What is the Internet?
Although today we use internet for almost all activities in our life, from finding informations from all domains to watching movies, listening music, making transactions and managing business, I do not think there are many people who wondered what the internet is. So, in my attempt to create a relevant work about the importance of the Internet for business and business consulting, I will start with definition of this term, to see what is it and what it does for us.
If we try to define for our perception, we can say that the Internet it is an “instrument” which help us to communicate with people from all over the world, to find information about things important for us, to stay in contact with news wherever you are, to play games, watch movies, make transactions and many others activities which ease our life.
The word internet is made up of two words coming from English interconnected and network, and according to Cambridge Dictionary, internet is a noun which define a “large system of connected computers around the world that allows people to share information and communicate with each other.”
With other words, the internet is a network of networks, which is connecting computers from different domains (governmental, personal) and create an infrastructure from which users of a network or computer can access systems belonging to other networks (e-mails, data, movies, documents etc.)
However, in English, there is a difference between the word “internet” written in upper case and in the lower case. Written with capital letter, the word internet designates a unitary world computer network and other computer-aided devices interconnected according to the communication protocols, while in the lower case it designates special networks that interconnect two or more autonomous networks that are remote from one another.
Brief History of the Internet
The appearance of the Internet cannot be attributed to one person, for this goal dozens of people have worked, believing in their dream of having an accessible world in which communication is easy and can be done anywhere. So, the history of the internet begins since the first computers appeared, and it can be divided into several important stages, as you can see in next chronology:
● 1934: Belgian information expert named Paul Otlet imagined a “Radiated Library” that would use technology of the day — the telephone and radio — to create something very much like the Internet.
● 1958 BELL created the first modem capable of transmitting binary data over a simple telephone line
● 1961 Leonard Kleinrock of MIT publishes the first theory on the use of packet data switching.
● 1962 Begin investigations of ARPA, a US defense ministry agency, where J.C.R. Licklider successfully defends ideas for a global computer network.
● 1964 MIT’s Leonard Kleinrock publishes a book on packet switching communication for network deployment.
● 1965: Two computers at MIT Lincoln Lab communicate with one another using packet-switching technology.
● 1967 First conference on ARPANET
● 1968: Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) unveils the final version of the Interface Message Processor (IMP) specifications. BBN wins ARPANET contract.
● 1969 Connecting the first computers between four American universities through the Interface Message Processor by Leonard Kleinrock
● 1969: On Oct. 29, UCLA’s Network Measurement Center, Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of California-Santa Barbara and University of Utah install nodes. The first message is “LO,” which was an attempt by student Charles Kline to “LOGIN” to the SRI computer from the university. However, the message was unable to be completed because the SRI system crashed.
● 1971 23 computers are connected to ARPANET. Sending the first e-mail by Ray Tomlinson. [1]
● 1972 The InterNetworking Working Group, the organization responsible for managing the Internet, is created.
● 1972: BBN’s Ray Tomlinson introduces network email. The Internetworking Working Group (INWG) forms to address need for establishing standard protocols.
● 1973 England and Norway connect to the Internet, each with a computer.
● 1973: Global networking becomes a reality as the University College of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway) connect to ARPANET. The term Internet is born.
● 1974: The first Internet Service Provider (ISP) is born with the introduction of a commercial version of ARPANET, known as Telenet.
● 1974: Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn (the duo said by many to be the Fathers of the Internet) publish “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection,” which details the design of TCP.
● 1976: Queen Elizabeth II hits the “send button” on her first email.
● 1979 Creating NewsGroups (discussion forums) for American students.
● 1979: USENET forms to host news and discussion groups.
● 1981: The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a grant to establish the Computer Science Network (CSNET) to provide networking services to university computer scientists.
● 1982 TCP / IP protocol and Internet word definition.
● 1982: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, emerge as the protocol for ARPANET. This results in the fledgling definition of the Internet as connected TCP/IP internets. TCP/IP remains the standard protocol for the Internet.
● 1983 First server name sites.
● 1983: The Domain Name System (DNS) establishes the familiar .edu, .gov, .com, .mil, .org, .net, and .int system for naming websites. This is easier to remember than the previous designation for websites, such as 123.456.789.10.
