1995101On October 24th, FNC (Federal Network Council) passed a resolution on the definition of Internet: "FNC believes that the following languages reflect the definition of the word' Internet'.
"Internet" refers to the global information system;
1. On the basis of network media, it is logically linked by the unique network logical address in the world. The address is based on Internet Protocol (IP) or other future protocols.
2. Communication can be conducted through transmission control protocol and Internet protocol (TCP/IP) or other future follow-up protocols or protocols compatible with Internet protocol (IP).
3. Let public users or private users enjoy the high-level and all-round services brought by modern computer information technology. This service is based on the above communication and related infrastructure. "
Of course, this defines the internet from a technical point of view. This definition reveals at least three aspects: first, the Internet is global; Secondly, every host on the Internet needs to have an "address"; Finally, these hosts must connect according to the same rules (protocols).
[Edit this paragraph] History
The Internet started at 1969. Under the protocol made by ARPA, it connected four main computers of southwestern universities in the United States, UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Stanford Research Institute (Stanford Research Institute), UCSB (University of California) and UniversityofUtah. The agreement was implemented by Hema of Cambridge University, and was launched in February 20 10 and February 20 10 respectively. By June 1970, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Harvard (Harvard University), BBN and System Development Company Santa Monica (Santa Monica, California) joined in. To1972,65438+10, Stanford (Stanford University), LincolnLabs of MIT (Lincoln Lab of MIT), Carnegie Mellon (Carnegie Mellon University) and Case-WesternReserveU joined in. A few months later, NASA/Ames, Mitt, Burroughs, RAND Corporation and the University of Illinois joined in. Since then, more and more companies have joined, so I won't list them here.
1968 when senator TedKennedy heard that BBN had won the ARPA protocol as an internal message processor (IMP), he sent a congratulatory message to BBN to congratulate them on winning the spirit of the "internal message processor" protocol.
The Internet was originally designed to provide a communication network that could work normally even if some places were destroyed by nuclear weapons. If most of the direct channels are blocked, the router will guide the communication information to spread in the network through the intermediate router.
The original network was for computer experts, engineers and scientists. It was not friendly at the time. At that time, there were no computers for home and office use. Anyone who used computers, whether computer experts, engineers or scientists, had to learn very complicated systems. Ethernet, the protocol of most local area networks, appeared in 1974, which is a by-product of Harvard student BobMetcalfe's paper on "Packet Broadcasting Network". This paper was initially rejected by the school because of insufficient analysis. Later, he added some factors before he was admitted.
Due to the development of TCP/IP architecture, the Internet developed rapidly in 1970s. This architecture was first proposed by BobKahn of BBN, and then further developed by Kahn and VintCerf of Stanford University in the 1970s. In the 1980 s, the Ministry of National Defense adopted this architecture, and by 1983, this architecture was widely adopted all over the world.
1978, UUCP(UNIX and UNIX Replication Protocol) was proposed in Bell Laboratories. 1979, a newsgroup network system based on UUCP. Newsgroups (discussion groups focusing on a certain topic) also appeared, which provided a new way to exchange information all over the world. However, newsgroups are not considered as a part of the Internet, because they don't enjoy the TCP/IP protocol. They connect UNIX systems all over the world, and many Internet websites make full use of newsgroups. Newsgroups are a very important part of the development of the online world.
Similarly, BITNET (a computer network connecting educational institutions around the world) is connected to the mainframe of IBM, a world education organization, and mail service has been provided since 198 1. Listserv software and later other software were developed to serve this network. A gateway has been developed to connect BITNET with the Internet and provide e-mail sending and e-mail discussion lists. These list servers and other e-mail discussion lists constitute another important part of the development of the Internet.
When the commands of e-mail, FTP and telnet are standardized, it becomes very easy for non-engineering technicians to learn and use the network. Although it is not as easy as it is today, it has greatly promoted the application of the Internet in universities and special fields. Other departments, including computer department, physics department and engineering technology department, have also found ways to make use of the benefits of the Internet, that is, to communicate with universities around the world and enjoy literature and resources. Libraries have also taken a step forward to make their retrieval catalogue face the whole world.
