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On October 24, 1995, the FNC unanimously passed a
resolution defining the term Internet. This definition was developed in
consultation with members of the Internet and intellectual property rights
communities. RESOLUTION:
The Federal
Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our
definition of the term "Internet". "Internet" refers to
the global information system that -- (i) is logically linked together by a
globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its
subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its
subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and
(iii) provides,
uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services
layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.
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Microsoft's full scale entry into the browser,
server, and Internet Service Provider market completed the major shift over
to a commercially based Internet. The release of Windows 98 in June 1998 with
the Microsoft browser well integrated into the desktop shows Bill Gates'
determination to capitalize on the enormous growth of the Internet.
Microsoft's success over the past few years has brought court challenges to
their dominance. We'll leave it up to you whether you think these battles
should be played out in the courts or the marketplace.
During this period of enormous growth, businesses
entering the Internet arena scrambled to find economic models that work. Free
services supported by advertising shifted some of the direct costs away from
the consumer--temporarily. Services such as Delphi offered free web pages,
chat rooms, and message boards for community building. Online sales have
grown rapidly for such products as books and music CDs and computers, but the
profit margins are slim when price comparisons are so easy, and public trust
in online security is still shaky. Business models that have worked well are
portal sites, that try to provide everything for everybody, and live
auctions. AOL's acquisition of Time-Warner was the largest merger in history
when it took place and shows the enormous growth of Internet business! The
stock market has had a rocky ride, swooping up and down as the new technology
companies, the dot.com's encountered good news and bad. The decline in
advertising income spelled doom for many dot.coms, and a major shakeout and
search for better business models took place by the survivors.
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Wireless has grown rapidly in the past few years,
and travellers search for the wi-fi "hot spots" where they can
connect while they are away from the home or office. Many airports, coffee
bars, hotels and motels now routinely provide these services, some for a fee
and some for free.
The next big growth area is the surge towards
universal wireless access, where almost everywhere is a "hot spot".
Municipal wi-fi or city-wide access, wiMAX offering broader ranges than
wi-fi, Verizon's EV-DO, and other formats will joust for dominance in the USA
in the months ahead. The battle is both economic and political.
Another trend that is beginning to affect web
designers is the growth of smaller devices to connect to the Internet. Small
tablets, pocket PCs, smart phones, game machines, and even GPS devices are
now capable of tapping into the web on the go, and many web pages are not
designed to work on that scale.
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One should not conclude that the Internet has now
finished changing. The Internet, although a network in name and geography, is
a creature of the computer, not the traditional network of the telephone or
television industry. It will, indeed it must, continue to change and evolve
at the speed of the computer industry if it is to remain relevant. It is now
changing to provide such new services as real time transport, in order to
support, for example, audio and video streams. The availability of pervasive
networking (i.e., the Internet) along with powerful affordable computing and
communications in portable form (i.e., laptop computers, two-way pagers,
PDAs, cellular phones), is making possible a new paradigm of nomadic
computing and communications.
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This evolution will bring us new applications - Internet
telephone and, slightly further out, Internet television. It is evolving to
permit more sophisticated forms of pricing and cost recovery, a perhaps
painful requirement in this commercial world. It is changing to accommodate
yet another generation of underlying network technologies with different
characteristics and requirements, from broadband residential access to
satellites. New modes of access and new forms of service will spawn new
applications, which in turn will drive further evolution of the net itself.
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Adapted form
the webpages http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html
and http://www.isoc.org/Internet/history/
