Talk:History of the Internet

Sugested Article Guidelines (Please do not Archive)

This article currently represents a history of the infrastructure and use of the Internet. The word Internet is taken to mean the current concept of the single global network in current use. Internet should only be capatalised when refering to the 'global' internet, which originates after NSFNet. Please be aware that prior to formation of this global 'Internet', the word 'internet' was used to refer to multiple networks and technologies. A paper published prior to this useage may refer to 'connecting to the internet', while refering a hypothetical technology or infrastructure. Try not to confuse these referals to mean the current global Internet.

This is an article with very wide scope, please use summary style. It is very likely that most additions to this page are worthy of, or already have, articles of their own dedicated to the topic. If you feel a particular subtopic that does not have its own article is worthy of it, then create one and link to it, Be Bold.

Specific technical history or development history belongs on the page of the technology concerned, not this page. For instance, development history specific to TCP/IP belongs on TCP-IP#Development. Again, this might mean the creation of new articles.

Please use the appropriate cite templates, and inline link to these cites where appropriate in the text. See Wikipedia:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Cite sources.

--Barberio 12:15, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

This Is Not A Technical History. Specific technical issues, and detailed discussion of devlopment of the technologies (including 'competition' between different methodologies) belongs on articles specific to that technology. There are too many technologies developed for and involved with the current Global Internet for them to be included in a single article. Please either expand the pages for those technologies, or create them. --Barberio 13:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Archive

• Talk:History of the Internet/archive1
• Talk:History of the Internet/archive2
• Talk:History of the Internet/archive3

Big Missing Item NOTE

While we all know Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore invented the internet along with inventing global warming, also in the 1990's, in fact the DARPANET was begun in 1968, when this note writer - wet willy sr - approved the DARPA contracts to use PDP8's to hook the first DARPANET up with contract let out of RADC (Rome Air Development Center) Griffis ARB, Rome, NY. : ))

Also missing the global OPARS network, hooking all the globe together in 1969, decades before you first show it, also approved by the CINCU, wet willy sr.

See also global OTH network, PAVEPAWS, Project Overlord, etc - all in the years 1968-69. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.230.159.228 (talk) 08:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Missing topics

• First internet worm
  • subsequent worms
• Point of lowest usage after dot-com collapse
• Routing failures
• congestion collapse
• any mention of Van-Jacobsen
• ICANN disputes of all kinds
• pictures of different applications at different times (text based telnet / gopher / Mosaic)
• any mention of UNIX and the importance of the integration of TCP-IP into it.

I think that there is too much focus on non-internet networks, which will have to be deleted to make space for what is missing. 62.121.101.201 23:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

• First internet worm
  • subsequent worms

Valid topic. Should be included. Go ahead and research it, a simple summary can be added, but I feel this would be worthy of an entire article of its own to fully adress the topic.

• Point of lowest usage after dot-com collapse

This is a figure that would be totaly speculative, or based on a sample of individual ISPs or colleges. If you have some non-anecdotal figures they would be usefull.

• Routing failures
• congestion collapse
• any mention of Van-Jacobsen

These are specific technical issues more suited to TCP-IP. The article is a history of the Internet, not a history of TCP-IP development.

• ICANN disputes of all kinds

These would be relevent to the ICANN article.

• pictures of different applications at different times (text based telnet / gopher / Mosaic)

Images would be nice, but not too many.

• any mention of UNIX and the importance of the integration of TCP-IP into it.

Again, this is more suited to TCP-IP

We've been over the 'non-internet networks' thing before. The networks included within this article made up the infrastructure of global networks prior to the Internet. X.25 in particular served as a fundamental infrastructure to the early growth. Fidonet and UUCP generated the systems and methods common in email and text based communications. To use an analogy, they are as important as the Articles of Confederation are to the history of the US Constitution. -Barberio 23:54, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

• First Message

As some of you may know, the first message ever sent over ARPANET was supposed to be 'LOGIN' but the network crashed after the 'O.' Perhaps this interesting bit could be included in a 'Facts' or a 'Trivia' section. ->http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lk/LK/Inet/1stmesg.html

FLAW 360: 360 being the magic scale of pi,; there is that the number of the internet is 742 where mainframes are the majority of concern: in this way i found that 'video' takes up the most memory and it "slows" the mainframe into 247 equations, : in this way a sort of juke box which can equate the 290r of video footage set to 390 might help [come] there is that this is where they are trying to Hatch Mianframes with Servers over various attitudes... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.235.232 (talk) 10:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Asia, South America, Africa and Eastern Europe.

