In today's society the Internet is something millions of people around the world use every day; from the youngest school aged children to news reporters and stockbrokers, the Internet has become an integral part of daily human life. The Internet is the source for obtaining almost any information someone could want in an instant. However, with all the content the Internet brings into our lives, I don't believe many people take the time to think about the complexity of the Internet and the history behind its development. We need to take a look at the Internet before it became the "Information Super-highway" we know it as today.
In the 1950's, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a "cold war", each side living in fear of a nuclear attack from the other. In 1957 the Soviet Union placed the first artificial satellite called Sputnik into an Earth orbit. This perceived technical superiority of the Soviets was the trigger that prompted the American government to research new uses for computer systems. In 1958, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created within the Department of Defense (DOD) to establish an American lead in science and technology applicable to the military. The original concept was to have computer systems in various locations communicate with each other, and be connected in a manner so that if one or more systems were destroyed the other systems could still communicate. The primary reason behind this was so that in the event the Soviets launched a nuclear attack and destroyed any missile sites, the remaining sites could be controlled remotely. .
Some of the first innovative thoughts at the time came in 1961 when Leonard Kleinrock, .
a student at MIT, presented his proposal for a doctoral thesis entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets", and in 1964 when Paul Baran, working for The RAND Corporation, wrote a study called "On Distributed Communications Networks".