[ih] infrastructure history [was: who invented the Internet]

[Alex McKenzie]

In my opinion, what we call The Internet consists of the set of computers which intercommunicate using the TCP/IP protocols.  This Internet has a direct lineage back to the ARPA Experimental Internet consisting of the ARPAnet, the ARPA Atlantic Satellite Net, and one or more ARPA Packet Radio Nets interconnected by routers (called gateways then) implementing IP.  I believe there is a direct line of growth by accretion from this small set of autonomous networks to today's Internet.  Since all of the networks in the original set were funded by ARPA/DARPA, a part of the US government, it seems ludicrous to say that the Internet was not started by government.

The development of TCP is described in my paper "INWG and the Conception of the Internet: An Eyewitness Account" which appeared in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol 33, No 1, pp 66-71.  A slightly updated version of that paper can be found at 
http://alexmckenzie.weebly.com/inwg-and-the-conception-of-the-internet-an-eyewitness-account.html
Specifically, the first paper by Cerf and Kahn describing TCP states on its cover page that it is "an attempt to collect and integrate the ideas uncovered at the June 
1973 INWG meeting in New York, as well as some ideas which have been 
worked out since that time by various other people." There were 7 people at that June meeting, one of whom was Bob Metcalfe, who implemented Ethernet at the Xerox PARC facility - so the Ethernet ideas were represented in the development of TCP.

Bob Metcalfe developed the idea for Ethernet in his Harvard PhD thesis.  I don't have a copy of the thesis handy, but I'm pretty sure it gives credit for support of his research to an ARPA contract at MIT where Bob was employed while working on his thesis.  Bob specifically acknowledges the prominent role played by the Aloha Network in giving him the idea for Ethernet.  The Aloha Network was developed at the University of Hawaii by a team led by Norm Abramson under US government funding.

So regardless of your answer to the question "Who invented the Internet?" it seems pretty clear to me that the US government was centrally involved in providing the funding that made it happen.

Alex McKenzie

PS: At the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony entertainment last night there was a sizeable segment call "Thank You Tim" which was intended to portray the pervasive influence of the "digital revolution" on the lives of today's youth and crediting Tim Berners-Lee (who was a paticipant in the segment) for "inventing the World Wide Web."
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