We need more information on the spread of the Internet over Africa and Asia.

At the moment, the only information I have on Africa is a single paper from 1991, when X.25 IPSS and 2400 baud modem UUCP links were still in use. [1]

I'd don't have any on South America, Asia and Easten Europe. --Barberio 16:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Lots of information added on Asia now. Still need some info on Eastern Europe and South Africa, but not found much. --Barberio 18:55, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I've added some infrastructure material for Africa, Asia/Pacific, and Latin America, and sent messages to colleagues there inviting them to extend my edits. I can do this for Eastern Europe as well.

I remain concerned about the warning box that this is US-centric. The ARPANET was not limited to the US, although most of it was there and that early development was US funded. CERN has played a critical role. There are roughly continental infrastructure organizations everywhere but Antarctica. What does it take to reach consensus to present a neutral view? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Notes

I changed the notes list from a bullet list to a numbered list, because that is much easier to search. But the list-numbers do not correspond with the note-numbers. Are we missing a note/reference? ~ 8 dec 2005, 16:08 CET

Some of the notes are direct links, and I think some of the references are not inline linked. --Barberio 18:52, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

At some point I'll go through the inline links, and turn them to inline references. --Barberio 18:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Internetworking

"The goal of the researchers creating the Internet was to create a network of networks" --Ronda Hauben, "The Internet: On its International Origins and Collaborative Vision (A Work In Progress)", cited in the Notes. --Ancheta Wis 10:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Alohanet

There might be mention of the multiple architectures extant, such as Alohanet, which existed during the time when Bulletin Boards (BBSs) were the only conception that was user-oriented.

The competition of ideas, like the 7-layer protocol, which was supplanted by the simpler TCP/IP 4-layer stack, does not seem to be mentioned. There does not seem to be the sense that there could (and probably will) be other implementations. --Ancheta Wis 10:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

This article is not a specific technical history, nor a history of TCP/IP. An article on the history of TCP/IP development would be a suitable place for discussion of any competition of TCP/IP had with any other networking systems. (Not just OSI, but proposals such as Xerox Network Services.) I should also note that the OSI networking model for system design is still in use, since TCP/IP provided none. *Both* the OSI and TCP/IP standards provided technical methods used in the modern internet. However, this is a technical issue, and should be adressed in a technical history article. --Barberio 13:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The role of the ITU

The ITU (and its predecessors) insisted on the use of X.25 and other approved protocols like X.400 and X.500, which impeded interoperability with other networks. Where is this mentioned? --Ancheta Wis 10:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

We already mention X.25, and it's preference in use in Europe and Worldwide prior to large scale IP rollout. We definatly should not be mentioning the ITU as impeding interoperability. CCITT/ITU-T are simply a diferent standards recomendation track. I should note that we still use many of the ITU-T standards, notably X.509 and H.323. ITU standards have also provided almost all the system that home and small buisness users have used to connect with the internet. (V.21 through V.92 POTS modems or G.992 DSL lines) We've been over this before, the development of a global network was not a competition between oposing networks or ideologies, but a melting pot of many networks and practices.

The ITU did not force people to use X.25. Research was offering widespread global internetworks tomorow, but there was a global X.25 network there for them to use almost right away. X.25 was the training wheel on a baby global network's first bike... --Barberio 13:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

RFC

Where is the mention of the use of the RFC as a dodge to circumvent the elaborate approval mechanisms in use by the Bell System and the ITU? --Ancheta Wis 10:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Find a cite to support this. --Barberio 13:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I need to find a specific comment for Dave Clark's "We don't believe in kings, presidents, or voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Mike O'Dell's http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg17986.html certainly give a sense. Incidentally, I've worked in the IETF and in the CCITT/ITU. The IETF is considerably more satisfying. I spent almost six years explaining how OSI and ISDN were the answer, but always regretted I couldn't pose the question they answered. Hcberkowitz 23:35, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Last obsticle to Featured Article status

We need a replacement for the Leonard Kleinrock & IMP image that is acceptable under Wikipedia:Image use policy. --Barberio 10:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

(Copy of Email I received from Kleinrock --Barberio 01:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC))

Dear John,

The photo to which you refer was a photo taken for general use by the public and you are free to use it as you wish as part of public domain.

