Welcome to this article about the best developers. Today we’ll talk about ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the first computer network used by the United States Department of Defense to communicate between its departments and agencies. We’ll cover its history, its technology, and how the ARPANET protocol was the basis for TCP/IP (the pioneering network protocol we use today).
The history of ARPANET
The first node (each machine in a computer network is a node) was created at the University of California, Los Angeles. There were two small nodes (message interface processors) that managed and shared communication links. This isolated and freed the main computers from that work.
On this basis, Roberts presented his first expert meeting in 1967. In this symposium there were great minds who were pioneers of the Internet (like Roger Scantlebury) and who discussed topics that today are in routine use by us.
By the following year, there was already a completed and approved ARPANET plan, and a competition was called to implement it. It was the company BBN that won the project in 1969. On September 29 of that year, the first message was transmitted through ARPANET, and two months later, the first link was established between Stanford University and UCLA.
The message interface processors (IMPs) implemented the store-and-forward technique and did so through a telephone modem. This way they connected to other equipment at a speed of 50 kbits per second, and the IMPs connected to the central computers through custom serial ports.
The first IMPs were implemented with computers called "DDP-516 from Honeywell". They had 24 KB of main memory and could connect a maximum of four central computers (thanks to their 4 ports).
By the end of 1969, the entire initial ARPANET network was finished, and in March 1970 it crossed the United States from coast to coast (east to west).
In 1983, the network had 500 connected computers using the NCP (Network Control Program) protocol. NCP was the basis for communications between systems belonging to ARPANET, until 1981 when TCP/IP was designed (the network improved notably).
Thanks to ARPANET
Thanks to ARPANET, in 1972 a BBN programmer named Ray Tomlinson invented email, "tomlinson@bbn-tenexa". And in 1973, a protocol for moving files within the network was invented, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
The universal freedom of the Internet
Text translated from the MIT AI Lab computing manual (1982), for the proper use of ARPANET.
"It is considered illegal to use ARPANET for any message not related to Government business ... personal messages to other ARPANET subscribers (for example, to arrange a meeting or say a friendly 'hello'). Sending email for commercial profit or political purposes. By sending such messages, you may offend many people and the government agencies that manage ARPANET."
For this reason, we at Neoteo celebrate the freedom of the Internet, and we hope that no government violates its universality and free access. And so we have the wit to imagine the first email sent by Ray Tomlinson.
From "tomlinson@bbn-tenexa" to "jefederay@bbn-tenexa;"
"Man, Roger Scantlebury's wife is hot"
