<nettime> The Birth of the Internet: the Architectural Conception

[ronda@umcc.ais.org (Ronda Hauben)]

                         Draft for Comment
                          
                     The Birth of the Internet:
                   An Architectural Conception 
            for Solving the Multiple Network Problem
                                 by  Ronda Hauben
                                 rh120@columbia.edu  
               
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt

                         Abstract

The Internet makes it possible to transmit a message across the 
boundaries of dissimilar networks. What is the architectural 
conception that makes such internetwork communication possible? 

TCP/IP is a communications protocol. What are the foundations that it is
built upon?  What does it mean to be a communications protocol?

This draft paper explores these questions and connects them to the
conceptual foundations of communications engineering and communications
science, as developed by Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener and others. 

The ARPANET and then the Internet are developments that contribute a new
body of communications experience and knowledge to that which has been
developed in the past as part of communications engineering. 

This context makes it possible to understand what it means that the
computer is a communications device, and a very general one at that. And
this context makes it possible to understand the nature of the Internet as
a new conception which builds on the experience and research done
developing the ARPANET. 


Ronda
ronda@panix.com

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