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Who Really Invented the Internet?
jaymzter writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an article that it claims seeks to dispel an urban legend about the internet: 'The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet.' The position of the piece is that it was Xerox's contribution of Ethernet that enabled the global series of tubes we know and love today, and what's interesting is that the former head of DARPA supports this claim."
A general wiring specification is hardly on a level playing field with creating the internet. That's like saying Xerox's mouse created the PC. A nice piece of the puzzle perhaps, but not credit-worthy.
Why exactly do we need to pay continual homage to Xerox? To create more urban legends instead of dispel and dismiss them?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
"See, it was never the government who created the Internet. The Free Market (peace be upon it) did it all by its lonesome!".
Color me shocked that a Murdoch paper's using that line.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Every generation of teenagers thinks they invented sex and music.... and the internet.
We used to laugh at "al gore invented the internet" but the next generation of people will laugh at "zuckerberg invented the internet"
The other problem is there is no "internet". No one thing you can point at. Who invented "the space shuttle" as one individual inventing one object is an equally dumb question.
Another problem is best displayed by analogy. Who invented God? There's 10000 religions all saying they did, and the other 9999 got it all wrong and the 9999 others are all going to hell. Odds are all 10000 got it wrong not just 9999. Or another great analogy, at least to educated people: Who caused the decline and fall of the roman empire?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
How about this: it was thousands of individuals, working both in the public and private sector on different pieces of the puzzle, when all taken together, who developed the Internet.
And then it gets crazier: if any of those pieces were missing, the same problems would have been present, and they would have been solved in similar but slightly different ways. If not for ARPANET, perhaps Project Xanadu would have yielded a working model, and something like IP would have been developed to make the networking work.
And to top it off: regardless, the state of the Internet at any particular point is largely a function of the available computing power. Moore's Law is highly resistant to challenge, and it's unlikely that any major change of players would have affected the outcome much. My BBS'ing days on a C=64 with a 300-baud modem might have had hypertext in the Xanadu model, but it still would have been an 8-bit experience.
In summary: there are stupid questions, like "who really invented the Internet?"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
According to Wikipedia, the first two computer networks were connected together (to form an "internet", because that is what the word means) was in 1969, more than 10 years before Ethernet was invented. That means an internet proceeded Ethernet in existence. Ethernet was created as one means of transmitting networked data. It was not the only possibility: dozens of other standards could have been adapted for a de facto LAN standard (note the "LAN" part of that: Ethernet isn't even really part of the Internet per se). It did not invent it, it did not proceed it, and in fact it was not even necessary to the Internet's existence. Hell, the backbone of the Internet is fiber optics, not Ethernet.
Also, I'm a little confused by them calling ARPANET "not an Internet" (not least because "Internet" shouldn't be capitalized in that context), since it was a connection of multiple networks together.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
See Facebook, the iOS app store and AOL.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
'Internetworking' predated Ethernet by a long shot. One could argue that the UUCP network was the progenitor to or perhaps the first incarnation of the Internet - it had file transfers, email, usenet news, and was a loosely-managed, cooperative network of systems across companies, universities, and government. It was mostly modem-based; those with dedicated leased lines were the envy of all.
It was store-and-forward, explicitly routed, and relied on config files like this. Contained within this example is my UUCP node definition from 22 years ago. I'm not tellin' which one.
Speaking of ethernet, anyone else remember thick ethernet cable and vampire taps?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Regardless of one's opinion on the Wall Street Journal...
This is a WSJ Online article in the Opinion section. So, it's one of many blogs, essentially, under the WSJ name. The standards for the real Wall Street Journal and for their online-only content (particularly the Opinion section) are dramatically different. The online-only content is absolutely terrible.
Stupid quote is stupid: "It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. "
Ethernet != Internet
right, because nobody but the government would have been smart enough to create a similar method for connecting computers together.
Good perspective here, IMHO:
Ars Technica review of this op-ed
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Where may I find this pious anthropomorphic market you speak of?
http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/internet_sterling.history.txt
SF and S-fact author Bruce Sterling did a fine little "short history" essay back in 1993. It was not only "not just Xerox" or "not just government" or "not just private industry", it was "not just America".
Note that 'Packet' is a very British term - and one of the really, really crucial developments was thinking of communications with packet-switching, not "opening a continuous line between sender and receiver".
It's a classic Wall Street Journal piece: reasonable research and fact-finding, but then they have to put the spin on it. That predates Rupert Murdoch by quite a bit.
