The 50 years of the Internet, from the ARPANET to a world of 4 billion users

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Fifty years round. The Internet does it today, even if the statement may not be entirely correct. It was October 29, 1969 when a first data packet was transmitted between two computers: one at the University of Los Angeles, the other at the Stanford Research Institute.

1969 – The year of the ARPANET
The network was called ARPANET, and was designed by the US Department of Defense. For this, according to some, it cannot be considered the day of the Internet, which instead will arrive – with its TCP / IP protocol – only later. But it's the technology that counts. And that day, for the first time, two distant computers exchanged data. Arpanet was the acronym of Advanced Research Project Agency, agency for advanced research projects for the Department of Defense.

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The connection speed that allowed data exchange was 50 kbps (which is about 2700 times slower than the broadband connections we have today). The first transmission was to carry the word "Login", but the system managed to transmit only the first two letters, and that "Lo" became famous over the years. The complete message was then sent successfully about an hour later.

1974 – The arrival of protocols
Over time, the ARPANET became more and more widespread. The knots which in principle connected only Los Angelese and Santa Clara, spread like wildfire. And a few years later it was time to set rules. A common language was needed. Thus, in 1974, computer scientists Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, introduced to the world the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). Thanks to these protocols, the standard used to transfer data packets was defined.