Developments in Networking

Thomas Merril and Lawrence G. Roberts connected the TX-2 computer in MIT to the Q-32 in california over a telephone line to create the first Wide Area Network (WAN) in 1965. Later in 1966 Lawrence joined ARPA for developing the computer network concept and executing his plan for ARPANET. This paved the way for the networking which later evolved and passed through many phases.

Router- Internet Message Processor (IMP) is considered to be the first device with a router like functionality. After the overall structure of ARPANET was refined, it was in August 1968 the development of packet switch called IMP was initiated and this contract was awarded to a group called Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) headed by Frank Heart. Later the International Networking Group (NWG) was formed, which introduced the idea of Router. The idea behind this was to connect different types of network and since it was a connectionless device it was not reliable. This led to the creation of the TCP/IP and as a DARPA initiated effort first IP router was introduced by Virginia Strazisar, though first multiprotocol router is credited to researchers at MIT. Today the routers that handle IPv4 and IPv6 are multiprotocol routers.

Ethernet cards- We all know the importance of network in an office. Though we have Wi-Fi available today but connectivity through Ethernet cards is preferred by most of the companies (almost all). It was developed by Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974. Ethernet is named after Ether- the medium that was once thought to propagate electromagnetic waves through space. Though any link with the Ether has been neglected by Bob Metcalfe- the inventor of Ethernet named it so, to signify that it could carry signals to all types of computers. This is something it does with ease even today. In keeping with the time, it has evolved from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. Without Ethernet card the technology world would have been a completely different world.

Switches- The first Ethernet Switch was introduced by Kalpana in 1990. The fact that it allowed different computers to communicate in a full-duplex mode and that too on a dedicated bandwidth, can be seen as its impact on the networking. Those in the networking domain know the importance of the switches- how it increased the speed and capacity of the network.

Hubs- Main reason behind the selling of hubs was the price, which was lesser than that of switch. Unlike switch, hub does not examine or manage the data packets that pass through it. The deployment of Hub actually began in 1980s and with time it evolved form 10 megabits per second to 1000 megabits per second.

WWW- No denying that it has changed the way world is connected and is sharing information. WWW was the brain child of Tim Berners-Lee, who worked at CERN, Switzerland. Tim wanted to create a database in which information had to be linked using hypertext. This became reality when in 1990 Tim came up with the tools like web browser, server and web pages etc. which were required to execute this idea. However browser was limited to NeXT computer but a later browser was introduced which could run on all computers. On August 1991 posted the code of the World Wide Web in a newsgroup- alt.hypertext and this day is also considered to be the debut of web to the general public. After that there was no turning back and rest as we all know is history.