The first achievement of searching the Internet was invented in 1989, which was created by Peter Dutz of McPherson University in Montreal and all his members. They created a file for the FTP site, which was later named Archie. This software can visit all open file download sites regularly, list their files and build a searchable software index. The command to retrieve Archie is a UNIX command, so only using UNIX knowledge can give full play to its performance.
McFill University, the university with the first Archie, found that half of the communications from the United States to Canada visit Archie every day. The school is worried that the management program can support such a large communication flow, so it has to close external access. Fortunately, there were a lot of Archie available at that time.
At about the same time, BrewsterKahle invented WAIS (Wide Area Network Information Service) in ThinkingMachines, which can retrieve all files in a database and allow file retrieval. There are many versions according to complexity and performance, but the simplest one can be used by anyone on the Internet. At its peak, intelligent computer companies maintained more than 600 database clues, which could be searched by WAIS all over the world. Including all the frequently asked questions in newsgroups and all the papers and documents developed for network standards. Like Archie, its interface is not very intuitive, and it takes a lot of effort to use it well.
199 1 year, the University of Minnesota developed the first friendly interface to connect with the Internet. At that time, the school just wanted to develop a simple menu system to access files and information on the campus network through the local area network. Then the debate between mainframe believers and those who support client-server architecture began. At first, the followers of mainframe system prevailed, but because the advocates of client-server architecture claimed that they could quickly build a prototype system, they had to admit defeat. Advocates of client-server architecture quickly developed an advanced demonstration system called Gopher. This hamster proved to be very useful. In the following years, more than 10000 hamsters appeared all over the world. It does not require knowledge of UNIX and computer architecture. In the gopher, you only need to enter a number to select the menu option you want. Today, you can use the "Mystery Messenger" to select all the gopher systems in the world.
When Reno of UniversityofNevada created Veronica (an automatic retrieval service used by Gopher), the usability of Gopher was greatly enhanced. It is called the acronym of "very simple modern-oriented network document". Gopher all over the world collects network connections and indexes like the web. It's so popular that it's difficult to connect with them, but in spite of this, a lot of VERONICA has been developed to reduce the load. A similar single-user indexing software has also been developed, called Jughead (JonaySuniversalgopher hierarchical exclusion and display).
PeterDeutsch, the inventor of Archie, has always insisted that Archie is short for Archie. When Veronica and Jughead appeared, they showed great disgust.
1989, another great event happened in the history of Internet application popularization. TimBerners and others at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, who are very famous at CERN, proposed an agreement to classify Internet information. This protocol is called WorldWideWeb after 199 1 year. It is based on Hypertext Protocol, a system of embedding one text into another. When you read these pages, you can always use them to select text links. Although it appeared before gopher, it developed very slowly.
The appearance of the graphic browser Mosaic greatly promoted the development of this protocol, which was developed by MarcAndressen and his team in NCSA (International Supercomputer Application Center). Today, Anderson is the head of Netscape, which has developed the most successful graphical browser and server to date, which is an achievement that Microsoft has been unable to surpass.
Since the Internet was originally invested and built by government departments, it was initially limited to research departments, schools and government departments. No other commercial activities are allowed except commercial applications that directly serve research departments and schools. In the early 1990s, independent commercial networks began to develop, and this situation was broken. This makes it possible to send information from one commercial website to another without going through a government-funded network center.
Dephi is the first international business company to provide online network services for customers. E-mail service started in July, and all-round network service started in 1992 and 10. 1in may, 995, when NFS (international science foundation) lost its position as an internet hub, all rumors about the limitations of commercial websites ceased to exist, and all information dissemination depended on commercial networks. AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe also started online services. During this period, due to the widespread use of commercial applications and the self-reliance of educational institutions, the loss of NFS cost investment is immeasurable.
Today, NSF has given up funding for network centers and higher education institutions. On the one hand, we began to build K- 12 and local public libraries, on the other hand, we studied how to improve a large number of high-speed network connections.
Microsoft has fully entered the market of browsers, servers and Internet service providers (ISP), and realized an Internet-based business company. June 1998 Microsoft's browser and Win98 integrated desktop computer show Bill Gates' determination to invest in the rapidly developing Internet.