I am pleased to see your use of it and if you would like any help in any way regarding the "polishing" of the History of the Internet", please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

Leonard Kleinrock

Paper driven WWW server?

The picture of "The first World Wide Web Server" shows a CRT display and an open manual with paper pages. It looks like the server required a human operator to look up directions for each operation. Is this unintentional, or a subtle joke slipped in by a sly editor? --Blainster 18:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

That's an unusual take on it! In fact, the computer depicted is a NeXT system; the first WWW was indeed developed on a NeXT, apparently this one. The printed document is some of Tim Berners-Lee's work, and the book is one that inspired it. This is all discussed on the image page itself. --FOo 20:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Oops, OK. I didn't notice the posted info. Unfortunately many of the small sized images in Wiki articles are not well lighted. The dark system unit doesn't show up very well. If someone could pop into the museum for an angled shot with a brighter flash, it would help. --Blainster 23:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Why no mention of p2p? (Or insert any other modern Internet use)

I have to admit that this was not a deliberate deselection of p2p when I made the re-write. I chose WWW and Email as the applications to mention because there are almost literaly the defining applications of the current Internet.

While p2p is an important technology, the wide spread social implications of it are still yet to be seen. Unlike the WWW, and e-mail, we have not yet seen how p2p is going to change social and economic functions, if at all. There are indications that it will, but crystal balls are not a subject for a history article. I think it is overly tempting to add p2p because it is the 'big name of the time'. However, as a history article, we should fight this.

Now, I use p2p applications every day, but I don't think they have yet penetrated global society in the way email and the WWW have. It would probably be a mistake to atempt to mention every recordable use or application on the internet. That way ends up with turning the article into a list. There is already such a list at List of Internet topics

So I'm going to propose a guideline. 'Historicaly notable applications or uses of the Internet should have had impact to the majority of internet users or fundamental implication in society at the time of their use'

--Barberio 22:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Reinsertion of the Use and Culture section

History of the Internet is an article likely to get searches from many non-technical people. Without any Use and Culture section, there is nothing in the article they will understand. There is no other single article which covers the same topic, either. The history of the World Wide Web is NOT the History of the Internet. The WWW was only one of a number of competing methodologies until after the introduction of Mosaic. In 1994, most people were using Gopher, and had scarcely heard of the WWW, or of WAIS. An article which eliminates all mention of those competing Internet systems does not serve its readers. --CGMullin 21:50, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

It appears that this as well as much information on "Before the Internet" was removed, possibly due to vandalism. I do not see any of the removals justified by edit summaries therefore I am reverting to a good version. KWH 00:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Lycos

I cannot verify this and it seems to conflict with some other assertions. (This indicates only 390,000 documents in 1994.) Can someone give a cite?

"At the end of 1993, Lycos indexed a total of 800,000 web pages."

Also, claiming Lycos as the first search engine is dubious (Previous link only states "one of the earliest search engines", EiNet perhaps has a claim, and WAIS also bears mention.) Any better authorities on that? KWH 03:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been checking around in some related articles, notably the Search engine article, and also the WAIS, Archie search engine, and Gopher protocol articles, and have made some corrections here. Lycos was FAR from the first search engine, it was just the first one to make a lot of money for its creators. CGMullin 18:21, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

WebCrawler is the first crawler based search engine, that might be worth a sentence or two.--Scorpion451 05:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikilinks

I think I read somewhere that relevant words should be wikilinked only in their first appearence within any one article. And yet a lot of words are annoyingly linked all over the place, the main culprits being ARPANET, X.25 and TCP/IP.

