ARPANET – The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network

So what is Arpanet, why was it developed and what impact does it have on our everyday lives, both personal and in business?
Arpanet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use a standard Internet protocol called TCP/IP, this was finally developed in the 1960s as a working model for the United States Department of Defense and funded by DARPA – the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military.
This network was developed to share information between agencies across the United States, it was not that long in development when people started to see the commercial aspects of this system, hence the birth of what we use in our everyday lives, a system which we call the Internet, also known as the interwebs.
The internet has had a huge impact on our lives in relation to and how we go about our day-to-day business, shopping, and our social communications with one another.
In 2012; as a nation we developed a huge global network infrastructure, consisting of the largest array of systems you could ever imagine, this includes mobiles networks, wired networks, and satellite system networks, all operating to provide us with a way to communicate effectively between large and short distances.
According to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), there are more than 24,500 space objects orbiting Earth. What impact doe this really have in the way our planets functions?
The largest obstacle to overcome when developing an infrastructure of this magnitude is the security that goes behind such a system. Unfortunately, we don’t all live in a harmonious society, people like to deface systems, and show they can manipulate information, it’s for these reasons alone we have to protect our technology.
There was a time if one required information passed from one location to the next, this could take hours or days, even weeks for this information to be received at the other end. With this new array ‘which has been developed’, means we now have a system to share information almost instantaneously.
Arpanet is the route of how the internet started, and going back to our routes really gives you a better understanding of how networks operate. I have been fascinated with networks since 1998.
Arpanet:
Types of network topology
- Point-to-point
- Bus
- Star
- Ring or circular
- Mesh
- Tree
- Hybrid
- Daisy chain