The success of Microsoft in the past few years has led to lawsuits about their dominance. Do you think this argument will end in court or in the market?
The popular trend of future development is to improve the connection speed of the network. The rapid development of 56k modem and the hardware manufacturers supporting it are only a small step in the future. However, with the rapid development of new technologies such as multi-core modem, DSL (digital private line) and satellite broadcasting network, it has been realized on a small scale and will be realized on a large scale in the next few years. At present, these technical problems are not only the connection of users, but also the problem of ensuring the high-speed and reliable transmission of data from information sources to users. I believe these problems can be solved in the near future.
In the period of rapid development and growth of the Internet, it is not standard for businesses to enter the Internet to find economic laws.
Free service cancels the direct cost of users. Dephi now provides free home pages, forums and information boards. Online sales of books, music and computers are also growing rapidly, and their profits are negligible in price, but the public is still not at ease about the safety of online sales.
[Edit this paragraph] Internet influence
The Internet is global. This means that the network we are using now, no matter who invented it, belongs to all mankind. This "globality" is not an empty political slogan, but has its technical guarantee. As we can see in the second chapter of this book, the structure of the Internet is a distributed network connected by "packet switching". Therefore, on the technical level, there is absolutely no central control problem on the Internet. In other words, it is impossible for a country or an interest group to control the Internet through some technical means. On the other hand, it is impossible to shut down the Internet within a country-unless it is not the Internet.
At the same time, however, such a global network must have some way to determine each host connected to it. On the internet, it is absolutely impossible for two people to have the same name. In this way, there must be a fixed organization to determine the name of each host, so as to determine the "address" of this host on the Internet. However, this is only the "naming right", and this power to determine the address does not mean the power to control. The organization responsible for naming can do nothing but name.
Similarly, this global network also needs an organization to formulate communication rules (protocols) that all hosts must abide by, otherwise it is impossible to establish an Internet that can be used by all different computers and different operating systems in the world. The next generation TCP/IP protocol will classify the information levels on the network to speed up the transmission (for example, giving priority to the transmission of browsing information instead of email information), which is an example of the service provided by the organization. Similarly, this power to make and abide by the "agreement" does not mean the power to control.
Undoubtedly, all these technical characteristics of the Internet show that the management of the Internet is completely related to "service" and has nothing to do with "control".
In fact, the current Internet is far from the "information superhighway" that we often say. This is not only because the current transmission speed of the Internet is not enough, but more importantly, the Internet has not been finalized and has been developing and changing. Therefore, any technical definition of the Internet can only be present and current.
At the same time, as more and more people join the Internet and use it more and more, they will constantly put forward new understanding of the significance, value and essence of the Internet from the social and cultural perspectives.
The network is the media.
As we have seen before, the emergence of the Internet is undoubtedly a revolution in human communication technology. However, it is obviously not enough to understand the meaning of the Internet only from a technical perspective. The development of the Internet has already surpassed the original military and technical purposes of ARPANET, and served human communication almost from the beginning.
Even in the early days of ARPANET, Licklidel, director of the Command and Control Laboratory (CCR) of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has always stressed that the fundamental role of computers and computer networks is to serve people's communication, not just calculation.
Later, DavidClark, a senior researcher at url] MIT /url] Computer Science Laboratory, also wrote: "It is wrong to regard the network as a connection between computers. On the contrary, the Internet connects people who use computers. The greatest achievement of the Internet lies not in the technical level, but in its influence on people. E-mail may not be an important progress in computer science, but it is a brand-new way for people to communicate. The continuous development of the Internet is a technical challenge for all of us, but we can never forget where we come from, the great changes we have brought to the larger computer community, and our potential for future changes. " (RFC:No. 1336) Obviously, from the development course of the Internet up to now, the network is communication.
The English word "Communication" is not easy to translate. When we talk about news, the word news refers to spreading and conveying; When we talk about traffic, the word refers to traffic; When we discuss interpersonal relationships, this word is related to communication and communication. At that time, Li url] Cridle /url] emphasized that the role of computers was "communication", which was the word used.
