution to the history of DNS consists of descriptions by Paul Mockapetris, Mike Roberts, Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker, and Tin Wee Tan. The authors outline how the aforementioned experienced the origins of the governance of DNS and expansion of the TLD space and sketch the DNS' origin and evolution. Origin refers to its history up to the time when the first machines came to rely on it as a production system, roughly 1986. The evolution phase takes us to the current decade. Also covered are DNS security issues and the internationalization of the DNS, which created a big movement to drive the change of the DNS to the next level. The DNS absolutely changed the development of the Internet and its evolution continues. As the inventor Mockapetris has said about the origin of DNS, "I built the first floor and maybe the second floor and then people came along and added about 20 more floors."

Reports on the celebration of the ARPANET 50th Anniversary that was recognized at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

The engineers who built routers for the fledgling ARPANET in 1969 never dreamed that networking technology would upend journalism. Nor did anyone guess that cellular communication would make people ignore one another at the dinner table. Early users of email had no idea of spam. Henry Ford did not foresee the traffic jam. . Technology has unintended consequences. Sometimes they are large and tumultuous. It is often well worth the trouble of trying to figure them out ahead of time.

Developed around 1973 by BBN under contract from DARPA, the private line interface (PLI), a cryptographic cybersecurity device used on the Arpanet, operated with minimal modification of the existing network infrastructure, sitting at the "edge" of the network between the network switches and the connected host computers. As a result of the developmental and infrastructural trajectory set in motion by the PLI, significant cryptographic resources remain at the edges (or ends) of the networks that constitute the Internet today. This study of the PLI is an entry into the historical relationship between cryptography and packet-switched computer networks.

Raymond (Ray) Tomlinson was a computer engineer best known for developing the TENEX operating system and implemented the first email program on the Arpanet system in 1971. In its official biography, the Internet Hall of Fame states that "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate." This interview is the second in a two-part Annals series based on an oral history conducted by Marc Weber and Gardner Hendrie for the Computer History Museum (CHM) in June 2009.

Raymond (Ray) Tomlinson was a computer engineer best known for developing the TENEX operating system and implemented the first email program on the Arpanet system in 1971. In its official biography, the Internet Hall of Fame states that "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate." This interview is the first in a two-part Annals series based on an oral history conducted by Marc Weber and Gardner Hendrie for the Computer History Museum (CHM) in June 2009.

The earliest and most widespread representation of the Arpanet were network graphs or maps that, arguably, remain its most prominent artifact. In an earlier article, the authors analyzed how the maps were created, what they represented, and how histories of the network parallel their emphases and omissions. Here, the authors begin a retooling of the maps to highlight further what is missing from them: communication flows, gateways to other networks, and hierarchies between its nodes.

In a 2011 Anecdote department article in the Annals, Alex McKenzie provided an excellent account of the events between 1974 and 1976 leading up to INWG 96, a proposed internetwork transport protocol. McKenzie's anecdote focused on the events in INWG (International Network Working Group), which this article shows were a small part of a much larger debate that was going on outside. The author places the INWG discussions in this wider context to better understand the technical points and implications, their ultimate impact, and the paradigm shift that threatened established business models.

This article explores a 20-year series of ARPANET maps produced by the firm Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). These BBN maps signify the earliest efforts to represent an early and central piece of the modern Internet, and they wind up as illustrations in contemporary discussions of ARPANET history and the early Internet. Once a functional tool for engineers, they now serve as an aesthetic backdrop used without explicit recognition of their intended purpose. The authors propose an excavation of their production, design conventions, and symbolic functions. They find that the maps represent a specific technological focus--the subnet--that worked well with the maps' network graph form and also aligned with the map creators' purposes during the network's early years. As a result, the continuities and systematic nature in the maps' form, one so central to the subnet, encourage us to read them from a certain technological perspective based in particular on the network's early, a view that may affect how retrospective histories depict the ARPANET's entire lifetime.

People from Bolt Beranek and Newman and others have extensively documented the Arpanet technology, including the Arpanet Interface Message Processor (IMP). This paper sketches the history (not the previously described technology) of the IMP program as originally written in 1969 for the modified Honeywell 516 computer. A sequence of other systems, evolving from the original software system and running on a variety of hardware platforms, are also enumerated. In 2013 a faded 1973 line printer listing of the IMP program was run through a special OCR program optimized to process such historical artifacts; an assembler was recreated to assemble the IMP code (looking like the modified PDP-1 Midas assembler used in 1973); and a software emulator of the original IMP hardware platform was created. This article also describes the methods used to recover a digital copy and assemble and run again the 1973 IMP code.

