The development of computer network has gone through now for a long time, we now use all kinds of communication software is no doubt with the help of computer network to achieve, but you know the background of the emergence of computer network? We eliminate information silos now, but years ago, did you know that computer networks can help us to connect the world and eliminate information silos? Now let’s talk about the development of computer networks.

The birth of the Internet

In 1946, the world’s first computer came out. At that time, there was no computer network, so computers could only work in a single machine. Even though the two computers were very close to each other, they could only guard their corner like an introverted child.

After world war ii, the United States and the Soviet union, for the purpose of the military, the United States department of formed a mysterious ARPA, the department to meet the requirements of the U.S. department of defense plans to develop a decentralized command system, the system will have a lot of nodes, when some nodes were destroyed, other nodes can still communicate with each other, the project was completed in 1966, The ARPA named it ARPANET. ARPANET was one of the earliest computer networks, a precursor to the Internet.

ARPANET was one of the first computer networks to use packet switching, where data communicated through a packet switching system was formatted into packets with the address of the target machine and sent over the network for reception by the next machine.

The term packet was coined by Donald Davies in 1965 to describe the data transmitted between computers through the network. Packet plays an important role in the computer network, and it can be said that packet is the hero of the Internet.

ARPANET was officially launched in 1969. Also in 1969, Steve Crocker of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) published the first RFC paper, considered the beginning of the Internet. In the same year, the first network switch realized the first data transfer over ARPANET, which marked the official birth of the Internet.

We often quote. RFC at the end of an article or communicate with someone, he comes up with his idea that he doesn’t really understand, and then you continue to ask him, he asks you to look up the RFC document (as if it is me), and what he says is the introduction. Heat 4

An RFC is an official document that describes the methods, practices, research, or innovations of the Internet and Internet systems.

Informally: the official documentation of the Internet Protocol.

The birth of the TCP/IP

Although several nodes can communicate with each other now, the number of nodes is only four, which is still relatively small. In addition, there were many limitations of the ARPANET, such as the inability of different computer networks to communicate with each other. In order to solve this problem, APPA launched a new research project to try to connect different computer lans.

Early ARPANET adopted a network protocol named NCP. However, with the development of network, multi-node access and the increase of users’ network requirements, NCP cannot fully support the development requirements of ARPANET. NCP also has a very important drawback, which is that it can only be used in the same operating system environment, which means that Windows users cannot communicate with MacOS users and Android users.

Therefore, ARPANET was in urgent need of a new protocol to replace the NCP protocol, which could not meet the demand. The task was entrusted to Robert E. Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf, whose theories were unprecedented until now. So what did these two old professors do? I’m just going to understate that they came up with a new Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). These are two very famous scientists in computer networks. Many people call Robert E. Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf the fathers of the Internet. In 1974, the two published a paper in the IEEE journal entitled “On Packet Switched Network Communication Protocol”, which formally proposed TCP/IP for the interconnection of computer networks.

Although we considered TCP/IP to be a great invention, in the context of the time, TCP/IP’s four-tier model was also relatively crude compared to the seven-tier model proposed by ISO. But the effort paid off. After four years of continuous improvement, TCP/IP finally completed the infrastructure. Finally, in 1983, DARPA decided to phase out NCP and use TCP/IP instead. It took ten years for the paper to be published and then adopted. In 1985, TCP/IP became part of the UNIX operating system. After that, almost all operating systems gradually supported TCP/IP, and this protocol became the mainstream.

Further development

In the early 1980s, ARPANET was a huge success, but it could not be used by schools without contracts from FEDERAL agencies in the United States. To solve this problem, the National Science Foundation (NSF) set out to establish a Computer Science Network (CSNet) for college students. CSNet is a protocol layer on top of other basic networks. It uses the communication capabilities provided by other networks and is also an independent network from the user’s point of view. CSNet uses centralized control, with all information exchanged through a repeater.

In 1986, NSF invested to establish supercomputer centers in five universities and formed NSFNET. Thanks to the encouragement and funding of NSF, many universities, government agencies and even private research institutions merged their local area networks into NSFNET. From 1986 to 1991, The number of subnets for NSFNET grew rapidly from 100 to more than 3,000.

Not only schools joined in, many academic groups, enterprises, research institutions and even individuals also joined in, Internet users are no longer limited to pure computer professionals. New users find communication between computers more attractive to them. As a result, they are increasingly using the Internet as a tool for communication and communication, rather than just sharing the computing power of the NSF’s giant computers.