Even today, almost none of the connections between Internet nodes are ethernet. Your home broadband connection is not ethernet - it's DSL, cable modem, or fiber. Back in the day when most Internet nodes didn't have dedicated connections, they used dialup modems over POTS, not ethernet. Most dedicated connections used the X.25 network provided by the phone companies for dedicated data lines.
What enabled the Internet was the idea of layering communications. That way your applications saw the same packets coming from the network regardless of whatever software or hardware lay underneath. That is, rather than try to translate TCP/IP packet data into ethernet packet data, then translate that into DSL packet data, etc. for this post submission to get to slashdot, each layer just encapsulates the higher layer's data. So the TCP/IP packets never know they've been split up into 1542 byte chunks to be transmitted along ethernet to reach my DSL modem. They don't know they've been converted into whatever tortured protocol DSL uses, and so on all the way to slashdot's servers.
You just have underlying layers treat the above layers are data streams. Then the higher levels (e.g. apps) can interoperate completely agnostic to what underlying layers are used. Ethernet was one of those underlying layers, so had nothing to do with it. Ethernet's simplicity and versatility had a lot to do with it being adopted at the hardware level for LANs (as opposed to, say, Token Ring), but it had nothing to do with the Internet.
Amtrak is $1000 for a cross country journey?! Do you bother to check anything before you put your drivel in to writing?
Here is the Amtrak site: http://www.amtrak.com/home
You can look up ticket prices right there.
From New York to Los Angeles: $212
There's a lot of merit in this story I think, but ultimately it muddies the waters. Certainly, it's claim that government-funded research played a less than key role in the development of internetworking seems to be just plain false.
First of all, the work Xerox did that most resembles the Internet protocols was not Ethernet, but PARC Universal Packet (PUP), which is indeed quite directly comparable to the IP in TCP/IP. Ethernet, while a terrific piece of work, mostly served to facilitate networking within a single site.
The article also says implies that the Government-funded ARPANET wasn't really the precursor of the Internet. I think that's an over-simplification. Arpanet wasn't the very first packet switching network (see the work of Baran and Davies), and it certainly wasn't an Internet (network of networks), but it really was the direct antecedent of the Internet as we know it. Arpanet connected universities and other research establishments. It proved the viability of a packet-switching network with all the application smarts at the periphery of the network. In almost all cases, what had been Arpanet connections among the early sites evolved (sometimes by way of NSFnet) to TCP/IP Internet connections, running essentially the same applications and services. So, in all those ways, Arpanet was a crucial step on the way to our TCP/IP-based Internet, and of course, ARPANET was government funded.
A much less sensationalist but much more balanced history of all this can be found at: http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/origins.html . The record there strongly suggests that Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf were discussing approaches to internetworking (connecting networks) in spring of 1973. Interestingly, the official PARC Research Report on PUP actually cites the Internet work of Cerf and Kahn, specifically their 1974 A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.
So, the government-funded work on internetworking seems to have started before the Xerox work, and the Xerox research time explicitly cited Cerf and Kahn as sources of inspiration for the Xerox work on internetworking. Wouldn't it be nice of the WSJ article made all that clear before everyone started using these over simplifications to prove the futility of government-funded research?
If you read nothing else, read the first and last paragraphs [following this one ;)].
They address exactly what the OP brought up and why it is not accurate.
Putting aside for just one brief paragraph whether Ethernet has led to the Internet,
Ethernet was developed by DIX - Digital [Equipment Corporation], Intel, and Xerox
in no particular order except that's the name they used. Bob Metcalfe -- cofounder
of 3Com -- has lectured about this for ages, Don't confuse the network we use
today (Ethernet II, 802.3, 802.1q, 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, 1000Base-anything, etc.)
with the original Ethernet [I] spec. Always build on the works of other giants.
Now back to the original claims. There were many networking standards, and IP was
just one of them. Originally computers did not talk to many other computers, even
in the same room. Original DECnet systems would each talk to one or more other
systems, and would relay messages -- much as Usenet did to text.
Ethernet was not the first bus-based network topology. Token-Ring was a strong
competitor, pushed by the great might of IBM. Debates raged as to which was
better, 4Mbps guaranteed-time slots (think like TDMA) or 10Mbps collission-detect
carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) that guaranteed nothing. The rule of thumb
was if you had two "stations" and one was transmitting a bitstream and the other
was sending nothing you could APPROACH 10Mbps. If the two talked to each
other then 5Mbps, and so on. The advent of full-duplex technology (10Base-T)
moved the "bus" into the center of one device (a hub) from which spokes connected
nodes. (You'll note that means it really is a star configuration).
Original Ethernet ran on big fat cables. To connect to it you used a big clamp on
connector with a "tooth" that pierced the outer insulation and hit the center conductor.
