The Internet

The Internet, something most of us use everyday, especially as students. We do our homework online, we look up lecture notes, apply to colleges, sign up for classes, communicate, and so much more. The Internet is vital to us, but do we ever consider where it came from, or how it got started?
The history of communication started digitally. In the 19th century Samuel FB Morse invented the telegraph. Morse code allowed two types of signals to be sent, basically a dot or a dash. When telephones came into play, communication went to analog then. Now with computer networks, and the Internet, we have switched back to digital. In the 1960’s, numerous new technologies started to emerge. One of which being ARPANET. ARPANET was the first large scale packet network, and was funded by an advanced research project agency . During the 1970’s, engineers found they could make a network that was big, fast, and inexpensive, however they had difficulty putting all three together. The Internet we know today is just a networks of networks, and has not been changed much since the 1980’s. It’s so interesting to see how flexible a design was back then, that it accommodates to the technology that we use and have today.
Most people are truly amazed by what the Internet is capable of. Obviously, people can do a lot of things like watch videos or play games just by having an Internet connection and a computer. However, Internet users are not aware of how simple the Internet actually is. What the Internet does is just send packages of data to specific addresses also known as IP address. An IP address is a kind of unique label that is assigned to all devices in the network. However, what people see on the screens of their computers is simply a process done by another computer on the other end of the network. What is really amazing that the Internet is able to connect many devices, no matter what the distance between them is. Yet, the more the distance, the slower connection speed.

the Internet can be accessed almost anywhere. On Purdue campus, we can connect to the Internet through cables in our rooms and the PAL(Purdue Ari Link) is covered in most public areas at Purdue. Students can use not only their laptops, but they may also use many other electric devices like a mobile phone or an ipad/ipod to get connected. In Purdue, many important activities depend on the use of the Internet. For me, I check my emails in Mymail, I check my grades in Blackboard, and I get my math homework done on webassign. all those things above rely on networks in the Internet. Without the Internet, we can see we will be messed up. The Internet allows students and professors to communicate and interact online, which is a more efficient way to exchange information or ideas.