HISTORY OF COMPUTER NETWORKING
A computer network, or simply a network, is a
collection of computers and other hardware components interconnected by
communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information. Today,
computer networks are the core of modern communication. All modern aspects of
the public switched telephone
network (PSTN) are computer-controlled. Telephony increasingly
runs over the Internet Protocol, although not necessarily the public Internet.
The scope of communication has increased significantly in the past decade. This
boom in communications would not have been possible without the progressively
advancing computer network. Computer networks, and the technologies that make
communication between networked computers possible, continue to drive computer
hardware, software, and peripherals industries. The expansion of related
industries is mirrored by growth in the numbers and types of people using
networks, from the researcher to the home user.
The following is a chronology of significant
computer network developments:
·
In
the late 1950s, early networks of communicating computers included the military
radar system Semi-Automatic Ground
Environment (SAGE).
·
In
1960, the commercial airline reservation system semi-automatic
business research environment (SABRE) went online with two
connected mainframes.
·
In
1962, J.C.R. Licklider developed
a working group he called the "Intergalactic Computer Network",
a precursor to the ARPANET, at the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA).
·
In
1964, researchers at Dartmouth developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System for
distributed users of large computer systems. The same year, at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, a research group supported by General Electric and Bell Labs used a computer to route and manage telephone
connections.
·
Throughout
the 1960s, Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Donald Davies independently developed network systems
that used packets to
transfer information between computers over a network.
·
In
1965, Thomas Marill and Lawrence G. Roberts created
the first wide area network (WAN).
This was an immediate precursor to the ARPANET, of which Roberts became program manager.
·
Also
in 1965, the first widely used telephone switch that implemented true computer control
was introduced by Western Electric.
·
In
1969, the University of
California at Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Institute,
the University of
California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah were
connected as the beginning of the ARPANET network using 50 kbit/s circuits.
·
In
1972, commercial services using X.25 were deployed, and later used as an
underlying infrastructure for expanding TCP/IP networks.
·
In
1973, Robert Metcalfe wrote
a formal memo at Xerox PARC describing Ethernet, a networking system that was based on the Aloha network, developed in the 1960s by Norman Abramson and colleagues at the University of Hawaii. In
July 1976, Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs published their paper "Ethernet:
Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks and collaborated
on several patents received in 1977 and 1978. In 1979, Robert Metcalfe pursued
making Ethernet an open standard.
·
In
1976, John Murphy of Datapoint Corporation created ARCNET,
a token-passing network first used to share storage devices.
·
In
1995, the transmission speed capacity for Ethernet was increased from 10 Mbit/s
to 100 Mbit/s. By 1998, Ethernet supported transmission speeds of a Gigabit.
The ability of Ethernet to scale easily (such as quickly adapting to support
new fiber optic cable speeds) is a contributing factor to its continued use
today