Interestingly, both "computer" and "communication" have the same root: "com" (* * *, integrity, integration and so on). The old English word "communication" means "participation".
Internet is an interactive platform that can communicate with each other, communicate with each other and participate in each other.
In American universities, people usually study mass communication instead of journalism. In this sense, "communication" has nothing to do with propaganda and being publicized, but is closely related to the "communication" in which everyone participates. I emphasize that "the network is the media" here, also to emphasize the important role of the network in human communication and exchange.
The development of the Internet has fully proved the media characteristics of the network. On the one hand, as a narrow and small-scale private media, the Internet is an excellent tool for private communication. E-mail has always been the most widely used and valuable function on the Internet. Due to the emergence of e-mail, communication between people is more convenient and common.
On the other hand, as a wide, open and effective media for most people, the Internet has realized the role of real mass media through a large number of websites visited by at least thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people every day. Internet can spread ideas or information faster, more economically, more intuitively and more effectively than any other way.
The emergence of Internet, e-mail and the use of World Wide Web provide good tools for people's communication.
Web pages are publications.
If we understand that "the network is the media", it is easy to understand that the web page of the World Wide Web, as one of the functions of the Internet, is essentially a publication, which has almost all the functions that a printed publication should have. The fact that the World Wide Web has developed in recent years proves this point.
In fact, quite a few users of the World Wide Web directly regard the World Wide Web as a publication. According to the statistics of NetSmart, 50% users read online magazines and 48% users read online newspapers. Even if you don't read newspapers through the World Wide Web, the pages of the World Wide Web themselves play the role of publications.
Burnsley, the inventor of the World Wide Web, clearly pointed out in his declaration on the World Wide Web: "The World Wide Web is essentially a platform for individuals and institutions to communicate through sharing information.
When information is provided to the World Wide Web, it is considered to be published on the World Wide Web. Publishing on the World Wide Web only requires the "publisher" to have a computer connected to the Internet and run the server software of the World Wide Web. Just like printed publications, the World Wide Web is a universal medium. However, compared with printed publications, web pages have many characteristics that printed publications do not have.
First of all, web pages are cheap. In the case that paper is very tight and expensive, the advantages of web pages are particularly obvious. Because, unlike printed publications, web pages are only electronic publications, and no paper is needed to make web pages. Moreover, when filmmakers, dramatists and even writers/artists lament that their works are "the art of regret", the advantages of web pages are also revealed. Because, the web page can be modified at any time and can be "redone" at any time.
Another advantage of web pages is that they have a wide readership. Since there is no need to spend money, everyone likes to read more books. Therefore, a good web page is certainly much broader than a good book and newspaper. A good web page is visited by tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people every day. Its influence can be imagined.
Moreover, because it is an electronic publication, the spread speed of web pages is incomparable to that of printed publications.
Needless to say, books, even newspapers, take time from editing, typesetting, printing to distribution, and web pages are very simple, just put them online. Here, the difference between web pages and printed publications is that printed publications are sent to readers, while web pages are taken by readers themselves. The most influential news pages on the Internet (such as CNN url]CNN/url] are updated every hour. Readers can pay attention to Chang Xin at any time and follow the development of the event at any time.
Moreover, because the web page is in hypertext file format, it can point to all the content related to the web page on the Internet through links. Whether doing theoretical research or watching news, you can easily find relevant information. Moreover, it seems that these materials were not written by others and imposed on you, but were "involved" in them and "discovered" by themselves.
Perhaps the biggest difference between web pages and printed publications is feedback. The feedback channel of printed publications is often printing, and in many cases, it is very rare to get feedback. It is very easy to put forward different opinions on a web page.
It is precisely because of these characteristics as a publication that the World Wide Web is increasingly favored by users.
According to the survey of PC-Meter 1996, on average, every Internet user visits 5.6 websites of the World Wide Web and browses 20.8 pages at a time, while the average time required to read each page is about 1.4 minutes, and the average time to read Web pages online is about 28 minutes. As such a media with dual functions of private and public, the realization of Internet utility basically depends on the increase of participants, that is, users. This feature is completely in line with the nature of the network.