The Global Picture

This section describes the origin of the "Internet" as being credited to the United States. However, the Internet did not simply spread to other countries. Instead, these countries all had their own networks that would eventually converge with the US Internet. This convergence is covered below, hitting on the key points and important events that led to a global community connecting through one world wide network.

• In America, there was a fear that connecting other countries to the U.S. would be giving up a taxpayer-subsidized resource to foreigners
• In other countries, there was a fear of sharing the connection being perceived as imperialism.
• ARPANET
  • The first network was owned by the U.S. government and had very few connections overseas, other than those connections made with military bases.
  • Just like other communication technologies in the past (i.e. telegraph, radio), the military was one of the first groups to use this new form of communication, although much of its research and development can be attributed to individuals.
  • Very rarely used outside of U.S. (i.e. University College London used the ARPANET for research and education)
• Minitel System
  • Developed by France Telecom in 1982.
  • First phone company offering context and communications.
  • Gave customers inexpensive terminals since there was little private access to computers.
• CERN
  • A European laboratory for particle physics, held one of the leading sites for computer networking.
• NSFNET
  • National Science Foundation operated this connection for civilian use.
  • Allowed other countries to connect to its network, and thus connected other countries to the ARPANET and later, the Internet.
• RIPE
  • Largest obstacle in unifying networks around the world was protocol.
  • CCITT and ISO protocols were more popular than TCP/IP
  • TCP/IP eventually became the norm.
  • RIPE steps in with more than 400 organizations, facilitating the unification of protocols like TCP/IP.
• Domains
  • U.S. had the top-level domains, so there was an American dominance over the networks.
  • Other countries wanted their own top-level domains, so a new domain naming system was adopted and added to the current one.
  • France became "fr", U.K. became "uk", etc.
• Main Theme
  • "The Internet, as a medium of instantaneous communication, might overcome geographic distance, but it cannot simply erase political or social differences." (Janet Abbate)