Number 266 - July 2005

Who Owns The Internet?
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*, Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
That is the question, does anyone own or control the Internet? The answer is no one and everyone. Short and sweet, right? To understand how this came about we really need to take a look at the history of the Internet, its developers and how it grew. To go back to the start of the Internet we have to recall the state of the world in 1957. The Soviet Union launched the first space satellite, Sputnik. This resulted in the U.S. Defense Department establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Not much really happened until 1962 when the RAND Corporation was commissioned to do a study on how command and control of missiles and bombers could be maintained after a nuclear attack. The central control for any communication system was assumed to be destroyed after such an attack.    Paul Barand of the RAND corporation proposed a "packet-switching network" that would be established for this purpose. This network would have no central control. In fact, it would be assumed from the beginning that it would be unreliable and the failure of any one or group of nodes would not bring down the entire network. All the nodes in the network would be equal in status to all other nodes. Each node would have its own authority to originate, pass, and receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets and each packet separately addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified source node, and end at some other specified destination node. Each packet would wind its way through the network on an individual basis.    The network was christened "ARPANET" and a contract for this was awarded to Bolt, Baranek & Newman (BBK). The decision was also made to establish the first node at UCLA. The reason for this was the presence of Dr. Leonard Kleinrock on the UCLA faculty. Dr. Kleinrock had developed the idea of data networks in 1959 as part of his Ph.D. dissertation at M.I.T. By the time ARPANET was being considered he was the foremost authority on data networks. Therefore, he was to be a key player in the development of the complete specification for ARPANET.    The switches for this network were to be "supercomputers". On Labor Day weekend in 1969 the first switch (now referred to as nodes or routers) was delivered to UCLA to be connected to a Honeywell computer. No one had ever done anything like this before, so it presented quite a challenge to the development team. However, within two days they had messages moving between the host computer and the switch. This was the birth of the Internet.    By December 1969, four sites were connected (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah). By mid-1970, ten nodes were connected, spanning the USA. Interestingly, BBK had designed the switch to handle no more than 64 computers and only one network.    ARPANET was originally a government funded research network. It was designed to facilitate communication between research sites, mainly universities. The government also funded studies leading to the development and expansion of the networks.    The original protocol for ARPANET was called the Network Control Protocol or NCP. In 1973 a new protocol was developed, with government funding, called TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. This new protocol allowed for a greater diversity in the computers that could connect to the network. The TCP portion converts messages into streams of packets at the source, then reassembles them back into messages at the destination. The IP, or "Internet Protocol," portion handles the addressing of the packets. It sees to it that packets are routed across multiple nodes and even across multiple networks with multiple standards. Since the software called TCP/IP was public-domain, and the basic technology was decentralized and rather anarchic by its very nature, it was difficult to stop people from barging in and linking up somewhere-or-other. But this was one of the major contributing factors to the growth of the Internet. By 1979 the use of TCP/IP was mandatory for all systems on ARPANET and the NCP was dropped.    The 1970's saw a period of rapid development software and hardware that contributed to the continued growth of what we call the Internet. E-mail software, Ethernet connections, TCP/IP, coaxial cables, and a commercial	satellite network that allowed expansion of the Internet overseas. By the end of the 70's, the number of host computers had grown to more than 110, but there was still only one 50 Kbps backbone, the ARPANET. Note that the satellite network was not under government control. Some in the DOD were concerned when they found that the major use of this network was the transmission of messages, not research cooperation. E-mail had become the primary function of the Internet.    By the mid-1980s, industry began offering commercial gateways and routers and started to make available TCP/IP software for some workstations, minicomputers, and mainframes. Before this, these capabilities were unavailable; they had to be handcrafted by the engineers at each site. The commercial developments significantly eased the problem of getting connected to the Internet. It was during this time period, the early 80's, that I had my first experience with the Internet in the form of MedLine. This was a network connecting university and medical school libraries to the National Library of Medicine. With this network researchers were able to quickly obtain abstracts or complete research articles quickly. A very valuable service for those from smaller schools whose budgets couldn't afford large numbers of subscriptions to research journals.    By the mid-1980s, network connectivity had become sufficiently central to the workings of the computer science community that the National Science Foundation (NSF) became interested in broadening the use of networking to other scientific disciplines. The NSF supercomputer centers program represented a major stimulus to broader use of networks by providing limited access to the centers via the ARPANET. NSF then began to assume the leading role in development of the Internet. A role formerly held by ARPA. In 1990, ARPA decommissioned the last node of the ARPANET. It was replaced by the NSFNET backbone and a series of regional networks most of which were funded by or at least started with funds from the U.S. Government. These were expected to become self-supporting soon thereafter. The NSF effort greatly expanded the involvement of many other groups in providing as well as using network services. As the number of non-governmental groups increased, there was an increase in the number of commercial networks that were interconnecting. The NSFNET had restrictions on it use, primarily as a service of the research community. These other networks had no such restrictions. Gradually, the commercial community assumed control of the Internet standards through the Internet Society. By 1991, the ARPANET had been dismantled and the Internet backbone was a 45 Mbps T-3 line. The number of Internet hosts had risen to more than 1.1 million.    By 1995 the NSF had dropped their support of the NSFNET and turned it over to private corporations. Currently, most Internet traffic is carried by backbones of independent Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as MCI, AT&T, Sprint, UUnet, BBN planet, ANS, and more. These backbones function at speeds up to 155 Mbps and there are more than 15,000,000 hosts.    Currently the Internet Society, the group that maintains Internet standards, is trying to figure out a new TCP/IP to be able to have billions of addresses, rather than the limited system of today. Today's system is in danger of running out of addresses. The problem that has arisen is that it is not known how both the old and the new addressing systems will be able to work at the same time during a transition period.    As you can see with the number of commercial organizations involved in the Internet and the decided lack of government control, no one entity can claim to own or control the Internet. Instead, we depend on several private bodies to provide specifications for maintaining some semblance of organization to this whole system. Also, in my opinion, every computer connected to the Internet owns a small piece of the system. So, it is owned by no one and by everyone. Happy surfing.    *Dr. Lewis is a former university & medical school professor. He has been working with personal computers for more than thirty years. He can be reached via e-mail at bwsail@yahoo.com.    Copyright 2005. This article is from the January 2005 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
Number 266 - July 2005