The History and Evolution of Computer Networks [612155]

The History and Evolution of Computer Networks
Name: Isabela Fitero
Group: 933

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………. 1
The History and Evolution of Computer Networks ………………………….. ………………………….. …….. 2
Introduction ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………………………. 2
The evolution of computers ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …… 2
Wide Area Networks ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………….. 3
Local Area Networks ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………. 4
The Internet ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………………………. 4
The World Wide Web ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………… 6
Bibliography ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. … 9

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The History and Evolution of Computer Networks

Introduction
A computer network represents “ a group of computers that use a set of common
communication protocols over digital interconnections for the purpose of sharing resources located
on or provided by the network nodes. ”[1] Computer networks can be seen as a merge between the
technologies of computing and telecommunications [5].
Computer networks appeared recently and have “evolved” from telephone networks, who
are said to be their predecessors. But, since younger generations are bound to surpass their
predecessors, so have computer network s surpassed telephone networks – they brought along with
their appearance something new in the communication world. That is the limitless store of
information which is actively growing with an incre dibly high speed. [5]

The evolution of computers
The design of the first computer was created by Charles Babbage in the beginning of the
19th century. The computer would have thousands of parts and it would receive input with the help
of punched cards and d eliver output via a printer, curve plotter and a bell. Because of the big
amount of financial resources that were needed in order to build the computer, the project didn’t
manage to reach its completion. But, in 1888, Charles Babbage’s son, Henry Babbage, managed
to create a less complex version. [2]
Nevertheless, computers still ended up in the 1950’s to be considered heavy mac hines that
were hard to operate [3]. Not only were they heavy, they were expensive and occupied an
extremely large amount of space [5]. Their design made it such that users couldn’t have an
interactive contact with them, they needed to be operated by persons who were specifically trained
to do so [3]. Those people represented the link between the user and the computer . The computers
collected jobs and provided the results after a significant amount of time, which led to users not
being abl e to get the results of the jobs they submitted in a timely manner. This was due to the fact
that the most important factor for computer systems w as their efficiency, and in that time, a fast
and reliable computer came with the cost of a rather unfriendly “user interface” [5].
The computer received jobs via input devices such as punched cards and paper/magnetic
tapes, but as of the 1960’s, interactive terminals made t heir appearance and users could access a
large mainframe computer with the help of a low speed data line [3]. The emergence of
multi terminal systems was mainly due t o processors becoming cheaper, which resulted in new
methods of organizing computer processing. Each user had at their disposition a terminal for
interacting with the computer and the response time was qu ite short, even though the computer
had to compute j obs from multiple users at a time. But even though m ultitermin al systems are seen
as being the beginning of the development for Local Area Networks (LANs) , they were still pretty
far away from LANs, since they lacked important features related to centraliz ed data processing .
Organization s didn’t show an interest in LANs, since they probably didn’t have the financial
resources for more than one computer either . And since purchasing one single powerful computer
proved to be more efficient in the long run than purchasing two computers with a smaller
computing power. [5]

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Figure 1: Representation of the first computers. [5]

Financial issues came into light once again, which lead to the development of multiplexers
and concentrators, since having a communication line between each particular device and the
computer proved to be an expensive solution. Simply put, these multiplexe rs and concentrators
had the role of intermediaries between the devices and the computer. Namely, their job was to
amass the output from a collection of devices and then send it to the main computer via a single
communication line. [3]
In the aid of main frame computers came front -end processors. Their purpose was to take
off some of the load from the mainframe computers by doing some of its tasks, such as the
managemen t of the peripheral devices and the packages, the transmission of messages and the
error handling. Their equivalent in today’s client/server architecture is represented by the user
interfaces of the software application. [4]

Wide Area Networks
Wide Area Networks are net works spread across large geogra phical areas. An example of
a wide area network is the I nternet.
WANs have the role of helping organizations, schools, s tate facilities to provide data to the
persons they have business with (for example: employees, students) and of allow ing them to carry
on with their business from various geographical locations. [6]
WANs emerged from the demand of having computers located in different geographical
points be able to communicate with each other. The first step was doing this with a remote terminal
and a computer, thing which was accompl ished with the help of modems , which facilitated the
connection between the two devices through telephone lines. This way, remote terminals could
have access to several computers, which, in the end, led to computers being able to communicate
with other com puters.
When WANs were built, they used the already existing communication links (like
telephone lines), because building new ones would’ve required a large amount of financial
resources. Since those communication links were not built with the purpose of b eing used in the
way WANs needed them, this led to the communication between remote devices to be limited to

