The brief history of the Internet

First, there was Internet

The terms Internet and World Wide Web, or simply «the Web», are often mistakenly used as synonyms to each other, which they are not.

The Web happens on software we call web browsers, like Chrome and Safari, and is a service on top of the Internet, just like other Internet services like email and FTP.

The Internet has evolved over several decades, from all the way back in the 1950s with the development of electronic computers, to the ARPANET project run by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s and up until the late 1980s, when ARPANET was decommissioned (1990) and replaced by the Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), or the Internet protocol suite as it is also known as.

The very first tests of communicating over the Internet protocol on a world-wide scale was conducted all the way back in 1977, when a successful test was made between sites in the US, the UK and Norway.

On January 1st 1983, ARPANET was officially replaced by the Internet protocol, and over the next 10 years institutions like the Berkely University and commercial corporations like Microsoft went on to fully support the new protocol, with commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) following right behind, delivering everyone access to what we today call the Internet.

And then, there was the Web

The first years of the Internet was rather boring, yet peaceful. There was no web browser, and the only place to surf was still on a sandy beach.

To use the Internet we had to use «text-only» services like telnet (used to log onto servers), mail (self-explaining) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol, use to transfer files back and forth between computers).

The World Wide Web (WWW) wasn’t invented until 1989, when the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee - while working at CERN, came up with the Web, and which to this day is one of the history’s most important inventions.

The original idea behind the World Wide Web was for scientists around the world to share information more easily.

The first website ever at CERN - and in the world, was a site dedicated to the World Wide Web project itself, and was hosted on Tim Berners-Lee’s own NeXT computer. This website is still running, and can be reached at info.cern.ch.

On 30 April 1993 CERN put the World Wide Web software in the public domain, making it the official date of birth for what many of us today call the Internet.

Who owns the Internet?

I first got this tricky question from one of my children.

When trying to explain it, I said that no person, company or organization owns the entire Internet, and that non-profit organizations are set to define the overall rules of engagement in terms of how the communication across it shall be managed and controlled, and that it is up to the users of the Internet to decide which content to transport across it.

"- So, it is very much like our World Oceans then?"

"- Yes, exactly", I responded.

As the World Oceans has been around for a slightly longer period of time than the Internet, the defined rules of our oceans are much more mature than the rules of the Internet, with the Law of the Sea and the Maritime Law, governed by the United Nations, and adopted by most countries in the world.

For the Internet on the other hand, there is yet to come a «Law of the Internet», but taking into consideration how young the Internet still is, it is logically to think such a law will be set into force some time into the future.

The Internet is extremely complex, with billions of devices connected over enormous distances, and so the biggest challenge has been to have a defined set of «traffic rules».

Through a single physical network cable, millions of people can communicate simultaneously over thousands of miles, all at the speed of light. How can this be possible?

The Internet was invented by- and is still being maintained by «computer nerds». Not geeks sitting in their underpants in the basement, but highly skilled and clever engineers, all with a strong focus to stick to standards.

Non-profit foundations run by experts overseeing the Internet

Based upon the foundation of the early inventors of the ARPANET, the TCP/IP and other standards, we today have professional groups overseeing and maintaining all technical aspects of the Internet.

• The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees the assignment of IP addresses and related elements, making sure every device has a unique «phone number».

• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and maintains the communication protocols of the Internet.

• The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is responsible for looking into the more long-term issues 5-10 years ahead in time.

• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ensures the standards of the Web is robust and follows the evolution.

Internet population growth

In 1995, around 16 million people (0,4% of the world population) had access to the Internet.

Five years later, in 2000, over 300 million people (5% of the world population) had the same access, and just five years later, on December 2005, a huge milestone in the history of the Internet was written, when the number of people with access to the Internet has reached one billion, or around 15% of the world population).

Another five years later, in late 2010, over two billion people had gotten access to the Internet.

And, in March 2019, over 4,3 billion people around the world has access to the Internet, counting for over 56% of the world population.

It is not difficult to predict that within a decade or two, pretty much every people on Earth will potentially have access to the Internet.