● 1984 1000 connected computers.
● 1984: William Gibson, author of “Neuromancer,” is the first to use the term “cyberspace.”
● 1985: Symbolics.com, the website for Symbolics Computer Corp. in Massachusetts, becomes the first registered domain.
● 1986: The National Science Foundation’s NSFNET goes online to connected supercomputer centers at 56,000 bits per second — the speed of a typical dial-up computer modem. Over time the network speeds up and regional research and education networks, supported in part by NSF, are connected to the NSFNET backbone — effectively expanding the Internet throughout the United States. The NSFNET was essentially a network of networks that connected academic users along with the ARPANET.
● 1987 10,000 connected computers.
● 1987: The number of hosts on the Internet exceeds 20,000. Cisco ships its first router.
● 1989 100,000 connected computers.
● 1989: World.std.com becomes the first commercial provider of dial-up access to the Internet.
● 1990 The disappearance of ARPANET
● 1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, develops HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This technology continues to have a large impact on how we navigate and view the Internet today.
● 1991 The World Wide Web is publicly announced.
● 1991: CERN introduces the World Wide Web to the public.
● 1992 1 million connected computers.
● 1992: The first audio and video are distributed over the Internet. The phrase “surfing the Internet” is popularized.
● 1993 The first NCSA Mosaic web browser
● 1993: The number of websites reaches 600 and the White House and United Nations go online. Marc Andreesen develops the Mosaic Web browser at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. The number of computers connected to NSFNET grows from 2,000 in 1985 to more than 2 million in 1993. The National Science Foundation leads an effort to outline a new Internet architecture that would support the burgeoning commercial use of the network.
● 1994: Netscape Communications is born. Microsoft creates a Web browser for Windows 95.
● 1995: Compuserve, America Online and Prodigy begin to provide Internet access. Amazon.com, Craigslist and eBay go live. The original NSFNET backbone is decommissioned as the Internet’s transformation to a commercial enterprise is largely completed.
● 1996 10 million connected computers.
● 1996: The browser war, primarily between the two major players Microsoft and Netscape, heats up. CNET buys tv.com for $15,000.
● 1997: PC makers can remove or hide Microsoft’s Internet software on new versions of Windows 95, thanks to a settlement with the Justice Department. Netscape announces that its browser will be free.
● 1998: The Google search engine is born, changing the way users engage with the Internet.
● 1999: AOL buys Netscape. Peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a reality as Napster arrives on the Internet, much to the displeasure of the music industry.
● 2000 The bubble dotcom explosion. [2] (368,540,000 computers)
● 2000: The dot-com bubble bursts. Web sites such as Yahoo! and eBay are hit by a large-scale denial of service attack, highlighting the vulnerability of the Internet. AOL merges with Time Warner.A newly expanded global Internet, to focus solely on science and education, now includes half of the world’s countries. The high-speed fiber-optic network connects users at speeds of 10 Gbps. A newly expanded global Internet, to focus solely on science and education, now includes half of the world’s countries. The high-speed fiber-optic network connects users at speeds of 10 Gbps.
● 2001: A federal judge shuts down Napster, ruling that it must find a way to stop users from sharing copyrighted material before it can go back online.
● 2003. The SQL Slammer worm spread worldwide in just 10 minutes. Myspace, Skype and the Safari Web browser debut.
● 2004: Facebook goes online and the era of social networking begins. Mozilla unveils the Mozilla Firefox browser.
● 2005: YouTube.com launches.
● 2006: AOL changes its business model, offering most services for free and relying on advertising to generate revenue. The Internet Governance Forum meets for the first time.
● 2009: The Internet marks its 40th anniversary.
● 2010: Facebook reaches 400 million active users.
● 2011: Twitter and Facebook play a large role in the Middle East revolts.
Although there are some inventions and works that may have contributed to the emergence of the Internet, the system that is considered to be the foundation of the creation of the Internet is represented by the ARPANET network.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was a network, based on previous studies and funded by US Department of Defense, which appeared in 1969. This was a simplistic decentralized network that provides three services Telnet (Remote login), file transfer (FTP) and remote printing, and which consists of the links between the computers of four academic institutions: Stanford Research Institute, Utah University, California University of Los Angeles, and California University of Santa Barbara.