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file transfer and e -mailing. Another drawback to this was the fact that the transmitted data ended
up being corrupted, which required for complex p rocedures for data control and restoration. [5]

Local Area Networks
The idea of computer networks was greatly influenced by an event that took place in the
early '70s, to be exact, it was the apparition of Large -Scale Integrated circuits. Because LSI devices
had a relatively low price and advanced functional capabilities they led to the development of
minicomputers. Those minicomputers cost far less than the mainframes so you could have around
10/12 for approximately the same price, they had strength in numbers so t hey started competing
with mainframes and even surpassing them in tasks that were run in parallel.
When this feat was achieved even small companies started having their own computers as
they were great for tasks such as controlling technical equipment or m anaging stocks.This became
the starting point of the distributed computing concept, computing resources being distributed
across the entire enterprise, however they were still operating independently. Over time the needs
of users were no longer fulfilled b y the computers working independently as they needed the ability
to easily share data with users in other offices or branches. That requirement led to the apparition
of the first LANs. At first they were nonstandard networking technologies, such as coordin ated
pairs of software and hardware and mechanisms of data transmission over communication links,
sufficient for building a basic computer network.
Then starting in the mid ‘80s the evolution of computer networks started evolving rapidly.
Standard technolo gies for connecting computers to a network were finally emerging, such as :
Ethernet, Arcnet, Token Ring and others.
Another incentive for the development of LAN network technologies was the sudden boom
in the personal computer (PC) adoption, them being an ideal element to building networks as they
they had enough power to run networking software and so PCs became preval ent in LAN
environments, not only as clients but performing data storage and processing centre functions as
well.
The standard LAN tech was based on the packet -switching principle, the successful
switching principle used in WANs. Later, the process of crea ting LANs evolved from handcrafting
and improvising to a standard procedure using defined networking technologies. At this time it
was enough to procure a standard cable and network adapter according to a required specification,
like Ethernet, then connect adapters to the cable using standard connectors and finally install a
network operating system, something like Novell NetWare, being popular at that time.
LAN developed new features like accessing shared network resources in a much simpler
fashion .

The Internet
The I nternet is a network consisting of other interconnected networks which communicate
using the TCP/IP protocol – the reason why the Internet is commonly referred to as a “network of
networks” . The networks that are part of the Internet are networks belonging to a great variety,
such as organizations, school, universities, state facilities and even private networks. [7]
The basis of the Internet is said to be the ARPANET, namely, the Advanced Research
Agency Network. ARPANET emerged in 1969 as a result of a research into time -sharing of
computers fun ded by the Unites States Depart ment of Defence. Both the ARPANET research, as
well as the packet switching rese arch, started in the 1960’s, and ultimately, packet switching was
implemented into th e design of the ARPANET. [7] ARPANET is the first wide -area network that

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implemented the two technologies that later became the pillar stones of the Internet, that is, packet –
switching and the TCP/IP protocol suite. [8]
ARPANET started with two nodes at two sites at the Network Measurement Center from
the University of California , Los Angeles and at the NLS system from SRI International (Menlo
Park, California) . And, by the end of 1971, the ARPANET has gotten to have interconnections
between fifteen sites, two of which were the Culler -Fried Interactive Mathematics Center from the
University of California, Santa Barbara and the Graphics Department from the University of Utah.

Figure 2: ARPANET's logical map (March, 1977) .[8]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET)
in 1981, which allowed the access to the ARPANET to grow . And later , in 1986, t hey have given
access to researchers to supercomputer sites in the United States through the NSFNet (National
Science Foundation Network). This proved to be one of the main reasons that allowed the TCP/IP
protocol suite to develop and set some principles, bringing with it the expansion and growth of
TCP/IP networks as well.

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Figure 3: NSFNet's backbone .[7]

The NSFNet had a great development as well, having reached into organizations from
countries belonging to different continues of the globe (Europe, Australia, New Zealand and
Japan). And because such a great and resourceful thing couldn’t have existed without having to
bring profit, commercial Internet service providers made their appearance as well in 1989.
Further research and progress made into semiconductor technology and optical network
made the Internet develop even more, with m ultiple organizations trying to contribute to it (for
example, by providing the users with access to email and public products ). Soon, the
communication through the Internet would prove to be stronger than the one through satellites. [7]

The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners -Lee in 1989 . He was the one who
designed the first web browser, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP ), the HyperText Markup
Language (HTML ), the first web server and the first web pages. [7]

