40 years of the Internet

January 1, 1983 was a very important date. It was the birth of the Internet; the fruit of several decades of hard work. It all began in the context of the Cold War. The Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite was a slap in the face for American scientists: their adversaries had a head start in telecommunications discoveries. In 1958, the Arpa (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was created, and its first project was to design a network interconnecting computers.

Between 1960 and 1964, engineer Paul Baran developed the idea of breaking messages into packets so that they could be reassembled in the receiving device. A concept that would form part of the foundations of our modern Internet. In 1967, the then director of Arpa decided to build the ARPANET, a network that would make it possible to communicate easily from one computer to another throughout the USA. On the European side, Gérard Le Lann, now Director of Research Emeritus at Inria, was interested in error and flow control in such a system.

His work caught the eye of an American colleague, Vint Cerf, who invited him to work with him for a year at Stanford in the mid-1970s. This collaboration on data exchange led to protocols still in use today. In 1983, Darpa (the new name for Arpa) decided to split the project in two: MilNet for US defense and the Internet for civilians. The network has since been greatly transformed, while retaining the ideas of these pioneers.

For the full article: Internet celebrates its 40th anniversary!

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