ARPANET and the NSFNet

Thus, in response to the increasingly diverse, Tower of Babel–like ARPANET, a kind of lingua franca (universal language) was developed: TCP/IP.

The ARPANET grew even more rapidly following the introduction of TCP/IP in 1983. Also around this time, the ARPANET made several key steps away from its military origins.

First, key military research sites were split off from the ARPANET to form a separate network called MILNET.

Secondly, in 1984, the National Science Foundation (NSF) created a new network called the NSFNet. Originally designed to allow remote connection to the new supercomputer centers NSF had created at several universities, it was instead decided that the NSFNet would serve the broader purpose of connecting smaller computer networks at each of the supercomputing sites. And because the NSFNet used ARPANET's TCP/IP as its protocol, the NSFNet and the ARPANET could be combined. The result was a network that truly deserved the name Internet, since it was now, on a very large scale, an "internetwork"—a network comprised of multiple networks. The NSFNet became, along with the ARPANET, another "backbone" for the Internet.

Recall that a backbone is a high-speed portion of a network. The original NSFNet backbone was built at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. It was fast for its day: 56000 bits per second—about the speed of today's regular phone-line modems (the ones we complain are "so slow"!).

This chapter was written by Jeff Nyhoff and Joel Adams. Copy editing by Nancy Zylstra
©2005 Calvin University (formerly Calvin College), All Rights Reserved

If you encounter technical errors, contact computing@calvin.edu.