Or am I making this up? PizzaMargherita 21:22, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

You are mistaken. Wikilinks should be repeated in lengthy articles. This allows the user to click a wikilink without having to scroll back to the first useage. --Barberio 21:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Can you please provide a reference to support this? Look here. It does explicitly say:

[Do not link] Words that have been linked earlier in the article. This advice follows the standard practice of defining or explaining a term, or spelling out an acronym, on its first occurrence in a text and not subsequently.

PizzaMargherita 22:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm reverting this because this is a long article, and we should not force users to scroll up and down a lot. Users may even be linked in to a section of the article, so never see the 'first' use of the wikilink. This may be against the guideline, but the guideline appears to have been writen for average sized articles, not long ones. --Barberio 09:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean "up and down a lot"? The article used to have links to TCP/IP and ARPANET in every single sentence. Surely that's not proper, is it?

What's the point of having guidelines if we only adhere to what they "appear" to us? How did you get the impression that the guideline I quoted applies only to "average sized articles"? PizzaMargherita 09:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, the article makes use of both "U.S." and "US" as adjectives. This is not only inconsistent and non-standard, but also unnecessary, since "American" would be unambiguous and accepted by both American English and Commonwealth English speakers. PizzaMargherita 21:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Please don't bring this here. This useage was prevelent in the article well before this became an issue on Manual of Style, and there is no reason to change it. --Barberio 21:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've brought it there. PizzaMargherita 22:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Since the guideline was changed without consensus, it's been restored, and I'll go about restoring links in the page as apropriate. --Barberio 08:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Brackets should not be used for sentence clauses.

Please please stop putting sentence clauses into brackets. This is not proper practice. This is a good use of the bracket - Johnston Kingly (86) won the shuffleboard cup. - while this is not - Johnston Kingly (The 86 year old plumber) won the shuffleboard cup. --Barberio 08:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Your example is slightly ironic in that is contradicts proper grammar not to have at least some sort of sentance clause explaining the apparently arbitrary number in parenthesis. page 86? Entry 86? Score at shuffleboard 86(very impressive!)--Scorpion451 05:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Barberio, you do not own this article

Barberio, please stop reverting perfectly valid edits ([2], [3]) with no justification. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 08:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

See above where I made the reason for this clear. For the umptenth time, I find myself asking you to be civil. --Barberio 10:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The bracket example you quote above is not relevant here. As user Bburton correctly points out, the current revision that you insist on keeping is not English.

"In Asia, having built JUNET a UUCP based network in 1984"

As for the hyphen in "X-based", Google confirms that we should use it, as we do in many other WP articles.

Therefore, the correct version is

"In Asia, having built JUNET (a UUCP-based network) in 1984"

Your requests for my being civil are baseless, so you might as well desist. Rather, your arrogance and your hysterical exclamation marks are not welcome here. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 10:49, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

UUCP and Usenet

Can someone please drop one sentence in the article explaining briefly the relationship between UUCP and Usenet? I don't think it's clear at the moment. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 08:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we want to go into UUCP and Usenet's links too closely here, assoiating the two, and directing attention to their articles is enough. We want to keep this in Summary Style. --Barberio 10:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

But surely a good article should be self-contained and should explain jargon. I'm not saying we should copy both articles, a few words would be enough to help understand how these two things are related, that's all. PizzaMargherita 06:57, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

'Self contained' conflicts with 'Summary Style'. Summary Style is the prefered method for wide aspect articles on Wikipedia. --Barberio 08:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the question here. Newsgroups are applications that can run over UUCP or IP stacks. Is the question about NNTP or the basic structure of news? Hcberkowitz 23:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Text forum?

In "Email and Usenet—The growth of the text forum", is "forum" a typo for "form"? Either way, what does it mean? Thanks. PizzaMargherita 19:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

You're confused over what 'Forum' means? --Barberio 19:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in this context specifically. PizzaMargherita 19:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a pretty common useage of the word 'Forum'. I'm not entirely sure what the confusion you have with it could be. --Barberio 20:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

If you actually visit the link you offered above, you will see that the word "Forum" has several "useage"s, none of which can possibly apply to email. Also I would avoid the term "forum" in this article without further clarifications due to the fact that "Internet forum" now commonly refers to web-based (note hyphen) applications. PizzaMargherita 20:54, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The most common useage of Forum as a word is 'place or method of debate and discussion'.[4] How this could not apply to mailing lists, and usenet, I fail to understand. Since the article doesnt use 'internet forum' , that's an irelevent issue. 'Forum' is a common useage english word, and anyone can identify that 'text forum' means 'a method of discussion based on exchanging texts' simply from the context of the section.

