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The Internet is a global network of computers. Every computer that
is connected to the Internet is considered a part of that network.
This means even your home computer. It's all a matter of degrees,
you connect to your ISP's network, then your ISP connects to a larger
network and so on.
At the top of the tree is the high-capacity backbones, all of these
interconnect at 'Network Access Points' 'NAPs' at important regions
around the world. The entire Internet is based on agreements between
these backbone providers who set in place all the fibre optics lines
and other technical aspects of the Internet.
The Internet has it's origins in the creative work of the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. government. APRA heavily
developed communication systems, and a computer communications network
called ARPANet in 1969. The ARPANet connected up academic and government
institutions. The network was mainly used for accessing files and
to send email.
ARPANet ran on the NCP protocol, developed by Vinton Cerf in the
1970's. He was joined by Robert E. Kahn in 1973, and they set forth
to develop a new and improved protocol. They finally developed the
TCP/IP protocol suite, a more flexible and powerful protocol that
was applied to ARPANet on January 1st, 1983. The Internet still
run on the TCP/IP protocol, and it's why January 1st, 1983 is commonly
thought of as the day the Internet was born. It's also why Vinton
Cerf and Robert E. Kahn are recognised as the fathers of the Internet.
Since 1983 the Internet has accommodated alot of changes. The original
Internet backbone, which was ARPANET, was beginning to show it's
age and was finally replaced by the NSFNet backbone in 1989. NSFNet
was government sponsored and lasted until 1995, when commercial
networks developed their own routing architecture, and the Internet
was finally decentralised. The heart of the Internet is now controlled
by these self designated Tier 1 networks.
The Internet can now be best analysed a range of tiers. At the
top is tier one networks which connect to the entirety of the Internet
and do not pay for their access. Some of the recognised tier one
networks are AT&T, GBLX, L3, NTT, Qwest, Sprint, Tata and Savvis.
It would be fair to say that these networks are at the centre of
the Internet. Tier two networks have to pay for upstream IP access
from their tier one counterparts, some examples of tier two networks
are BT, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom. As you may have deduced,
virtually all tier one networks are based in the US.
That said, the internal makeup of the Internet goes largely unnoticed
by the majority of end users. For them, the last two decades has
seen the Internet accommodate such things as network LANs and ATM
and frame switched services. The Internet continues to evolve, and
is becoming available on a wider selection of technologies, such
as mobile phones, pagers and possibly on televisions in the future.
The actual term "Internet" was finally defined in 1995
by FNC (The Federal Networking Council). The resolution created
by the The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following
language reflects our definition of the term "Internet".
"Internet" refers to the global information system that,
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