Created by the desire to have a command and control network that can survive a nuclear war, as traditional circuit-switched telephone networks were quite vulnerable in this case, ARPANET was developed over time, and if in 1972 he had 40 computers connected, he reached in 1983 to connect 500 centers. However, in 1990 the Arpanet network was dismantled due to the existence of much more developed networks.
Fig. 1: ARPANET in 1973 Fig. 2: ARPANET in 1974
Source: www.wikipedia.org Source: www.wikipedia.org
Fig. 3: ARPANET, March 1974
Source: www.wikipedia.org
Despite of this fact, ARPANET has succeeded in generating more efficient networks and systems that are still used today, one of the most important being Domain Naming System (DNS), which was responsible for organizing the machines in domains and put in the name of hosts with IP addresses.
Fig. 4: the first message ever sent via the ARPANET
Source: www.wikipedia.org
In figure 4 we can observe the first message ever sent via the ARPANET on 29 October 1969, at 10:30 pm. This image stored at UCLA shows the configuration of a message transmission from the UCLA SDS Sigma 7 host computer to the SRI SDS 940 host computer.
World Regions Population
2016 Internet Users
Dec. 31, 2000 Internet Users
June 30, 2016 Users % Population Growth
2000-2015
Africa 1,185,529,578 4,514,400 340,783,342 28.7% 7,448.8%
Asia 4,052,652,889 114,304,000 1,846,212,654 45.6% 1,515.2%
Europe 832,073,224 105,096,093 614,979,903 73.9% 485.2%
Middle East 246,700,900 3,284,800 141,489,765 57.4% 4,207.4%
North America 359,492,293 108,096,800 320,067,193 89.0% 196.1%
Latin America 626,054,392 18,068,919 384,751,302 61.5% 2,029.4%
Oceania/Australia 37,590,820 7,620,480 27,540,654 73.3% 261.4%
WORLD TOTAL 7,340,094,096 360,985,492 3,675,824,813 50.1% 918.3%
World Internet Usage, 2016
Source: Internet World Stats
II. Practical part
CONECT – Catalog of Non-Governmental Organizations for Evidence, Consultation and Transparency. – Study Case
Introduction
In this part, as I said at the beginning, I will try to deliver to you informations about a new platform, born from old methods used by the institutions. Working in Ministry of Public Consultation and Social Dialogue as advisor, I frequently encounter situations in which I have to advise the management of the institution about them and the strategy to be adopted in order to have the best results. So in the daily activity specific to the post I am in charge, I have to apply techniques acquired during the master studies in the field of business consulting. The first and most complicated situation is the finding of a solution for the creation of a real evidence of non-governmental organizations in Romania.
Description of the problem
At this moment in Romania there are approximately 90000 non-governmental organizations registered in the register of associations and foundations at the Ministry of Justice. Unfortunately, of this number of organizations only about 30000 have activity, the rest having to be dissolved and radiated from the register of the Ministry of Justice. We could identify many causes for this problem such as dysfunctionalities of the legal framework, lack of control mechanisms, lack of interest from those directly involved, many costs and too long time to dissolve and eliminate an organization. However, in the light of the latest events and due to the evolution of the European world, we can see that public institutions have to maintain a constant dialogue with the civil society represented by different NGOs and involve them in the process of public policy making. So at this moment there is a question about the relevance and expertise of the organizations that should be consulted by the decision-makers, but above all their identification, because the register of associations and foundations proved to be ineffective, by not including the modifications to date but Especially the contact details of the legal representatives of the NGOs
The Catalog of Non-Governmental Organizations for Evidence, Consultation and Transparency will be a primary source of information on Romanian associations and foundations, containing up-to-date information on their current activity in terms of the projects being carried out and the policies promoted.
References
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istoria_Internetului
http://www.info-portal.ro/articol/istoria-internetului/269/1/0/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
http://www.ziare.com/internet-si-tehnologie/istoria-internetului/arpanet-precursorul-internetului-actual-documentar-1219850
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