And again, you should only use a hyphen for "something based" when there is posibility of the sentence being confusing without it. Ie 'A spider web based forum' is better as 'A spider web-based forum'. (Unless it's 'A spider-web based forum' using spider webs to send messages) But 'A web-based forum on spiders' is redundant use of a hyphen since context is clear. --Barberio 03:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The definition you quote is missing a key element, the word "public". Since Roman times, fora have been public places of discussion, which email in general is not.

Exactly because the article does not mention internet forums, the issue of ambiguity is not irrelevant. I propose we get rid of the whole "The growth of the text forum" phrase.

I challenge you to apply this made-up hyphen grammatical rule of yours to web-related WP articles and see how far you get. Come on, start with internet forum. PizzaMargherita 06:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Mailing lists, and usenet, most definatly were 'public' fora. I'm concerend you seem to be proposing subtantive changes to this article without understanding either the context or content. Could you please read the article, and the linked too articles before making sugestions. Also, 'Forum' explicitly does not imply public access. For instance, the Oxford Union is a private forum.

And I did not 'make up' the hyphen "rule". That's what a hyphen is, a tool for disambiguation. It's not always used, nor are there even clear "rules" as you imply, since it's use is entirly dependant on context. --Barberio 08:55, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

1. Removing a meaningless "The growth of the text forum" from the title of the subsection hardly qualifies as a "subtantive" change.
2. I do not need to read the article, let alone the "linked too" articles, before making "sugestions", or even editing it for that matter. That's how Wikipedia works.
3. I could be similarly concerned that you seem to be editing WP while making grammatical mistakes and misspelling every other word. But I don't. More importantly, you seem to be owning this article (and its awards) and seem completely unable to cooperate with other people and accept other people's positions or reconsider your position even when proven wrong. This kind of attitude is frowned upon around here.
4. So are you going to take up the challenge?

PizzaMargherita 09:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• Get a room, you two. · rodii · 02:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with this one? Everybody seems to enjoy the show, yet strangely nobody is commenting on any of the issues. PizzaMargherita 06:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Could be that everyone's bored shitless watching you two debate hyphenation, nitpick spelling and drag your personal dislike for each other from page to page. · rodii · 17:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

There remains at least one ungrammatical sentence in the article (and it's not only about the hyphen) and one nonsensical subtitle. A user is preventing me and other users from rectifying this. If you are unconcerned, the "unwatch" button is right there. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 18:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

If, on the other hand, you care, you may want to correct the article yourself, as Barberio seems to treat your edits more leniently than mine, presumably as you suggest for personal reasons. PizzaMargherita 19:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Look, I don't understand Barberio either, but, c'mon, spelling flames and arguments about hyphenation are weak. There are in fact two standards in the the English-speaking (or English speaking) world. The older one, requiring hyphens, is now considered outdated by some authorities; however, others disagree. This is one of those arguments that just doesn't have a conclusive winner.

Personally, "Email and Usenet—The growth of the text forum" seems OK to me. In fact, it seems like a nice take on the emerging community that email and Usenet fostered. However, I agree that it may not communicate as effectively as it might. I can't come up with a better title, though--can you? Just decapitating it doesn't really help. I submit that it would be more constructive to rewrite either the title or the section than it would be to beat each other up about the whether the meaning of "forum" is obscure or not.

Finally, which sentence is it that's ungrammatical, in your opinion? I'll take a shot at editing the section, which is pretty choppy, but I'm not seeing the particular bit that concerns you.