This book is intended for professionals interested in research and those who develop and build the Internet of Things (IoT) end systems. This book equally serves as a reference of context for any reader crossing among the components of IoT whether in software, hardware, networks, or security. Covers some of the following topics: physical principles and information; historical perspective of IoT; applications and architectures of machine-to-machine communications (M2M); device communication; IoT solutions; hardware support; software development, and network security. With the imminence of a greater and more connected world, we are approaching another wave of revolution in connectedness. Just as the use of the Internet came as a surprise, IoT will no doubt be the same in how it affects and presents novel ways in how we interact with each other, our machines, and our world. This book could be viewed as presenting the reader with the technical “bones” of IoT so that he/she may lay flesh on them by discerning how and why the pieces ought to fit together.

This article, the fifth in a series on the history of packet switching, provides an account of the early days of commercial packet switching services in the United States. It is remarkable and refreshing - and possibly controversial - in stressing the business of technology more than the technology itself. The previous articles covered the early history of packet switching in the UK (by Peter Kirstein, February 2009) and in Canada (by Tony Rybczynski, December 2009), the early history of the Internet (by Len Kleinrock, August, 2010), and the development of X.25 virtual circuit networking in France (by Remi Depres, November 2010). Commercial packet switching networks were launched in most countries by the Postal Telephone & Telegraph administrations (PTTs), but the situation in the U.S. was different. AT&T was the dominant communications service provider, but initially showed little interest in packet communications. Entrepreneurial companies, particularly Telenet and Tymnet, became leaders in commercializing packet switching services. The earlier articles in this series described the technical history of packet switching and the development of the international X.25 standards. This article focuses on commercial, competitive and regulatory developments in the U.S. and is written by key figures in these developments. Larry Roberts is generally considered one of the pioneering architects of packet technology and, in particular, the ARPANET, and was co-founder and President of Telenet, the first regulated commercial packet carrier in the world. Stu Mathison was VP of Planning at Telenet from its creation until it became a part of Sprint in the 1980's. Phil Walker, an attorney, was also a co-founder and managed Telenet's regulatory and legal affairs.

From as far back as 1971, the Arpanet Network Information Center (NIC) at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International or SRI), located in Menlo Park, California, maintained the official Arpanet Host Table. This work was carried out under contract to DARPA. Later, the same activity was carried out by the NIC for the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) and the Defense Data Network (DDN), of which the Arpanet eventually became one segment. In this Anecdote article, Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler describes the organizations and people involved in the early efforts at naming and addressing, in particular the transition to the domain naming system (DNS) and the origin of the top-level domains (TLDs).

The who, what, when, and how of the Arpanet is usually told in heroic terms-Licklider's vision, the fervor of his disciples, the dedication of computer scientists and engineers, the work of graduate students, and so forth. Told by one of the key actors in this salient part of US and Internet history, this article addresses why the Arpanet was built.

1972 was an exciting year in computer networking. The ARPANET, which came to life near the end of 1969, had grown to 29 nodes by August 1972. The National Physical Laboratory in England, under the direction of Donald Davies, had been running a 1-node packet switch interconnecting several NPL computers for several years. In July 1972, three people associ ated with the ARPANET work at BBN formed a new company, Packet Communications, to engage in the business of providing communication services for computer to terminal, computer to computer, and terminal to terminal information transfer.

The Internet began with the Arpanet, which celebrates its 45th birthday this year. The Arpanet came out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created in 1958 and, through its Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), has been a major source of support for IT research and development. Early IPTO directors envisioned interconnected computers, and three masterminds in particular led the effort to achieve this vision: Larry Roberts, Bob Kahn, and Vint Cerf.

The NIC was the hub of information exchange on the early Internet. This anecdotal article describes what and how information was exchanged back then and describes the dynamic collaboration that set the tone for how business was carried out on the Internet. It also describes what happened to the NIC archives and how they were preserved for posterity.

Heinrich Welker's work as a theoretical physicist in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s focused on the then novel fields of superconductivity and CMOS technology. Specifically, his theoretical and experimental research on gallium arsenide laid the foundations for a range of diversified industries. His pioneering ideas are at the origin of the major technology developments that led to the 1970 inauguration of the Arpanet, precursor of the Internet. Compound semiconductors are the building blocks of light-emitting devices, such as lasers, and of light-detecting devices such as photocells. They opened the way to CD players and DVD recorders, sophisticated night-vision equipment, fiber optical communications systems, solar photovoltaic panels, flat-panel displays, mobile phones, and all devices that make up the technological revolution that shapes so many aspects of our lives.

