The Georgia conflict shows one thing, it is quite the cold war is not over. The state powers hide behind a cold smile and have the times of nuclear armament not yet forgotten. Real democracy is in the best case in an alpha phase and shows the Russian Bear that he is not as meek as a lamb. Without panic, according to considerations of isolating Russia. Occasionally, concerns are being voiced that it may yet come to a serious conflict. The Austrian STS band sang in 1985 in "cold and colder"
"The head of the Kremlin smokes a Camel and sipping a Coca Cola
loves the cowboy in America Crimean champagne and eating caviar
But we know that if they fight two prints of a fall on the button
And certainly Bomb'n us without warning on the head "
Indeed, the question arises whether it is really to einemal a nuclear exchange could occur. Often - though wrongly - claimed that the development of the Internet would have the cold war into account by it should ensure a fail-safe communication system in times of nuclear wars, the contact between commanders and troops. But that is not right.
The real reasons were more mundane nature. The ARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense Agency was the mid- 60's with all the Ivy League universities combined. In addition there was a room, stood in the terminals of each university mainframe. For each terminal there was a separate login procedure, and any program that was running on a terminal, could run only on this one. There was no exchange between these computers were the result of the programs and procedures implemented independently of each other from different universities. What a waste of resources! The thought is also reflected in the ARPA and called for a tender. In particular, was responsible JCR Licklider, who today is considered one of the fathers of the Internet known. The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was awarded the contract the new network to be specified. In the communication so far, only the circuit-oriented flow of information was known, but the new network should support a packet-based transmission, as conceived by Paul Baran and Donald Watts Davies. One problem was that the computers came from the universities of different vendors and require different handling. Also for the exchange of data each had cooked their own thing. The solution was the IMPs. Own small computers, which took over as interim station, the communication between computer and phone line. The IMPs were the forerunners of today's routers. The construction of the IMPs went to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). presented as a key architect solid at BBN Robert E. Kahn, the structure of the network. 1969 delivered the first IMP and the same year was the ARPAnet, as it was then called, online with four nodes. From this date, those computers at UCLA, the SRI, the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the University of Utah exchange data with each other. 1971 already 14 knots and the online network was increased by a node per month. Ray Tomlinson invented the user @ host convention and implemented the first mail server in the ARPAnet. At the time, adopted the concept of Ethernet and shape was outlined by Bob Metcalfe, later founder of 3Com, in a doctoral thesis. Since there at this time with the SATNET RadioNet and two other networks had to where a link should be established, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed the TCP protocol. Further standardization enabled the direct connection of modern computer networks to the Internet. TCP / IP stack for DOS have been developed and was made the Ethernet network of PCs and mainframe computers easily. More and more services have found their way into the net, such as Usenet, FTP and IRC. 1990 marked a special moment: the ARPAnet was officially shut down and Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW). Finally content could be retrieved easily with a browser. The age of the Internet for all 'was begun.
And what about the nuclear war? In fact, there was this Considerations. These related but not the ARPAnet. Captured, they were in the RAND study on secure communications over telephone lines during a nuclear war. These ideas were later applied to the Internet. But less in the event of nuclear war itself, than for a higher robustness to line fluctuations and failures of transmission nodes. Nevertheless, this rumor still persists and is spread by mainstream media. That does not alter the fact that, the work of Licklider, Cerf, Baran, Davies, Kahn, Postel, Crocker, Lee and many others made sure that you can read these lines. If make it but the famous movie "The Day After" in reality, the Internet will continue to function, and the rumor will come one step closer to the truth