The larger point here is that you and B. are having a flame war, not a constructive attempt to resolve differences, and you should try to step back a bit. · rodii · 01:53, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I made some edits. It's still pretty choppy, though, and the idea behind the title--which I support--doesn't really come through. The problem as I see it is not the title, but the fact that it is implicitly arguing that the significance of email and Usenet was that they provided a forum (and by extension created a community)--and then the section text doesn't really pay off on that. It's just a bunch of facts without any real evaluation of their significance. · rodii · 02:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The pre existing text included references to 'discussion groups' which I feel is sufficient to introduce the idea. Disucssion in detail on implications of email and usenet belong on their own article pages. Since this has to be summary style, we should only introduce the subject, and provide means to find more, including wikilinks and references. --Barberio 09:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok thanks, we're getting somewhere. The ungrammatical sentence is

In Asia, having built JUNET a UUCP based network in 1984, Japan followed on by connecting [...]

User Bburton and I have tried to put it right, but were reverted. Actually, the whole sentence is a complete shambles, so if you could wave your wand on this one, that would be much appreciated.

As for the hyphen, there may not be a rule, but as I pointed out the overwhelming majority of occurrences of "web-based" (in both Google and Wikipedia itself) are spelled with a hyphen, which does nothing but improve readability. Also, in some cases (as Barberio himslef points out) it makes a sentence unambiguous, therefore we may as well keep it everywhere for consistency. PizzaMargherita 08:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The oft quoted Emmerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds". I removed those changes not just becuause of the extranious hypthen, but because it placed a sentence clause in brackets. Contrary to a common mistaken belife, this does not make a sentence any easier to read. Breaking sentence flow like this is very bad, as with over use of extranious punctuation. There likely is a better way to phrase that sentence, but those changes were not it. --Barberio 09:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

cood yoo pleas enliten uz wot daz "sentence clause" meen I ease stoopid and I cunt find deffinision anywear PizzaMargherita 10:13, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Another cheap shot. B. has indicated that he's dyslexic and spelling errors are hard for him to catch. Obviously we don't want them in article text, but there they can be silently fixed. Calling attention to it here is uncivil and creates bad feelings that are an obstacle to moving forward. Just let it go, please. · rodii · 17:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there an illness that makes people make up grammatical definitions, grammatical rules, wikipedia rules, misquote people, be uncooperative, refuse to accept that they are wrong, own wikipedia articles, invoke consistency only when it suits them and revert edits that silently fix their dyslexia? That sentence is just not correct English. This article is a lost cause. Goodbye. PizzaMargherita 18:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not defending any of that, I'm just saying making fun of someone's spelling is not constructive. · rodii · 18:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

So anyway, how is it the growth of "the" text forum? Surely email (which I must insist is not a forum) and usenet would make at least two separate fora, right? PizzaMargherita 16:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

This is surely the generic use of "the" here--just as one might talk about the growth of "the" piano concerto or "the" internal combustion engine or "the" university. None of those uses implies there is just one of that kind. And the argument of the section, such as it is, is that mailing lists and Usenet constituted a public space for discussion and debate on the Internet. If you want to replace "e-mail" with "mailing lists" I wouldn't object.

Barberio, I understand this can't be an in-depth discussion, but in its present form it's an incoherent jumble of assertions without any focus. If the "thesis" of the section is indicated by the title, then it should be supported somewhere in the section. I know you feel it's "sufficient to introduce the idea", but other editors disagree. I think a little more depth, without unbalancing the article, would help make this section more coherent. · rodii · 17:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead if you can think of a way to write that and remain terse. --Barberio 18:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Should This Internet Theorist Be Mentioned?

I've seen and read through a copy of Raymond S. Rodgers' obscure 1971 booklet Man in the Telesphere, which predicted an Internet-like network that would link computers and people globally, and which used the word "web" to describe this system. But should he and his booklet be mentioned in this article? I'm unsure that merely because someone predicted something makes them worthy of mention, particularly if few people listened to the prediction. On the other hand, it is an interesting bit of trivia, at the very least. Here's a link to a rather defensive web site about the topic THE 1971 PREDICTION OF THE "WEB" / TELESPHERE--Skb8721 15:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No mention of BBN ?

As BBN developed the first IMP and ran the ARPANET initially, there should be a mention of this.

[5]

A T-shirt I've seen at IETF and NANOG meetings, as well as a .sig, reads "BBN. AS 1 and proud of it."

