The Internet

Per the last post on the History of the Internet, the BBC has this nifty infographic on the growth of the Internet from 1998 to 2009. In 1998 only a handful of countries had more than 5% of the population online.

One of the big questions people are asking me about the Google Fiber project is, “Why do we need it?” This is often followed by a grudging acceptance that their current service is, “ok,” and concerns about cost. In the next two posts I’ll try to explain why commercial, “broadband Internet” in the United States is pretty darn poor.

But before we can talk about where we are and where we are going we need to understand where we’ve been. So this first post will be: A Brief History of the Internet.

The Internet was born from the Defense Department’s need to have a reliable way to maintain command, control and communications over its continental-sized nuclear weapons forces. It was found in the late 1970’s that Ma Bell’s (remember, THE Phone Company?) telecommunications infrastructure was not very robust. If Chicago, for example, was vaporized it would cut the nation in two communications-wise.

Thus was born the idea of breaking communications into little chunks, called packets. Each packet would be like taking a very long letter and cutting it up, putting parts of the letter in separate, numbered envelopes. The envelopes would then be put in the mail. All envelopes/packets would find their own way to the destination and be re-assembled in the proper order once received. Ideally, they would use the shortest, most efficient route. However, if some part of the network was a glowing hole in the ground (vis. Chicago) a network of routers of packets for a message originating in Washington, DC destined for the ballistic submarine pens in Washington State could find an alternative route, say through St. Louis or Dallas and eventually all the packets/envelopes would reach their destination.

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