Those were called vampire taps. Ethernet at that point was 10Base5. 10MBps, 500m.
Then came "thinwire". Using BNC connectors, T-s for taps, and dual-connectors to
extend, 10Base2 got us 10Mbps at 200m. That was pretty much it.
Aside: around this time someone thought to resurrect token-ring but make it use
expensive glass fiber that needed expensive splicing -- to power the "desktop!"
This 100Mbps network was Fiber Distributed Data Interface.
Anyway so now we come to the part where we have
a. IP and TCP/IP
b. A bus-based network to allow many to many communication
And thus the ARPANET was born. It wasn't to fight a war, it was to do research.
The US military -- reporting to the same US DoD that funded ARPA -- thought it
was such a great idea they created a network called MILNET.
The original systems used specialized computers running specialized code to be
Internet Message Processors (IMPs). These complex one-of-a-kind systems are
what today are outscaled, outpaced, outperformed, and outfeatured by a $50
router running DD-WRT (not to mention WiFi)...
The Internet did not exist because computers in one room could talk to each other
via Ethernet. It exists because that one room could talk to ANOTHER ROOM in
a far away place. Internet means "Interconnected Networks". One Ethernet in
place A talking to one Ethernet in place B.... now THAT's interconnection.
Ehud
It did not start to grow "MASSIVELY" until private industry got into it. There were not even ISPs then, because they were private industry. Just shut up and watch your compuserv.
It didn't start to grow "massively" until it was popularized by the World Wide Web. Who invented that? An Englishman working at that well known bastion of free market Americana: CERN in Switzerland.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Ars on the story: WSJ mangles history to argue government didn't launch the Internet
That's why Al Gore "created" the Internet. He didn't do anything, other than make it accessible.
Learn to love Alaska
Obama is the typical college professor who knows a lot of facts and information and theory, but very little real world knowledge. President Woodrow Wilson had the same flaw. (And also lied that he would not take us to war.)
Obama, like Clinton, are 2 of the very few US presidents who came from *nothing* families (alcoholism, dissociated family life, working class at best). Look what they each achieved in their lives. Meanwhile the Bushes and now Romney were born into US$ multimillionaire political families and never had to fight or work to get anything. I ask you this: Look at what you are in life. What have you achieved? My bet is you're still living in the basement playing games. As to Obama's "real world" experience, he has lived many places, seen the world up close. In contrast you probably haven't been out of the basement much. In your 3 short sentences you have shown your total ignorance, and there is no one alive without "flaws" including you... Had you achieved anything your sig wouldn't be "HP Desktop with i7 at 3GHz/8GB versus Dell i5 at 3GHz/12GB. To buy or not to buy?" You'd be able to afford both and a few more. In my home office I have 4 different computers doing different jobs surrounding me, and 2 more around the house (kitchen and bedroom) plus 5 "retired" computers in a closet (all of which still work). Get off my lawn...
This passage illustrates the extreme bogosity of this article: "It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks." It is, of course, bullshit: an Ethernet is a type of computer network, it does not link different computer networks. The glory of the Internet is that it can link computers on Ethernet, serial lines, EVDO, token ring networks (if any still exist!), carrier pigeon, whatever; and those protocols were developed with publicly funded research.
Typical ahistorical right-wing bullshit from the WSJ.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
1) "The Internet" was invented by Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine who worked for Stanford University and issued RFC 675 "SPECIFICATION OF INTERNET TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROGRAM", and they were funded by ARPA.
2) Lots of other people and organizations developed lots of networks. ARPANET between University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute (funded by ARPA). There was also privately operated Telenet & Tymnet, and university lead MERIT networks as well as UUCP started at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
3) I worked for one of the first private Internet Service Providers - tt was also one of the first providers of dial-up shell accounts, and later had one of the first national DS-3 IP networks. When I started cold-calling people for web design, they often told me "My customers will never use the Internet" (if they even knew what the Internet was). Suffice it to say that a lot of very forward-looking private providers of capital made that company possible, and they all made a lot of money in the process, and that turned the Internet from something you tinkered with at University into something real.
Also look at private companies like Cisco that made IP routing practical at large scales.
So I will 100% agree that government funding of university researchers created the Internet. However it would have never gone anywhere without private money funding a massive expansion and buildout of it.
Think university solar cell research funded by the government - good. Solyndra funded by government - bad.
And it would have also gone NOWHERE if government tried to regulate early ISPs as roughly as it regulated the incumbent telecommunications companies. We could do pretty much whatever we wanted with little regulation or censorship.