I too find this odd. They could also be considered part of the initial node along with UCLA and SRI, albeit for maintenance and monitoring purposes. A fine book that includes BBN's part in the development of ARPANET is Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. Yasgur (talk) 03:08, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

This is not a history of ARPANET, but a history of the Internet. It's unfortunately common for the two to be conflated, but that's a mistake. Notably, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet is mistitled, in that it is a history primarily of the ARPANET not the Internet. --Barberio (talk) 21:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The Internet goes mainstream

The article discusses the role of Windows 95 in the mainstreaming of the Internet, but that's not how I remember it at least. To my mind the first big step that drew media attention to the Internet and drove the expansion of the dial-up ISPs that made Internet access possible for mere mortals was the Mosaic web browser. Note that this is also how Internet tells it. — ciphergoth 09:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Zapped the entire section into a comment pending someone supporting it with cites. I think you're right in that this contradicts other information we have. The Internet was well on it's way to mainstream long before Windows 95. The popularity *of* winsock itself seems to indicate this. --Barberio 12:31, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The only cite for this is pretty sloppy looking. It appears to be notes from a lecture, and is riddled with formatting and context mistakes. The actual part of it refering to 1000% increase says "Claims were often made of a doubling every three or four months which corresponds to an annual growth rate of 1000%. Such growth rates did exist did hold during 1995 and 1996. However, growth slowed down to about 100% during 1997, which is in line to the average growth rate of 100% a year for the entire 30-year history of the internet.", which seems to be saying the records of growth are patchy, and that some measures claimed a doubling over periods of three months. This is then sloppily extrapolated to a "1000%" yearly increase. I don't think this is a clear cite of a growth spurt in 1995. --Barberio 22:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone find any information about the battle over commercialization that happend in the early 90s. I know there was a court case over one of the first commercial webiste and the Universities banned it. The court sided with the website. I remember this but can find no mention of it on the internet now. MindStalker 20:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)MindStalker

World View Tag

I do not think this article should be tagged. The Interent was created from the ARPANET and for years only existed in the USA being funded later by the National Science Foundation. As such the world view of this article is correct since the article itself correctly describes the history on the world view. Because the Internet was created in the USA and with funds from the NSF does not mean it is not correctly showing the world view.

Please reply to me regarding this on my talk page. I plan to begin work on this article shortly and will remove this tag if there are no objections. I am currently looking at and correcting supporting documents before I begin. --akc9000 ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 13:11, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Radar station links

I will preface with this statement: the ARPANET was the first attempt at an internet-like network. I am not trying to rewrite history. However, I belive that it is important to note in the article at least briefly that the first proof of concept for the idea came from the linking of radar stations though phone line connections. This was a project in the United States Air Force in the mid-1960's. It only passed very simple messages and was, as I said, only a proof of concept before the full investment of the military into the ARPANET. It is however, a notable and little known point in the timeline of the internet, and deserves at least a brief mention.--Scorpion451 05:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Have you any references for this? I'm aware of communications used, for example, with SAGE, and those were certainly not packet switched. LOGBALNET might be an early competitor, although I'd have to refresh my memory that it was packet and not message switched. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

References

Hi, I've come accross this [6] on the BBC News website, published today. I don't know if it will be of help but thought might as well give you the link and see. Regards, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 09:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Deceptive Drawing

I have removed this ridiculously out of scale drawing. Not only is it wrong, at first glance it looks like the areas of the boxes represent the actual ip address space. This is nothing short of deceptive. Right now this drawing offers nothing in the way of enlightenment and only serves to confuse. If we are to draw an accurate representation of the Ip address space, we would need to use a box that measures 2.8*10^14 pixels on each side. One pixel of that would be the IPv4 address space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.134.164.46 (talk) 03:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Strange edits to the article.

