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... , but
they soon branched out into virtually every other field, as people
recognized the power of being able to "talk" to hundreds, or even
thousands, of people around the country.
In the 1970s, ARPA helped support the development of rules, or
protocols, for transferring data between different types of computer
networks. These "internet" (from "internetworking") protocols made it
possible to develop the worldwide Net we have today that links all sorts
of computers across national boundaries. By the close of the 1970s, links
developed between ARPANet and counterparts in other countries.
The world
was now tied together in a computer web.
In the 1980s, this network of networks, which became known
collectively as the Internet, expanded at a phenomenal rate. Hundreds,
then thousands, of colleges, research companies and government agencies
began to connect their computers to this worldwide Net. Some
enterprising hobbyists and companies unwilling to pay the high costs of uk web hosting reseller
Internet access (or unable to meet stringent government regulations for
access) learned how to link their own systems to the Internet, even if
"only" for e-mail and conferences. Some of these systems began
offering hosting reseller support access to the public. Now anybody with a computer and modem --
and persistence -- could tap into the world.
In the 1990s, the Net continues to grow at exponential rates. Some
estimates are that the volume of messages transferred through the Net
grows 20 percent a month. In response, government and other users have
tried in recent years to expand the Net itself. Once, the main Net
"backbone" in the U.S. moved data at 56,000 bits per second.
That proved
too slow for the ever increasing amounts of data being sent over it, and
in recent years the maximum speed was increased to 1.5 million and then
45 million bits per second.
Even before the Net was able to reach that
latter speed, however, Net experts were already figuring out ways to pump
data at speeds of up to 2 billion bits per second -- fast enough to send
the entire Encyclopedia Britannica across the country in just one or two
seconds. Another uk web hosting reseller major change has been the development of commercial
services that provide internetworking services at speeds comparable to
those of the government system. In fact, by mid-1994, the U.S.
government will remove itself from any day-to-day control over the
workings of the Net, as regional and national providers continue to
expand.
1.6 HOW IT WORKS
The worldwide Net is actually a complex web of smaller regional
networks. To understand it, picture a modern road network of trans-
continental superhighways connecting large cities. From these large cities
come smaller freeways and parkways to link together small towns, whose
residents travel on slower, narrow residential ways.
The Net reseller hosting program superhighway is the high-speed Internet. Connected to
this are computers that use a particular system of transferring data
at high speeds.
In the U.S., the major Internet "backbone"
theoretically can move data at rates of 45 million bits per second
(compare this to the average home modem, which has a top speed of roughly
9,600 to 14,400 bits per second).
Connected to the backbone computers uk web hosting reseller are smaller networks serving
particular geographic regions, which generally move data at speeds
around 1.5 million bits per second.
Feeding off these in turn are uk web hosting reseller even smaller networks or individual
computers.
Unlike with commercial networks such as CompuServe or Prodigy, there
is no one central computer or computers running the Internet - ... |