The Internet is a collection of global information made up of numerous subnets, each containing several computers.

In the early 1990s, the Internet already had many subnets, each responsible for its own set-up and operation costs, and these subnets were interconnected through NSFNET. NSFNET connects tens of millions of computers in the United States and has tens of millions of users. It is the most important member network of the Internet. As computer networks expand and spread around the world, networks outside the United States are also increasingly connected to the NSFNET backbone or its subnets.

1993 was a very important year in the development of the Internet, in which the Internet achieved all the most important technological innovations to date. The use of the WWW and browsers gave the Internet a refreshing new platform: What people see on the Internet is not only text, but also pictures, sound and animation, and even movies. The Internet has evolved into a new world of text, image, sound, animation, film and other media, and swept the world at an unprecedented speed.

The rapid rise of The Internet, caused the attention of the world, China also attaches great importance to the construction of information infrastructure, pay attention to the connection with the Internet. At present, the information network that has been built or is under construction has a profound influence on the development of science and technology, economy and society in China and the information exchange with the international community.

Internet Development in China

Although China’s Internet did not start as early as the United States, China has the fastest Internet growth in the world.

The development of the Internet in China originated from 1987 to 1993, during which the domestic scientific and technological workers began to access Internet resources. During this period, a group of scientific research institutes led by Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperated with foreign institutions to carry out some scientific research projects connected with the Internet, using Internet E-mail system by dialing way. And for some key domestic universities and research institutions to provide international Internet E-mail services.

In October 1990, China officially registered the highest domain name CN with the International Internet Information Center, thus opening the Internet E-mail using its own domain name.

In January 1994, the National Science Foundation of the United States accepted China’s request for official access to the Internet. In March 1994, China was allowed to join the Internet. In early April, the Chinese government formally requested the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to connect to the Internet at the CHINA-U.S. Joint Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation, and the request was accepted. So far, our country finally got through the final link, in April 20, with NCFC project connected to the Internet international special line as a symbol, our country and Internet comprehensive contact. In May of the same year, China’s networking work was completed. Our government recognizes the entry of Internet into our country. The domain name of China’s Internet has also been finalized as CN. It was rated as one of the top ten sci-tech news in 1994 by the Chinese press and listed as one of the major sci-tech achievements in 1994 by the National Statistical Bulletin.

Since 1994, China has realized the TCP/IP connection with the Internet, and gradually opened the full function of the Internet service; Large-scale computer network project officially started, the Internet in Our country has entered a period of rapid development. In 1995, China Telecom set up special lines in Beijing and Shanghai respectively, and provided Internet access services to the society through telephone lines, DDN special lines and X.25 network. In May 1995, the establishment of CHINANET national backbone network was started. In January 1996, the CHINANET backbone network was completed and officially opened, and the nationwide public computer Internet network began to provide services. It marks the rapid development of China’s Internet.

China has successively built a number of nationwide public computer networks, among which the largest is the following several

  • China Telecom Internet CHINANET
  • China Unicom Internet UNINET
  • China Mobile Internet CMNET
  • China Education and Research Computer Network CERNET
  • China Science and Technology Network CSTNET

It can be found that China’s Internet construction can be divided into three stages.

  • The first stage is 1987-1993, this stage is called the enlightenment stage, or the experimental stage, China began to contact the Internet in this stage, and carried out scientific research projects and scientific and technological cooperation work, but the network application of the stage is limited to a small range of E-mail services.
  • The second stage is 1994-1996, this stage is start-up stage, or laying stage, this stage our country began to set up, laying backbone network, and access the Internet, from now on our country was officially recognized as the country with Internet on the international. Then ChinaNet, CERnet, CSTnet and other Internet network projects have been launched nationwide.
  • The third stage is from 1997 to now. This stage is for nationwide access to the Internet, and this stage is the stage of rapid development of The Internet in China.

After entering the 21st century, CERNET2 test network opened, CERNET2 test network is 2.5Gbit/s-10 Gbit/s speed to connect Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou three CERNET core nodes, which marks China’s Internet has entered the international advanced level.

CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) will publish the development of China’s Internet every year, interested partners can check the relevant information through www.cnnic.cn.

A brief history of computer networking