Internet
Growth: the 1980s
- 1983: 500+ hosts
- 1984: 1000+ hosts
- 1984: original
NSFNet backbone—56,000 bits (56 kilobits) per second.
- 1986: 2000+ hosts
- 1987: somewhere
between 10,000 and 25,000 hosts
The Internet was
growing so quickly that in 1987, only three years later, the NSF had to
upgrade the NSFNet backbone to a "T-1" line—1.5
million bits (megabits) per second.
Here, the Internet
was running into the issue of "bandwidth."
Bandwidth
refers to the amount of information that can travel over a network connection
in a given amount of time. One of the common analogies invoked to describe
bandwidth is that of a pipe: a pipe with a larger diameter
can carry more water in one minute than a narrower pipe can. Similarly,
the many network connections that make up the Internet come in a great
variety of bandwidths—that is, some can carry more bits
per second (bps) than others. By definition, a backbone must
have a very high bandwidth relative to other kinds of connections.
The original NSFNet
backbone could not handle the packet traffic generated by the growing
number of hosts on the Internet. Thus, it had to be upgraded to a higher
bandwidth.
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