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Figure 4: The world's first web server .[7]

The World Wide Web is an information system containi ng different web resources, such
as documents , who are available via the Internet . The Uniform Resource Locators, aka URL s, are
the means used to uni quely identify these web resources.
The World Wide Web came into being because Berners -Lee found the searching of
information through numerous computers to be pretty difficult, so he submitted a proposal to t he
CERN management to implement a more effi cient system for information management. This
information management system would be based on hypertext (links embedded as text ) and even
hypermedia (for including multimedia documents, like video, speech and graphics ). His first
attempt proved to be unsuccessful, but he didn ’t give up, and a yea r later, with the help of Robert
Cailliau, he has submitted another proposal.
The next step for Bernes -Lee was to combine the Internet with the hypertext, and since no
one took an interest in his ambitious, yet possible, vision, he took the matter in his own hands and,
with no doubt, proved to be successful.
A breaking point for the Web was represented by the appearance of Mosaic, which is a
graphical browser. Before the emergence of Mosaic, the Web wasn ’t quite popular, but with the
help of Mosaic ’s graphical user interface, things took a turn for the best. [9]

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Since many websites from different parts of the globe started to appear on the Internet , the
need for international standards for protocols and formatting was imminent . And so, the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in 1994 by Berners -Lee.
By 1996, organizations have came to realize the benefits of the Web and decided that they
should af firm they presence on the Web as w ell. The web not only provided the possibility to
publish anything freely, access a huge amount of information from all around the glo be,
communicate with other persons instantly, it also provided a door for organizati ons to sell their
products throughout the globe and thus, what today are known as e-commerce websites , were
created.
Between 1996 and 1997 , search engines were developed as well. In 1996, the first Web
search engine, called RankDex, was created by Robin Li. RankDex wasn ’t a simple search engine,
it also scored the web pages found and ordered them according to their score. A bit later, the well
known and most oftenly used Web search engine was born – Google Search and in 1998, the
Google company was f ounded as well.
The growth of the Internet continued to inspire young and ambitious entrepreneurs , and
such, many dot -com startups came into existence. Since being ambitious does not necessarily come
with good ideas and the ability to manage and keep a business on the market, many of these startups
died shortly after making their first steps on the market. But, the contrary happened as well, and
so, there were some compani es that managed to bring profit and survive on their own. Between
the companies that survived , the ones which are more notic eable are the ones who dealt with online
merchandising , since online retailers found selling products through the Web to be quite a
profitable source of income.
The most succes sful companies were the ones that made t heir b usiness into making the
World Wide Web a better experience. Companies like Google, e Bay and Amazon made a name
for themselves and a re still thri ving to this day. Social networking websites like MySpace and
Facebook knew no less fame, and became pretty popular among the younger generation. While
MySpace’s 10 minutes of fame are gone, Facebook has managed to keep itself on the surface. But,
since this world needs both Yin and Yang to keep its balance, there ’s no good thing that com es
without a bad one. And so, with the rise of the Internet, eventually came the rise of cybercrime.
In the beginni ng of 2002, Web 2.0 was born. This was due to the fact that people came up
with new way s of exchanging con tents, such as Webblogs and RSS. The Web was starting to
become more organized, and new websites tha t are still popular to this day have emerged (for
example, Wikipedia ). In 2005, YouTube, a video viewing website, was created by Steve Chen,
Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. YouTube reached fame in a short period of time and came up with
the notion of user submitted content. This, along with the growth of acces sibility for high -speed
connections, revolutionized the Web and a considerable number of websites have chosen to offer
video content.
The growth of the Internet motivated the movement of connecting n umerous types of
devices to the internet. And with this, new means by which those devices could connect to the
internet emerged as well (for example, Wi-Fi connection ). Nowadays, the Internet can be acce ssed
using mobile phones, laptops, desktops, tablets and many more devices. [10]

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Bibliography

[1] Computer Network , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network
[2] Computer , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer
[3] Dinesh Thakur: Evolution of Computer Networks,
http://ecomputernotes.com/computernetworkingnotes/comput er-network/evolution -of-computer –
networks
[4] Front -end processor , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front -end_processor
[5] Evolution of Computer Networks ,
https://www3.nd.edu/~dwang5/courses/fall16/pdf/evolution.pdf
[6] Wide area network , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_network
[7] Internet , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
[8] ARPANET , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
[9] World Wide Web, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
[10] History of the World Wide Web,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w iki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web