In this issue of the History Column we bring you an article by Prof. Peter Kirstein, one of the original contributors to early packet switching. We are probably all familiar with the history of the Internet, beginning with its genesis in the American-developed ARPAnet of the late 1960s and early 1970s. We may be less familiar with the contributions of British researchers, as well as those in other countries such as France, at about the same period of time, who worked closely with American researchers as well as independently in developing the packet-switching technology so fundamental to the Internet. Prof. Kirstein recounts the early activities by British engineers, led by Donald Davies of the National Physical Laboratory, the British Post Office, those of his own group at University College London, and others as well. He also ties this work into ongoing activities in the United States at the time. In future History Columns we plan to have similar articles by U.S. packet-switching pioneers on their own early activities in the field. This series of articles on the genesis of the Internet should be of great interest to all communication engineers. We commend the article following to your attention.

‘‘Routing is a hard problem.’’ That’s what colleagues told me when I joined BBN in 1971, right after getting my undergraduate and master’s degrees in computer science at Harvard University. As a student, I had built the hardware and software to connect Harvard’s first interactive computer, the DEC PDP-1, to the infant Arpanet (the first packet switching computer network and precursor of the Internet). I had also taken a Harvard course taught by two senior BBN engineers who built the original interface message processors (IMPs), the switching nodes that routed traffic across the network. While at BBN, and with almost all the course requirements for a PhD in hand, it was time to find a possible dissertation topic. So I was glad to learn that dynamic routing—determining the best paths for network traffic in real time—was considered a difficult computer science issue because I planned to tackle it. By 1971, the Arpanet had been up and running long enough to disclose shortcomings in the performance and stability of the original design. My job at BBN was to redesign and rewrite all the software for the IMP, not just the routing module. I fondly recall releasing new IMP software to the whole network (amounting to a few dozen nodes at the time) every other Tuesday morning for two years. Fifty software versions later, the IMPs had more stable congestion management, better reliability, and higher throughput. But routing still remained a challenging area for further study. By the end of 1974 I had completed my PhD dissertation for Harvard on routing while working full-time at BBN. This dissertation described the problem, analyzed and compared many routing algorithms, and pointed out topics for further work, such as hierarchical routing for networks of networks. But I had not resolved some of the nagging network accidents, outages, and other crises caused by the original Arpanet routing system.

This paper brings light on the digital signal processing (DSP) roots of a modern concept, voice over IP (VoIP). An example is also provided in which developments in DSP - speech coding, in particular - had a profound impact on the early development of the ARPANET, the ancestor of the Internet. The author shows how packet speech, recently rediscovered and made popular as VoIP, was first successfully demonstrated in 1974 on the ARPANET and how the Internet protocol (IP) emerged largely as a result of that effort.

The author notes his MIT background and transition from MIT Lincoln Laboratory to Bolt Beranek and Newman. He sketches the Arpanet project at BBN from his position as project leader, and he describes BBN's unusual mix of government-funded R&D and commercial activity, including issues and anecdotes involving government contracting, overhead rates, and employee motivation.

In establishing BBN, the founders deliberately created an environment in which engineering creativity could flourish. The author describes steps taken to assure such an environment and a number of events that moved the company into the fledgling field of computing.

With the invention of the PC and emergence of the network, we realized we need new concepts and capabilities to program networks of computers. Standards such as TCP/IP and IEEE 802 played a major role in transforming the first computer network concept (Arpanet) to the Internet we know today. However, we also had to invent new computing models such as the client-server model, transactions, distributed objects, Web services, disconnected operation, and computing grids. Furthermore, we had to invent various middleware to support these emerging models, hiding the underlying system's complexity and presenting a more programmable view to software and application developers. Today, with the advent of sensor networks and pinhead-size computers, we're moving much closer to realizing the vision of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. However, as we create pervasive spaces, we must think ahead to consider how we program them, just as we successfully programmed the mainframe and, later on, the Internet.

TCP/IP evolved from 20 years' research that sought a way to move from a telephone-style circuit-switched infrastructure to a packet-switched infrastructure. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/B2-NhlmkDMo is a video interview with Vint Cerf about how TCP/IP evolved from ARPANET, an earlier small-scale research network. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/awOa4Pk82Kg is an audio recording of Charles Severanceís Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Vint Cerf about the history of packets.

“There is no cloud,” goes the quip. “It’s just someone else’s computer.” It’s funny because it’s true: With cloud computing, your data and apps reside in a remote data center, which you share with many users even if it feels like it’s all just for you. Remarkably, a very similar mode of computing was also popular from the 1960s into the 1980s, when it was called time-sharing. At one point, the pioneering firm Tymshare boasted the world’s largest commercial computer network. Rivaling even the ARPANET, it gave customers the illusion of having a powerful machine at their disposal, even if it was really someone else’s.

