The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.
In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into short messages in fixed format, i.e. packets, that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the packet to its destination, where the payload is extracted and used by an operating system, application software, or higher layer protocols. Packet switching is the primary basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide.
The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The program created several nationwide backbone computer networks in support of these initiatives. It was created to link researchers to the NSF-funded supercomputing centers. Later, with additional public funding and also with private industry partnerships, the network developed into a major part of the Internet backbone.
The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC), housed at Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall on the campus of Cornell University, is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program. It was formerly called the Cornell Theory Center.
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion, the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing.
Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government. The Internet2 consortium administrative headquarters are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices in Washington, D.C., and Emeryville, California.
David J. Farber is a professor of computer science, noted for his major contributions to programming languages and computer networking who is currently the distinguished professor and co-director of Cyber Civilization Research Center at Keio University in Japan. He has been called the "grandfather of the Internet".
SURAnet was a pioneer in scientific computer networks and one of the regional backbone computer networks that made up the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). Many later Internet communications standards and protocols were developed by SURAnet.
United States federal research funders use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualization and other computing and information processing services distributed over the Internet beyond the scope of a single institution. In scientific usage, cyberinfrastructure is a technological and sociological solution to the problem of efficiently connecting laboratories, data, computers, and people with the goal of enabling derivation of novel scientific theories and knowledge.
The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California is a nonprofit corporation formed in 1997 to provide high-performance, high-bandwidth networking services to California universities and research institutions. Through this corporation, representatives from all of California's K-20 public education combine their networking resources toward the operation, deployment, and maintenance of the California Research and Education Network, or CalREN. Today, CalREN operates over 8,000 miles of fiber optic cable and serves more than 20 million users.
Larry Lee Smarr is a physicist and leading pioneer in scientific computing, supercomputer applications, and Internet infrastructure. He is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, and was the founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, as well as the Harry E. Gruber Endowed Chair Professor of Computer Science and Information Technologies at the Jacobs School of Engineering.
The very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) came on line in April 1995 as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored project to provide high-speed interconnection between NSF-sponsored supercomputing centers and select access points in the United States. The network was engineered and operated by MCI Telecommunications under a cooperative agreement with the NSF.
Christine L. Borgman is a distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA. She is the author of more than 200 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Two of her sole-authored monographs, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet and From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World, have won the Best Information Science Book of the Year award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She is a lead investigator for the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, where she conducts data practices research. She chaired the Task Force on Cyberlearning for the NSF, whose report, Fostering Learning in the Networked World, was released in July 2008. Prof. Borgman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Legacy Laureate of the University of Pittsburgh, and is the 2011 recipient of the Paul Evan Peters Award from the Coalition for Networked Information, Association for Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE. The award recognizes notable, lasting achievements in the creation and innovative use of information resources and services that advance scholarship and intellectual productivity through communication networks. She is also the 2011 recipient of the Research in Information Science Award from the American Association of Information Science and Technology. In 2013, she became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Stephen South Wolff is one of the many fathers of the Internet. He is mainly credited with turning the Internet from a government project into something that proved to have scholarly and commercial interest for the rest of the world. Dr. Wolff realized before most the potential in the Internet and began selling the idea that the Internet could have a profound effect on both the commercial and academic world.
Merit Network, Inc., is a nonprofit member-governed organization providing high-performance computer networking and related services to educational, government, health care, and nonprofit organizations, primarily in Michigan. Created in 1966, Merit operates the longest running regional computer network in the United States.
The Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) is a state-funded IT organization that provides member organizations with intrastate networking, virtualization and cloud computing solutions, advanced videoconferencing, connections to regional and international research networks and the commodity Internet, colocation services and emergency web-hosting.
Federal Internet Exchange (FIX) points were policy-based network peering points where U.S. federal agency networks, such as the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), NASA Science Network (NSN), Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), and MILNET were interconnected.
Advanced Network and Services, Inc. (ANS) was a United States non-profit organization formed in September, 1990 by the NSFNET partners to run the network infrastructure for the soon to be upgraded NSFNET Backbone Service. ANS was incorporated in the State of New York and had offices in Armonk and Poughkeepsie, New York.
Dennis M. Jennings is an Irish physicist, academic, Internet pioneer, and venture capitalist. In 1985–1986 he was responsible for three critical decisions that shaped the subsequent development of NSFNET, the network that became the Internet.
Doug Van Houweling is a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. He is best known for his contributions to the development and deployment of the Internet. For these accomplishments, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014. He is also the recipient of the EDUCAUSE 2002 Excellence in Leadership Award, the Iowa State University John V. Atanasoff Discovery Award, the Indiana University Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion, and an honorary Doctor of Science from Indiana University in May, 2017. Van Houweling was the Associate Dean for Research and Innovation from 2010 to 2014. Prior to that, he was the Dean for Academic Outreach and Vice Provost for Information technology at the University of Michigan.
