ARPANET And Internet 3391

Many people do not understand what the Internet is the power that it has overthe world. The Internet is an extraordinary learning and entertainment toolthat, when used properly, can significantly enhance a user's ability to gatherinformation.

Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) started theInternet. It was a project under taken by the Department Of Defense (DOD) in1969. It started as an experiment to link together DOD and military researchincluding Universities doing military-funded research. "The reliablenetworking part involved dynamic rerouting." (Levine 12) If one of thecomputers was under enemy attack, the information could be automaticallytransferred to other links.

Fortunately, the Net is not usually under enemyattack. The ARPANET was very successful, and every university in the countrywanted to sign up. Because so many people wanted to use the Net, ARPANET startedgetting hard to manage, especially with many university sites on it. Therefore,it was broken into two parts: MILNET, which had all the military sites, andARPANET, which had all the nonmilitary sites. "The two networks remainedconnected, however, thanks to a technical scheme called IP (Internet Protocol),which enabled traffic to be routed from one net to another as needed. All thenetworks connected by IP in the Internet speak IP, so they can all exchangemessages.

" (Levine 12) Even though there were only two networks at thattime, IP was made to allow thousands of networks. The IP is designed so thatevery computer on an IP network is compatible. That means any machine cancommunicate with any other machine. The Internet, also called the Net, is theworld's largest computer network. The Internet is the "network of allnetworks." (Levine 7) The networks are connected to big companies likeAT&T, as well as to home computers.

About 1,000 networks join each month.Every computer that is attached to the Internet is called a host. Hosts can besuper computers with thousands of users, regular PC's with only a couple ofusers, or specialized computers, like routers that connect networks together orto terminal servers that let terminals dial in and connect to other hosts. Eachcomputer has its own host number.

"Being computers, the kind of numbershosts like are 32-bit binary numbers." (Hayden 32) Here is an example of abinary number: 1011010010010100100100101000 Binary numbers are easier toremember by breaking them up into eight 4-bit groups. "Then each group istranslated into it's Hexadecimal equivalent." (Levine 18) So the numberabove would translate into this: B.49.

49.28 This number is easier to use andremember. Every four digits in the binary number stands for one hexadecimalnumber. Below is a list of each four binary numbers and its hexadecimalequivalent. To figure out the binary number in the example into its Hexequivalent is in this way: 1011 is the first four digits of the binary number.

Looking at the table, it can be determined that its hexadecimal equivalent is a"B". The second set of four binary numbers is 0100. That changes into4 and so on. The first four numbers of a host number tells you what class thenetwork is. The chart bellow states classes and sizes: Class First Number Lengthof First No Max No of Hosts A 1-126 1 16,387,064 B 128-191 2 64,516 C 192-223 3254 Big companies like IBM and Apple usually have class A networks. "Forexample, IBM has network 9, and AT&T has network 12, so a host number9.

12.34.56 would be at IBM, and 12.98.76.

54 would be at AT&T." (Levine19) Medium sized companies and universities have class B networks. "RutgersUniversity has network 128.6 and Goldman Sachs has network 138.8" (Levine19) Small organizations use class C networks. Network 192.

65.175, for example,is used by a single IBM research lab. To make it easier the Internet uses names,not numbers. "For example, the machine we have heretofore referred to as140.186.

81.1 is named chico." (Levine 21) When ARPANET first came out, theyhad simple names; the machine at Harvard was called HARVARD. But since there aremillions of names on the Net they had trouble coming up with different names. Toavoid this problem they created the Domain Name System (DNS). Host names arestrings of words separated with dots.

For example, MILTON.IECC.COM. The part atthe right of an Internet name is called a zone.

In this example the part at theright is com. Com means it is a commercial site, rather than educational,military, or some other kind of zone. The next part of the name is iecc. IECC isthe name of the company.

The part to the left of the company name is the name ofthe host machine inside the company. So a computer inside of IBM could be milton:milton.iecc.com. Name zones are divided into two categories: the three-letterkind, and the four-letter kind. The three letter zones are made byorganizations.

Below is a table stating all the zones: Zone Meaning Com edu govint mil net org Commercial organizations Educational institutions Governmentbodies and departments International organizations Military sites Networkingorganizations Anything else that doesn't fit into any of the other categoriesThere are also two letter zones. These zones are for national countries. Some ofthese zones are AU for Australia and AT for Austria. There are a few otherzones. Even though the ARPANET is not in use any more, a few sites are stillthere for historical reasons.

They have names ending in arpa. Names for somecomputers on the UUCP and BITNET networks, have names ending in UUCP and BITNET.These names are not real zones, but a lot of systems still route mail to themanyway. Any BITNET or UUCP site can get itself a real host name. Some parts ofthe Internet have rules of conduct.

The strictest rules are for the NSFNET,which does not allow any commercial use. In late 1993, most educational placesin the United States were attached directly to the NSFNET, but then they movedto commercial networks. What the Internet does, is transmit data from onecomputer to another. Each time a host wants to send a message to another host,either the receiver is on a network where the first host is directly connected(then the message will be sent directly).

Otherwise the sender would send themessage to a host that can forward it. The forwarding host delivers the messagedirectly or they can pass it to another host. Usually messages are sent to morethan a dozen forwarders on its way from one part of the Net to another. Totransfer a file from one computer to another the file transfer is enabled.

Thereare two different kinds of programs available for this feature. They are: FTPand RCP. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) originated in 1971. The Internet designersdecided on a protocol to copy files from one place to another on the net.

Manypeople wrote programs that fulfilled the protocol and called them FTP. Anotherway is via Remote Copy Protocol (RCP) It is very easy to copy a file from onecomputer to another. It is done in the following way: Log onto another computerfrom FTP and tell it what you want to copy and where to copy it to. The Internethas spread to many businesses and family rooms throughout the world.

Sincecomputers mainly operate using the English language, the Internet usually doesas well. For example, if you browse through a site located in the Netherlands,there will most likely be an option to change between English and Dutch. This isusually the case throughout the world. An example of one of these sites is athttp://www.

dhp.nl/. This link will take you to the Dutch Home Page. Currentevents have showed that there are certain governments in Europe that wish tohave the language of the Internet changed to their own respective vernacular.The ISP's, Internet Service Provider which is a company that gives you access tothe Internet for a nominal fee, in these countries are willing to alter thelanguage of the Internet to meet the governments desires.

This however wouldcost each user ten dollars more per month, therefore many Internet consumers areweary of this plan. One of the many great aspects of the Internet is that eachuser has the option of remaining anonymous. Doing so would diminish the amountof prejudiced remarks said to one another. Therefore there could be noprejudices against a person who is using the Internet. The Internet is a way formany different religions, societies, and races to meld together and share views,experiences, and new inventions across thousands of miles.

Once you enter theCyber-world, everybody is equal, deserves the same respect, and the same rulesapply to all users. In my opinion the Internet is very resourceful. You can beentertained or it can be used as a teaching aid. I use the Internet all the timeto either talk to people, transfer files, or to look up information for schoolreports or projects. There are many different ways that you can log onto theInternet.

The most commonly used is through an ISP. Some of which are ATWorldNet, Spectra.Net, and IBMNet. You can also access the Internet throughon-line programs such as America On-line, Prodigy, or CompuServe.

These threeprograms are the most popular and widely used. The Internet can be used byanyone who has a computer, modem and an Internet program. The Internet is anecessary tool for any student who needs to do papers and reports that need theinformation that Internet can provide. Many schools have the Internet in classto learn from and have fun at the same time.