In 1973, four national laboratory groups and three university energy research groups started an investigation of whether scientific collaboration could be improved with computer networks. Four years later, the seven groups were piggybacked on to the Arpanet, and more than 60 case histories of applications had been documented. This article reviews the early collaboration and tells how the energy research community was introduced to modern computer networking.

The paper describes both the administrative and technical backgrounds to the establishment of the first international Internet node-from its beginnings as a single Arpanet node to the main early link between the Internet and the UK National Research Network. It gives an overview of some of the technical accomplishments of the early years and of the services offered. It reviews how certain political and governmental decisions affected its management and location and draws some conclusions from the experiences.

The use of computer networks is growing rapidly throughout our society. Current network technology has its roots in the U.S. Department of Defense, specifically in the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the ARPANET computer network, but designed for other than explicitly military objectives. This paper describes ARPA's motivations for developing the network and how ARPA and computer science researchers built the first wide-area packet-switching network.

The author's involvement in developing Arpanet and Ethernet computer network interfaces is described. The lessons learned in designing and implementing Arpanet in 1969 and Ethernet in 1989 are discussed. It is argued that some of the more general lessons are likely to be applicable to interfaces operating on up to a terabit, petabit, or perhaps even an exabit per second. >

A major driver of Internet growth has been the USA's decades-long national policy of funding basic research and infrastructure prototyping in its universities. This unique national system has enabled universities to experiment with capabilities years ahead of their mass commercial distribution. From Arpanet to NSFnet, this far-reaching partnership between government, universities and industry planted the seeds that grew into the modern cyberworld. More recently, NCSA Mosaic and NCSA's Web server software catalyzed the development of the World Wide Web. This "explore the future" methodology has been institutionalized in the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program. Each PACI partnership brings together dozens of leading researchers at some 75 institutions to create the services necessary to prototype a seamless, integrated computational and collaborative environment known as the Grid.

A description is given of the digital data network for the ARGO/JASON remotely operated vehicle system and its implementation over the system's 7000-m single-mode electrooptic cable. The implementation uses the ProNET terrestrial local area network hardware protocol to provide multinode communications and allows for transmission of the network data over one of several multiplexed channels. Standard Internet protocol (IP) software is supported, allowing computers on the network to be tied directly into the Arpanet/Internet. The undersea computers and the shipboard vehicle control computers use a real-time multitasking system to provide fast and flexible event-driven control. Combined with network communications, the system is a complete multiprocessor package with low-latency responsiveness and flexible architecture, with a fiber-optic link tying the vehicles to each other and to the support ship. >

As the original Arpanet evolved, it opened to research communities and then to the general public. As the number of connected computers grew, so did the amount of resources. Nowadays this growth is nearly exponential, and many countries are still waiting to popularize Internet access. What we're arriving at is a planetary proliferation of networked equipment surrounding us that can run programs cooperatively. Starting from this conception, and putting aside a few technicalities for a jiffy, the WWW appears to be an unlimited pool of computing resources. Exploiting the huge amount of resources that sit idly on computers over the WWW sounds like the redistribution of goods without leveling everything to equality at the expense of comfort.

This year was the 25th anniversary of the publication of William Gibson?s award-winning novel, Neuromancer. It may be hard to remember that the world in 1984 was very different than today. Everything today is interconnected through the Internet, and data and applications are moving into the ?cloud.? The Web is taken for granted as part of modern life. Googling for information is second nature. Today?s Internet would have been beyond most imaginations when Neuromancer was written. In 1984 the ARPANET was still a closed network for researchers and academics around the size of 1000 hosts. The U.S. National Science Foundation contracted the construction of CSNET based on TCP/IP to MCI. Transmission links were upgraded from 56 kb/s to 1.5 Mb/s T-1 lines. The Domain Name System (DNS) was being introduced. The Web would not be conceived until five years later, and the network would not be opened up to commercial traffic until eight years later. At the time, PCs were running at 8 MHz with 128 kbytes of RAM.

