The Internet Essays -- The Internet

Whether you’re an average teenager wanting to keep in touch with friends after school, or a business person needing a low cost but effective way to keep work related material local and secret, chances are you use E-Mail or Instant Messaging services. For communication purposes in this high tech lifestyle that exists today, these systems are used only with the basic understanding needed to run these devices. You are about to learn how these systems came to be and the in depth understanding needed to make them work.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To start with, you must know that they require a system of computers connected to a LAN (Local Area Network) server. The most commonly used and largest LAN server in the world is the Internet. Since the internet hosts the majority of all IM (Instant Messaging) and E-Mail servers, then you must know the beginnings of it.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Internet’s precursor was the ARPANET. The ARPANET was a large wide-area network created by the United States Defense Advanced Research project Agency (ARPA). Established in 1969 ARPANET served as a test-bed for new networking technologies, linking many universities and research centers. The first two nodes that formed the ARPANET were UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, followed by the University of Utah. Because of his unique expertise in data networking Len Kleinrock would use the technology which by then had come to be known as â€Å"packet switching†. When TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) was adopted by the ARPANET as its connection for the networks, the Internet was born.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The first email message was sent by Len Kleinrock in 1973. He used the Resource-Sharing Executive program (RSEXEC) to send a message to a man in London that he forgot his razor in his room and to retrieve it while at the international meeting for government funding projects like the ARPANET from other countries. To do so he first had to run the RSEXEC program in his home in Los Angeles and then had to think of a person on the network at 3 A.M. When he did, he put the â€Å"where so-and-so† command in and connected his computer to the other so the TALK command would be enabled. RSEXEC opened a split screen window, one to write messages and the other to read. As time passed, this process of using a resource sharing program as a message sending... ... out with their own versions as well. Since AOL controls the majority of IM systems, it will not allow the software the capability to communicate with other IM systems. Other companies have taken a different approach rather than wait for an agreed-upon standard. Jabber is one company that has created a client program capable of communicating with various IM systems.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Instant Messaging works by using a piece software called a CLIENT. The CLIENT is normally a software the is in the server and/or maybe needed in the user to machine for proper use. The client communicates with an ICQ server whenever the user’s online and the client is running. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently developing a standard protocol for instant messaging, this protocol is know as the Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As time has passed and technologies have improved more and more little things tend to replace the uses of what was once a great and commonly used services. So who is not to say that one day the usage of e-mail services will gradually be wilted away by some unheard of system that may become just as big.