Brief history of the Internet

The term “Internet” refers to a global system of interconnected computer networks in which users/computers are able to communicate with each other. The origin of the Internet dates back to the 1960s when the U.S. Department of Defense funded its research division to build a distributed communications network. Known as the ARPANet, the network connected computers in four universities that were heavily involved in government and military research—Stanford; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Utah. The unique advantage of this network was that communications “traffic” would be less likely to become congested at a single point or to be destroyed in the event of military attacks or natural disasters, because multiple paths linked one computer site to another.1 In the 1980s, ARPANet was superseded by NSFNet, a high-speed communications network created by the National Science Foundation. This new network linked computers together across the country. Research in the United States has since generated worldwide participation in the development of networking technologies. Researchers first linked small computer networks to form a large network, and then connected the large networks around the world; thus was born the Internet. Over the past decade, the Internet has experienced explosive global growth: as of June 2010, an estimated one quarter of the global population used Internet services.2

In China, the first computer network—CANET (China Academic Network)—was established in 1986 by the Beijing Institute of Computing Applications, with help from the Universität Karlsruhe in Germany. A year later, the IHEP (Institute of High Energy Physics) in Beijing began connecting to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, representing China’s first international connection. In 1994, the IHEP achieved China’s fully functional connection to the Internet by opening a 64 kbps international dedicated line to the Internet, making China a country with fully functional Internet accessibility. In 1995, the Internet became available to the public through the services provided by China Telecom and ChinaNet, both of which were operated by the government.

The Chinese government plays a dominant, vital role in the development of the Internet.3 From 1997 to 2009, it invested a total of 4.3 trillion RMB, and built up a nationwide optical communications network with a total length of 8.267 million kilometers.4 By the end of 2009, China had established 7 land–submarine cables and 20 land cables, with a combined capacity of more than 1,600 Gb, China’s international outlet bandwidth reached 866,367 Gbps, and China’s major telecommunications companies possessed 136 million broadband Internet access ports.5The large-scale development of Internet infrastructures has greatly enhanced the diffusion and application of the Internet around the country. By the end of 2009, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 384 million, which was 618 times the number in 1997 and represented an average annual increase of 31.95 million users. In 2009, the Internet penetration rate in China reached 28.9%, higher than the world average; the total number of IPv4 addresses reached 232 million, making China the second-largest owner of IPv4 addresses in the world; and the total number of domain names reached 16.82 million, a historic high point.6

The structure of the Internet

Physically, the Internet resembles and is part of existing public telecommunications networks. Large telecommunications companies, called network service providers (NSPs), offer long-distance data transport services through national and international fiber optic cables. These transport services are accessed by individuals and organizations via Internet service providers (ISPs), which are physically linked to NSPs. People connect to ISPs through such channels as dial-up connection, Wi-Fi, and landline broadband. Once connected, they have access to various services provided by the ISPs, including access to the Internet, access to ISP resources, and user resource hosting.7

What technically distinguishes the Internet from traditional telecommunications services is its use of a set of communication protocols that is commonly referred to as Internet Protocol Suite. A protocol is a set of rules or standards that enable computers to connect and transmit data to one another. The Internet Protocol Suite is constructed as a set of layers which includes the application layer, transport layer, Internet layer, and link layer. Each layer solves a set of problems related to data transmission and corresponds to the environment or scope in which its service operates. At the top of the Suite, the application layer “defines the type of information contained in the collection of packets and what is to be done with it.”8 Important protocols in the application layer include HTTP, SMT, POP, IMAP, and FTP. The transport layer provides end-to-end communications services for applications. TCP, the most notable transport protocol, controls how data are sent out on the Internet. At the Internet layer, all transport protocols use the Internet protocol (IP) to carry data from the original host across network boundaries, if necessary, to the destination host. The link layer is the lowest layer in the hierarchy of the Suite. It is used to interconnect hosts between adjacent network nodes in a local area network segment or a wide area network connection. The Internet Protocol Suite is also commonly known as TCP/IP, named from two of the most critical protocols within it. The TCP/IP model breaks down information from one network into packets, allows packets to be repackaged for transmission, and then reassembles them at the receiving computer in another network.

The functions of the Internet

First of all, the Internet provides an infinite amount of information for users to access and retrieve. The World Wide Web plays a particularly important role in this regard: it enables users to access any type of information located on the Web anywhere in the world. The Web has three major components: the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)—the address of content placed on the Web; the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)—the primary protocol used by Web servers and browsers for sending and receiving documents on a website; and the hypertext markup language (HTML)—the programming language used to create Web pages and links.9 Although the Web has grown immensely in complexity in the past decade, these three basic elements remain central to its operation. Also, Web browser software such as Firefox and Internet Explorer enables users to navigate from one Web page to another. Additionally, through the use of keywords, Internet search engines like Google and Baidu10 allow users to locate their desired, specific content in the sea of online information nearly instantly.

Second, the Internet provides an effective tool for users to communicate with each other. Among the various communication tools, e-mail is arguably the most important. E-mail refers to a message sent from one computer user to another across a network. Major portal sites like Yahoo! and Microsoft have offered free e-mail accounts to attract users to their sites, and e-mail communication is in fact the first Internet activity for many users. Communication on the Internet has grown beyond e-mail, however. Users now can chat with one another in real time through instant messaging (IM) services. Major global IM services include Skype, Microsoft’s MSN, and Yahoo!’s Messenger. In China, the most popular instant messaging program is provided by Tencent QQ, whose simultaneous online users exceeded 100 million in 2009.11Most of these services are free, but they do not adhere to a common standard. Usersthereforehavetobeusingthesameprograminorderto...