A
computer network, or simply a network, is a collection of computers and other
hardware components interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing
of resources and information.
1940
George Stibitz used a Teletype machine to send
instructions (or a problem set from his Model at Dartmouth College to his
Complex Number Calculator in New York and received results back by the
same means.
I950's
Early networks of
communicating
computers included the
military radar system
Semi-Automatic
Ground Environment
(SAGE),
started in the late
1950s.
• 1960
The commercial airline reservation system
semi-automatic business research environment
(SABRE) went online with two connected
mainframes
1962
Linking output systems
like teletypewriters to
computers was an
interest at the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA) when,
J.C.R. Llckl.der was hired and developed a
working group he called the
“Intergalactic Computer Network’
This concept, allowed the data and programs
stored within each computer to be accessed
from anywhere in the world, by any of the
computers connected to the network.
1964
Researchers at Dartmouth
developed the Dartmouth
Time Sharing
System for
distributed
users of large computer systems.
At the same time, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, a research group supported by
General Electric and Bell Labs used a computer
to route and manage telephone connections
1965
Thomas Marill and Lawrence
G Roberts created the first
wide area network (WAN)
This was an immediate
precursor to the
ARPANET, of which
Roberts became
program manager.
At the same time, the
first widely used
telephone switch that
used true computer control
was introduced by
Western Electric.
1972
Commercial
services
using X.25
were deployed, and later used as an underlying
infrastructure for expanding TCP/IP networks.
1991
Home Broadband created
1996
The 56K modem
was invented by Dr.
Brent Townshend
2000
In late March 2000,
Cisco achieved a stock
market capitalization
(valuation) of
D more than
$550 million
That officially made Cisco the single
most valuable corporation n the world at
that time• literally, a “Fortune 1” company.
2001
Home broad band enters mainstream
usage and begins growing at a faster
rate than Internet dial-up services.
2009
10 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) was the only market
segment to show sequential port and revenue
growth in 2009, due in large part to
shipments of purpose-built fixed 10 GE boxes
for the data center.
2010
100 Gigabit Ethernet
fully completed
2020
The Terabit Optical Ethernet Center are aiming for
1 Terabit Ethernet over optical fiber
- 1trillion bits per second -
by 2015, with the ultimate goal of enabling 100
Terabit Ethernet by 2020.
Today, computer networks are the core of modern
communication. All modern aspects of the public switched telephone network
(PSTN) are computer-controlled, and telephony increasingly runs over the
Internet Protocol, although not necessarily the public Internet. The scope of
communication has increased significantly in the past decade, and this boom in
communications would not have been possible without the progressively advancing
computer network.
Computer networks, and the technologies needed to
connect and communicate through and between them, continue to drive computer
hardware, software, and peripherals industries. This expansion is mirrored by
growth in the numbers and types of users of networks, from the researcher to
the home user.
