The first description of widespread networking capabilities was conceived by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962. In 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, Lawrence G. Roberts connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 in California with a low speed dial-up telephone line

creating the first wide-area computer network. The result of this experiment was that time-shared computers could work well together as a network.

In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967. Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and work proceeded on completing a Host-to-Host protocol and other network software. In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S. Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop applications.

In October 1972 Kahn organised a large, very successful demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). This was the first public demonstration of this new network technology. It was also in 1972 that the initial application, electronic mail, was introduced. In July, Roberts developed its functionality by writing the first

e-mail program to list, read, file, and respond to messages. From there e-mail took off as the largest network application for over a decade.

The original ARPANET grew into the Internet. Internet was based on the idea that there would be many networks linked together and available to many users. Widespread development of LANS, PCs and workstations in the 1980s allowed the Internet to flourish. Ether net technology, developed by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC in 1973, is now widespread.

In the 1970’s, to make it easy for people to use the network, hosts were assigned names, so that it was not necessary to remember numeric addresses. Originally, there were a fairly limited number of hosts, so it was possible to maintain a single table of all the hosts and their associated names and addresses. Also the Domain Name System (DNS) was invented by Paul Mockapetris of USC/ISI. The DNS permitted a mechanism for creating host names (e.g. www.acm.org) which divided the Internet into classified Internet addresses.

As the Internet evolved TCP/IP was developed at BBN. TCP/IP was adopted by the defence forces three years earlier in 1980. By 1983, ARPANET was being used by a significant number of defence organisations. By 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities for daily computer communications. Electronic mail was becoming commonplace. Federal agencies in America had a large part to play it the development of the internet and funded the development of its infrastructure. The Federal Networking Council was formed. The FNC also co-operated with other international organisations, such as RARE in Europe, to co-ordinate Internet support of the research community world-wide. In 1988, a National Research Council committee, chaired by Kleinrock produced a report commissioned by NSF titled "Towards a National Research Network". This report had an influence on Senator Al Gore, and facilitated the development of high speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future of electronic information.

In 1994, a National Research Council report, chaired by Kleinrock, Entitled "Realising The Information Future: The Internet and Beyond" was released. This report, commissioned by NSF, was the document in which a blueprint for the evolution of the Internet was outlined and which has had a lasting affect on the way to think about its evolution. It anticipated the critical issues of intellectual property rights, ethics, pricing, education, architecture and regulation for the Internet.

A key to the rapid growth of the Internet has been the free access to the basic documents, especially the specifications of the protocols. The beginnings of the ARPANET and the Internet in the university research community encouraged the tradition of open publication of ideas which greatly helped the development of the Internet.

The growth in the commercial sector brought the Internet beyond its primarily research roots to include both a broad user community and increased commercial activity and led to the formation of the Internet Society in 1991

In 1992, another reorganisation took place when the Internet Activities Board was reorganised and re-named the Internet Architecture Board. Commercialisation of the Internet in the early 1980s, led to the increased use of TCP/IP and in September of 1988 the first Interop trade show was held. 5,000 engineers from potential customer organisations attended. The Interop trade show has grown a great deal since then and today it is held in 7 locations around the world each year to an audience of over 250,000 people who come to learn about the latest products, and discuss the latest technology.

In the last few years, a new phase of commercialisation has evolved and new products are being developed to facilitate this sector. They range from online banking to online booking for theatres, airline tickets and a host of other services.

On October 24, 1995, the FNC unanimously agreed on the term "Internet."

RESOLUTION: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term "Internet". "Internet" refers to the global information system that -- (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly of privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructur described herein.

In the last two decades, since it came into existence, the Internet has extended to the realm of personal computers, private companies using TCP/IP and internal business networks. It has inspired enormous investment and has gathered together a great number of professionals and regulating bodies to make it the most influential communications technology since the invention of the printing press.

In recent times the development of multimedia has enhanced the Internet and developers today envision the 3-D web page, using media created in 3-D applications which will be within the download capabilities of many computers with the development of broadband connections.