Internet turns 35, still a work in progress

Steve Crocker was a graduate student in 1969 at UCLA in the computer lab when the first network connection was made in what has become the Internet (Agencies)
Thirty-five years after computer scientists at UCLA linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot gray cable, testing a new way for exchanging data over networks, what would ultimately become the Internet remains a work in progress.

University researchers are experimenting with ways to increase its capacity and speed. Programmers are trying to imbue Web pages with intelligence. And work is underway to re-engineer the network to reduce spam and security troubles.

All the while threats loom: Critics warn that commercial, legal and political pressures could hinder the types of innovations that made the Internet what it is today.

Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on Sept. 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers. By January, three other "nodes" joined the fledgling network.

Then came e-mail a few years later, a core communications protocol called TCP/IP in the late 70s, the domain name system in the 80s and the World Wide Web - now the second most popular application behind e-mail - in 1990. The Internet expanded beyond its initial military and educational domain into businesses and homes around the world.

Today, Crocker continues work on the Internet, designing better tools for collaboration. And as security chairman for the Internet's key oversight body, he is trying to defend the core addressing system from outside threats.

He acknowledges the Internet he helped build is far from finished, and changes are in store to meet growing demands for multimedia. Network providers now make only "best efforts" at delivering data packets, and Crocker said better guarantees are needed to prevent the skips and stutters now common with video.

Cerf, now at MCI Inc., said he wished he could have designed the Internet with security built-in. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and America Online Inc., among others, are currently trying to retrofit the network so e-mail senders can be authenticated - a way to cut down on junk messages sent using spoofed addresses.

Many features being developed today wouldn't have been possible at birth given the slower computing speeds and narrower Internet pipes, or bandwidth, Cerf said.
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35年前，美國加利福尼亞大學洛山磯分校（UCLA)的計算機科學家們用一條15英尺長的灰色電纜將兩台龐大的計算機連接在一起，試驗一種通過網路交換數據信息的新方法。直到今天，網際網路最終的發展前景仍然在不斷探索中。

大學研究員在試驗增加網際網路功能和速度的新方法，程序員們嘗試著將智能元素和網頁密切結合。為減少垃圾郵件和解決網路安全問題而重新設計網路的工作也正在進行中。

而威脅一直忽隱忽現：批評家們提醒說商業、法律和政治壓力會阻礙各種進步和創新，而正是這種創新促使網際網路發展到今天。

1969年9月2日，斯蒂芬

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Amongst the most influential names in the history of the Internet, Paul Baran of RAND Corporation (a government agency) must be mentioned. 1962, RAND was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.

Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal was a packet switched network. He wrote:

Packet switching is the breaking down of data into datagrams or packets that are labeled to indicate the origin and the destination of the information and the forwarding of these packets from one computer to another computer until the information arrives at its final destination computer. This was crucial to the realization of a computer network. If packets are lost at any given point, the message can be resent by the originator.

As we know today, packet switching has established the foundation of today' Internet.

Actually Steve Croker only played a role as a member of Kleinrock's team of the network measurement system. Leonard Kleinrock is Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is Chairman and Founder of Nomadix. His team documentated for the first time the electronic mail protocol which was developed later into SMNP.

There is a book titled "A Brief History Of The Internet" by Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff (Sorry, forget what year the book is published), in which you can find the most accurate information about the Internet.