Rev. David P. Giffen wrote:
> Al had nothing really to do with it. His Dad was on the committee that
> created the ARPANET Which became the Internet. ARPANET was originally
[...]
Sorry, but Al *did* have something to do with it.
ARPANET != Internet. ARPANET connected about 30 universities, and did not
just "become" the Internet, nor did it evolve into the Internet. The
Internet came into being when ARPANET and other networks became
commercial, rather than government-funded, internetworks. Dating the birth
of the Internet to 1969 is like dating the birth of the personal computer
to Eniac or Colossus. It's good history, but it's lacking in perspective.
Al's role in "creating the Internet" was to sponsor legislation that led
to the commercialization of the 'net. Please keep in mind that "the
Internet" is a collection of networks. Arpanet was one single network,
which was reworked to become NSFnet. It didn't see anything faster than
56kbps until that time, and that was around 1986.
In 1986, he introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act and was calling
for bandwidth using fiber. This led to the High Performance Computing and
Communications Initiative. He was behind the legislation in 1990 that
allowed the National Science Foundation to assemble what is now the
Internet. This took net access out of academia and defense workers
(NSFNet), and opened it up to the rest of us. There was a tremendous
amount of yammering at the time about whether research
efforts would be hampered, whether commercial traffic over gov't funded
lines would be legal, appropriate, etc.
Al "got it" early on. I'm sure someone else would have stepped up,
but without these efforts, we'd still have the 'net of the 80's. It
would be no exaggeration that Gore was the 'net's leading proponent
during his tenure in Congress.
For a pretty good history that shows that the move from APRPANET to
Internet was not a simple, organic growth that was inevitable, from
someone who should know (Vint Cerf) I recommend:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/cra/networks.html
-W-
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