Basic node-to-node protocol of a packet-switched network based on the multiplexing of the link into N logical channels is first described. The node structure is then described based on a set of queues, an input routine, a main-task routine, and an output routine. Three protocols which are based on different implementations of the transmission of the acknowledgment (ACK) block are then introduced. The first one is the 1972 version of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the second places the ACK block in regular packets, and the third uses only control packets. The simulation program developed to compare these protocols is then described. It studies the behavior of a link between two nodes, which consists of a full-duplex line and of two sets of queues. The rest of the packet-switched network is simulated by a packet generator which feeds the two sides of the link. First, comparison of protocols is done using symmetrical and asymmetrical loading conditions. In this last case, interesting results are obtained in relation to momentary saturation of the N logical channels. The influence of the limitation of buffers allocated to an output line is also discussed. Sensitivity of protocols to reverse traffic characteristics is then studied and, based on the results, choice of a protocol is discussed. Based on the dynamic behavior of the queue, some questions are raised in connection with adaptive-routing algorithms.

The theft of US military information from Internet the research computer network built around the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's ARPAnet for academic use, is cited as an example of the computer break-ins that are focusing attention on computer security. The nature and extent of the threat are explored, and steps to combat it are described. Among them are encryption, smart cards, and fingerprint readers. >

The early successes of computer networks in the mid-1970's made it apparent that to utilize the full potential of computer networks, international standards would be required. In 1977, the International Standards Organization (ISO) initiated work on Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) to address these requirements. This paper briefly describes the OSI Reference Model. The OSI Reference Model is the highest level of abstraction in the OSI scheme. The paper first describes the basic building blocks used to construct the network model. Then the particular seven-layer model used by OSI is briefly described, followed by a discussion of outstanding issues and future extensions for the model.

The authors describe the Pluribus multiprocessor system, outline several techniques used to achieve fault-tolerance, describe their field experience to date, and mention some potential applications. The Pluribus system places the major responsibility for recovery from failures on the software. Failing hardware modules are removed from the system, spare modules are substituted where available, and appropriate initialization is performed. In applications where the goal is maximum availability rather than totally fault-free operation, this approach represents a considerable savings in complexity and cost over traditional implementations. The software-based reliability approach has been extended to provide enror-handling and recovery mechanisms for the system software structures as well. A number of Pluribus systems have been built and are currently in operation. Experience with these systems has given us confidence in their performance and maintainability, and leads us to suggest other applications that might benefit from this approach.

The speed at which large files can travel across a computer network is an important performance measure of that network. In this paper we examine the achievable sustained throughput in the ARPANET. Our point of departure is to describe the procedures used for controlling the flow of long messages (multipacket messages) and to identify the limitations that these procedures place on the throughput. We then present the quantitative results of experiments which measured the maximum throughput as a function of topological distance in the ARPANET. We observed a throughput of approximately 38 kbit/s at short distances. This throughput falls off at longer distances in a fashion which depends upon which particular version of the flow control procedure is in use; for example, at a distance of 9 hops, an October 1974 measurement gave 30 kbit/s, whereas a May 1975 experiment gave 27 kbit/s. The two different flow control procedures for these experiments are described, and the sources of throughput degradation at longer distances are identified, a major cause being due to a poor movement of critical limiting resources around in the network (this we call "phasing"). We conclude that flow control is a tricky business, but in spite of this, the ARPANET throughput is respectably high.

The technology of packet switching over multihop, multiple-access channels has evolved to the point at which its protocols can now support internetwork operation of medium-size networks whose nodes possess some degree of mobility. As regards the needs and challenges of the future operating environment, it is clear that these can be met only by enhancing the packet radio architecture and its protocols. We discuss several enhancements that allow the organization of large, dynamic networks that can operate over multiple channels, adapt to varying conditions, and possess self-monitoring and self-control capabilities. As these areas are examined, the attendant issues and tradeoffs are discussed; in addition, some protocols and information regarding their performance are presented.

This paper describes the data communications activity at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) during the period 1965-1975. The key feature of the NPL work was the development of the principle of packet switching, which was first proposed in a data communications context by D. W. Davies of the NPL in 1965. The report focuses on the construction of the NPL Data Communications Network, which first became operational in 1970. This network served both as a model for a possible U.K. national network and as a practical local area network (LAN) for the NPL site. The report describes the impact of the NPL work on other early networks, such as ARPANET and the British Experimental Packet-Switched Service (EPSS), and on data communications in general.

The semiconductor industry is about to undergo sweeping change. The development in the last few years of relatively inexpensive IC-design work stations and the emergence of silicon foundries-a new kind of company devoted to making chips fast-are expected to alter drastically the traditional roles of the semiconductor supplier and hardware maker. Burgeoning demand for the design and fabrication of chips in one month is expected. With the recent opening to the commercial world of ARPAnet, a communications network run by the U.S. Defense Department, the basic ingredients to realize the one-month chip are now in place: speedy design, with the aid of both work stations and ARPAnet, and fast fabrication at specialized foundries.