"Bruce Sterling - Internet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

separately addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified
source node, and end at some other specified destination node. Each
packet would wind its way through the network on an individual
basis.

The particular route that the packet took would be unimportant.
Only final results would count. Basically, the packet would be tossed
like a hot potato from node to node to node, more or less in the
direction of its destination, until it ended up in the proper place. If
big pieces of the network had been blown away, that simply
wouldn't matter; the packets would still stay airborne, lateralled
wildly across the field by whatever nodes happened to survive. This
rather haphazard delivery system might be "inefficient" in the usual
sense (especially compared to, say, the telephone system) -- but it
would be extremely rugged.

During the 60s, this intriguing concept of a decentralized,
blastproof, packet-switching network was kicked around by RAND,
MIT and UCLA. The National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain set
up the first test network on these principles in 1968. Shortly
afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency decided
to fund a larger, more ambitious project in the USA. The nodes of the
network were to be high-speed supercomputers (or what passed for
supercomputers at the time). These were rare and valuable machines
which were in real need of good solid networking, for the sake of
national research-and-development projects.

In fall 1969, the first such node was installed in UCLA. By
December 1969, there were four nodes on the infant network, which
was named ARPANET, after its Pentagon sponsor.

The four computers could transfer data on dedicated high-
speed transmission lines. They could even be programmed remotely
from the other nodes. Thanks to ARPANET, scientists and researchers
could share one another's computer facilities by long-distance. This
was a very handy service, for computer-time was precious in the
early '70s. In 1971 there were fifteen nodes in ARPANET; by 1972,
thirty-seven nodes. And it was good.

By the second year of operation, however, an odd fact became
clear. ARPANET's users had warped the computer-sharing network
into a dedicated, high-speed, federally subsidized electronic post-
office. The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing.
Instead, it was news and personal messages. Researchers were using
ARPANET to collaborate on projects, to trade notes on work,
and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze. People had their
own personal user accounts on the ARPANET computers, and their
own personal addresses for electronic mail. Not only were they using
ARPANET for person-to-person communication, but they were very
enthusiastic about this particular service -- far more enthusiastic than