There seems to have made some odd edits to the top of the article, that left it in a very confused state. Including obliterating the lead, and replacing it with the top paragraph which made no sense as a lead, and then messing up the formatting. I assume this was the result of some bad fixes to repair vandal edits. Let's try to take a bit more care? --Barberio (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Having had to repair some considerable damage to the article, including blanked out sections and other vandal-edits that had been left uncorrected in this article since October, I'm even more disillusioned about Wikipedia than I was when I suspended my editing. --Barberio (talk) 23:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

strange reference

the article says

In October 1962, Licklider was appointed head of the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, now known as DARPA, within the information processing office. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. As part of the information processing office's role, three network terminals had been installed: one for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, one for Project Genie at the University of California, Berkeley and one for the Multics project SHOPPING at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

I was at MIT and worked at Project MAC in the 60s and have not heard of "Project SHOPPING." Multics was not begun until 1964-65. The idea of "network terminals" being installed at DARPA is misleading, since there was no network other than the PSTN... and calling up one of these systems to use it was an adventure in tie lines and long distance operators.

I think the references to "project SHOPPING" and Multics should be removed or supported with better evidence and dates.

regards, tom (editor multicians.org)

Thvv (talk) 00:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ugh. Another instance of people 'maintaining' the article while remaining ignorant of the subject. At some point someone messed this up. As I originally wrote it, it'd referred to the Compatible Time-Sharing System project. The 'three terminals' is a pretty well established as one of the prompters of ARPA interest in networking, and the linked N.Y.T. article used to support this with quote and citation made this pretty clear. Shame no one read that while maintaining the page. --Barberio (talk) 03:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Section on WWW out of place

I don't know why there is a paragraph on the WWW in an article on the Internet but it is out of place, has no sources and links to the actual internet article. Not to mention it might help perpertrate the idea that the web = the internet. If anyone has no objections i am going to delete it. DyloniusFunk (talk) 22:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Richard Robins (talk) 14:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)Seems like a good suggestion. I feel the History of the Internet page tries to cover far too much information in a limited space. There could be reference to key ideas and new pages created to cover these topics. The article ignores critical developments in the 1980s, which set the stage for rapid growth in the 1990s. There's no mention of the U.S. Government's privatization of the Internet in the early 90s that opened usage up.

You two are incompetent, the Web is one of the most important and famous systems carried by the Internet. Of course it should be there. 209.148.247.171 (talk) 05:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Error regarding Verio

"best internet"(or Verio) is listed as opening commercial access to the west coast in 1986, but this is obviously not true. Even the link provided by the editor shows the date to be 1996 1 --Zsieg (talk) 00:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Where is Licklider? The Internet is not a protocol, it's a concept.

The current state of this article is deplorable. Whoever wrote it is not only ignorant of the Internet but also is ignorant in general about the nature of scientific discovery and creation.

The Internet is an information highway, not a protocol. Whoever does not understand what information scientifically is should go and read up on it not waste our time here with childish amateur gossip. --209.148.247.171 (talk) 05:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Licklider's contribution is specifically in the second main body paragraph "Three terminals and an ARPA". --Barberio (talk) 21:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Suggested change

The main page seems impervious to editing so I place my suggested change here.

Early in the article, a reference is made to the internet being accessed by scientists on all 7 continents (obviously, including Antarctica).

Under the continent-by-continent section, this sentence seems quite jarring: The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), headquartered in Australia, manages IP address allocation for the continent.

I suggest the sentence be revised to end: "...for the vast region including its two continents."

As geographic background, the Asia-Pacific region includes roughly half of the world's surface, so the use of "vast" may be appropriate.

thanksErtdfgcvb (talk) 10:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Definition of "North America"

Further to my comment an hour ago, I suggest that the references to North America under the "Worldwide Online Population Forecast" subheading be clarified. North America is traditionally defined as the mainland from Alaska and Canada in the north down to include Panama in the south, plus the Caribbean islands. A more recent, and confusing, use of the NA term especially popular in business matters, uses NA as meaning only the USA plus Canada. For instance, the telephone country code 001 is often referred to as North America when it is, in fact, not the full continent.

I suspect that this latter two-nation definition is the one used in this article. If so, I suggest that a notation be added after the first use of the term "North America", such as "(defined as the USA plus Canada)" or perhaps "restricted to".

So, the fundamental question is whether Mexico, the six states of Central America, and the Caribbean are included in the statistics cited. If not, NA should be clearly defined.

Statistics cited with extreme precision, such as "1.1%", become meaningless if they apply to an area that is vague, misleading or uncertain.

ThanksErtdfgcvb (talk) 11:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)