Internet celebrates 30th birthday

Alex Diaz

It is the revolutionary communications system used daily by billions of users - but few know this January 1 is the internet's 30th birthday.

The computer network officially began its technological revolution when it fully substituted previous networking systems on January 1, 1983.

Known as "flag day", it was the first time the US Department of Defence-commissioned Arpanet network fully switched to use of the internet protocol suite (IPS) communications system.

Using data "packet-switching", the new method of linking computers paved the way for the arrival of the World Wide Web.

Chris Edwards, an electronics correspondent for Engineering and Technology magazine, said: "I don't think that anybody making that switch on the day would have realised the importance of what they were doing.

"But without it the internet and the World Wide Web as we know them could not have happened."

Commenting on the historic event's impact on the world, Edwards said: "The internet means there is nowhere and no one in the world you can't reach easily and cheaply."

Based on designs by Welsh scientist Donald Davies, the Arpanet network began as a military project in the late 1960s.

It was developed at prestigious American universities and research laboratories, such as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute. [more...]

Full story: http://news.smh.com....0101-2c3co.html

-- The Sydney Morning Herald 2013-01-01

"The internet means there is nowhere and no one in the world you can't reach easily and cheaply"

unless they live in Thailand

"The internet means there is nowhere and no one in the world you can't reach easily and cheaply"

unless they live in Thailand

or new zealand

Not exactly. While the term "Internet" first came into common usage in 1982, the concept and implementation of networked computers first started in October, 1969, and the term "internet" was first coined in 1974. The transition to a different networking protocol did not mark the beginning of the Internet, rather it was merely one of many milestones of advancement along the road towards the more modern, reliable, and secure system we have today.

See http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/today-internets-40th-birthday/story?id=8945743#.UOLGe-T5yIo

ad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History

Nobody made any mention of Al Gore. Thanks Al

internet is just an infrastructural technology connecting computers over geographic boundaries. for many years you only see 'military trucks' and 'white-gowned researchers' around. until world-wide-web commercialised in early ninty, that bought us from BBS world to a socio sharing platform for everyone.

by the way, a really interesting documentary on the 20-years influences of the WWW - The Virtual Revolution ( BBC 2010 ) is now on True Vision Explore 3 ( channel 17 ). or check it out here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n4j0r.

happy new year !

Ahhhh...bring back the days of telephone receiver modems, no spam, no malware,

no virus, no trojans....bring back the free newsgroups especially alt.binaries.dirtyjokes.\

Bring back the BBS's and that oh so irritating sound of modem to modem connection!

My first email was in 1990.....*********@stanford.edu.....I was living in Hong Kong back

then and was the 10th person in the entire place with email....beer was cheaper back

then....

Yes, and my ISP back in 1995 was boasting 128kbps international connection, increased to unheard of 256kbps later same year.

And porn was everywhere!!! Ah, I do miss the bad old times....