No one can explain the history of the internet better than the internet itself! Everything started with the US government's project to build a stable and tolerant-in-defects communication network known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The involvement of research centers and academic institutions in the DARPA project made this project gradually evolve into the ARPANET and the Military Network (MILNET). While the MILNET project was tasked to support operational requirements, the ARPANET project was undertaken to support the need for research (https://www.internetsociety.org/). That said, from 1962 to 1985, the internet already had built its profile. Thus, based on the saying "every new beginning is some beginning’s end", the appearance of the internet on the global computer network stage formally marked the end of the ARPANET's golden era.
According to the internetsociety.org, on October 24, 1995, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) through a resolution, priory consulted with members of the internet community and intellectual property rights, defined the term internet. According to that resolution, the internet refers to the global information system, which:
- Is logically connected by a global unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent updates;
- Is able to support the communication through a TCP/IP protocol suite or its subsequent updates and other compatible protocols, and;
- Provides, uses and makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high-level layered services on the communications and related infrastructure described in that document.
Over time, the development and advancement of computer network technologies took place. Thus, the need to connect and interconnect more computers to computer networks, and with it, more geographical locations, created a need for well-defined terms and concepts to describe computer networking. Because of this, types of computer networks, computer network topologies, computer network architectures, and computer network components were born. Certainly, a computer network represents one of the biggest inventions of mankind in the field of communications. Simply, mention the internet and one will immediately understand how huge the benefit of a computer network is to humanity.