Rating: 
Summary: A good book about the history of the net
Review: This book tells about how the Internet as we know it today has come into existence.In February 1966 Bob Taylor who was employed by the Advanced Research Project Agency located in the Pentagon, was in charge of three non-networked computer terminals, each terminal running a different operating system. Communications between the terminals was at that point in time impossible. Taylor set out to explore a way to get the three computers to talk to each other. The political climate at the time was such that the Russians have launched sputnik into space (1957). President Eisenhower began ARPA as a research and development agency to rival the Soviet's advances in technology. ARPA's mission was to find a way for (government-sensitive) information withstand an attack (from the Soviets) on the Pentagon. Paul Baran joined ARPA. He was working on a way "to build communications structures whose surviving components could continue to function as a cohesive entity if the other pieces were destroyed." Baran diagramed 3 kinds of networks in a paper he wrote. The three networks were, centralized, de-centralized and distributed. Baran had another idea. To send information over the network, he suggested that the messages themselves be fractured. This was formulated into packet-switching. Special computers had to be constructed in order to uses packet-switching. The software form these computers was build by a company called BBN. The hardware of the machines known as IMPs was built by Honeywell. In the beginning there were four nodes on the network. Over time the amount of nodes grew to 115 - until senstive government nodes claimed their own network, MIILNET. Through funding, the National Science Foundation helped get many more colleges and universities on the network.
Rating: 
Summary: Internet is older than you thought
Review: This is an excellent book for all those who would guess that Bolt, Beranek and Newman is a law firm. It may sound like one, but it isn't. BBN - now a subsidiary of GTE/Verizon - is a company which is most intimately tied to the birth of what is nowadays known as the internet. And if the BBN's marketing guys would have been half as good as their engineers, we would probably hear a lot more about BBN today and less about, say, Cisco. In a clear and highly readable style, Hafner and Lyon have covered the history of the packet switching networks with encyclopedic breadth. You'll learn both about the early theoretical fathers of packet switching, like Paul Baran and Donald Davies; you have the people in the DoD's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) like Joseph Licklider, Bob Taylor or Larry Roberts, who not only had a grand view of computer networking or obtained the necessary governmental funding, but were also able to specify their wishes precisely enough that the engineers were able to build the network based on their plans. And finally, there is Frank Heart's team at BBN, guys who actually built the darn thing. The subtitle - The origins of the internet - is well chosen. Most of the book focuses on the years 1968-1972, from Roberts' draft proposal, to the 1972 international conference on computer communication. Other development, either earlier or later, is covered only fragmentary. There are other interesting stories, like the origins of USENET, internet news exchange service, but they are not the scope of this book. The book leaves a pleasant impression that the authors actually understand the necessary technical background of the topic they are writing about. Some diagrams might help further, but I am sure that numerous metaphors used in the book will also alone help the casual reader to understand the idea of packet switching. Chapter notes and bibliography section deserve special praise, and the subject index comes in handy, too. Overall, a very satisfying book.
Rating: 
Summary: It leaves out the hype but tells a coherent history
Review: This is one of the best books on the history of the Internet I have found. It doesn't make incredibly grandiose and silly statements and it is written in a very clear, straightforward manner. Focusing largely on the early days of the Internet, especially BBN's role in creating the original ARPANET, this book is a pleasant blend of character portraits and technical material, though it is somewhat light on the technical apsects. Still it spent less time than other computer history books on hiring and firing and other rather boring junk. My only gripe with this book is that it peters out right about 1990 and flies over the modern Internet with too little detail. Perhaps that story is best told in a follow-up book. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Great book on the history of the internet
Review: This was an excellent account of how the internet was created and how both ARPA and distributed networking has shaped what we use now everyday.. This book provided an excellent account of what the founders of the internet had to deal with in order to design what we have today.. This is a great read and provides a great reference for all who use and depend on the internet...
| 
