The Digital Wave
ARPANET was transformed into the Internet as we know it today.
The technology involved in this was a very basic packet switching
network that later moved to include packet satellite networks,
ground-based packet radio networks and other networks. The
basic idea behind using the Internet was connecting multiple
independent networks of rather arbitrary design, beginning with
the ARPANET that, in other terms, follows a technical idea of open
architecture networking.
Until that time, there was only one method of networking,
which was the circuit switching method. In this method, networks
interconnecting at the circuit level passed individual bits on a synchronous
basis along a portion of an end-to-end circuit between a
pair of end locations.
What this means, is that in the circuit switching mode, there
is a dedicated path by which data travels from the source to the
destination. In packet switching mode, this is not the case. The
hub or the router, which acts as the intermediary, decides the best
path for sending or receiving the data packets that gives this
process more flexibility with increased efficiency.
The future of networking was based on this skeleton. Further
down the line, the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol) was developed since the Network Control Protocol of
NCP, which was in use at that time, did not have the ability to
address networks (and machines) further downstream than a destination
IMP. This was the main driving force behind the development
of another protocol which we know as TCP/IP, today.
Further, down-the-line applications such as Telnet were developed,
which is a very basic application for remote logging and file
transfer. However, e-mail remained the biggest and single most
innovation from that era. Other applications being developed at
that time included packet-based voice communication (the precursor
of Internet telephony), various models of file and disk sharing, and early “worm” programs that showed the concept of agents (and, of course, viruses).
This form of the Internet, though, was very limited and soon
the commercialisation of the fledgling Internet seemed to be a
very real possibility.
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