ARPAnet
• ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency)
• 1969 Cold War
• ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were
only a limited number of large, powerful research
computers in the country, and that many research
investigators, who should have access to them, were
geographically separated from them
– Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director
ARPAnet
Early ARPAnet
• 1971
– Email implemented
• 1973
– Email was 75% of the ARPAnet traffic
– File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was developed
ARPAnet  Internet
• Transition Period 1971-1983
• Packet Switching developed and perfected
– Robust, fault-tolerant, efficient, survivable
• TCP/IP: Network of Networks realized on a
large scale
– The ability to connect different types of networks
Early Internet 1983-1989
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•
•
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No web browsers, no web pages at all…
Email
FTP
Early message board system (BB systems)
Client-server applications
In 1989 came the WWW
• The ideas existed, but one man perfected and
implemented them
• WWW ideas
– URL concept – Documents, computers, virtual
mailboxes, networks, programs, etc. can all have
uniform identifier to help locate them
– Hypertext concept – Documents can have links to
other documents, just click the text
Tim Berners-Lee
• A graduate of Oxford
University
• wrote the first web
client and server in
1990.
• His specifications of
URIs, HTTP and HTML
implement the
backbone of the WWW
WWW improved Internet
• On the Internet, you had to
– Know numeric IP addresses to locate servers
– Login anonymously or with a user account
– Know the folder hierarchy and file name of the
document/data.
• Location information shared via email
– If you didn’t have friends, you had no idea what
was on the Internet
WWW instead of Internet
•
•
•
•
•
HTTP instead of FTP
Web Browser instead of FTP client or terminal
Web Server instead of FTP or file server
URLs instead of numeric IP addresses
Clicking Hyperlink instead of navigating
through folder hierarchies
• HTML instead of text and postscript docs
Are these things the same?
Internet
World Wide Web
They are distinct and different
Internet
• Network of Networks
• Hardware
• TCP/IP
• Packet Switching
World Wide Web
• HTML-based content
• Browsers
• HTTP
• URLs
• Hyperlinks
Internet vs. WWW
• Analogy
– The WWW is like a boat that sails the seas of the
Internet.
– People use to swim on the Internet.
– The WWW boat has now become a yacht with jet
skis and a helicopter pad.
• Makes the sea lots of fun to travel on…
More Important History
• 1989 TBL invents first web browser and server
• 1991 Gore Bill is passed, which helps fund
major WWW research and infrastructure
• 1993 Mosaic – first graphical browser – is
developed
• 1995 Apache – still the most popular web
server – is developed
WWW Matures 1989-1995
• 1993 InterNIC is created by US government
– centralizes the control of URL and domain names.
• 1998 InterNIC is replace by non-profit
corporation called ICANN.
– ICANN regulates 3rd party domain name registrars
such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions.
– Thousands of registrars exist today
WWW Matures 1989-1995
• 1995 NSFnet (formally ARPAnet) becomes
research only network
– most Internet traffic starts to get routed through
telecom backbones operated by AT&T, Sprint, and
others
• 1995-??? Government subsides and pork
barrel programs help private companies build
up the physical infrastructure
– Cable TV providers eventually join the free money
party
Commercialization Period 1995-2000
• 1995 – Netscape emerges
– Sells web server software commercially
– Gives away web browser for free
– Reaches 90% market share by 1997
• 1995 – 1996 Microsoft races to come out with
competing software
– Web Browser - Internet Explore
– Web Server - IIS
Commercialization Period 1995-2000
• 1996-1999 – Browser Wars between Microsoft
and Netscape
– Two versions of HTML and CSS arise
– Proprietary plug-ins developed
• Flash, RealPlayer, Silverlight, etc.
• 1997-2000 – E-commerce Explosion
– Amazon, E-bay, Online Stock Trading, Music/MP3
trafficking, etc.
Browser Wars 1996-1999
• 1996-1997 Netscape dominated (fasted
growing IPO in history at that time)
• But, by 1999, Internet Explorer was #1 and
stays there until 2012
• 2000 Netscape goes out of business.
Why web browsers matter?
• Web Browser are free.
• Q: So, why did Netscape and Microsoft compete
so heavily to have the #1 browser?
• Answers:
– You can sell tools, server software, and applications
that work nicely with your browser
– You can change your browser so the competitions'
stuff breaks.
– You can control the default search engine, homepage,
etc.
• Thus, you can make $$$ directing traffic to e-commerce
websites that pay you.
Browser Wars 1996-1999
• 1998 Microsoft Integrates IE into Windows
– Forced upon people as the default browser
– Microsoft must pay more than one billion in antitrust lawsuit but somehow still wins
• 2000 Netscape loses
– AOL buys out Netscape, which was failing
financially
– AOL is now a subsidiary of Time Warner
Post War
• 2000 Netscape becomes open source, so
developers can build upon it for free
– Leads to the Mozilla Foundation, which eventually
develops Firefox in 2002
• 2003-2007 Firefox builds significant market
share, poised to overtake IE
• 2008 Google introduces Chrome
• 2012 Chrome, not Firefox, is the first to
overtake IE
Browser Wars - Significance
• Early competition pushed the advancement of
web browsers and servers
– Use to be simple applications for transmitting and
rendering web pages.
– Web Browsers and servers now implement a
platform capable of running heavy-weight
applications
• But, the War lead to de-standardization and
lots of bad ideas (Flash, <font> tag, etc.)
W3C
• 1993 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was
founded to help develop web standards.
– Largely ignored during the browser wars.
– But, rose to prominence in the early 2000’s
• 1999-2000 Helped to clean up and standardize
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• But now, W3C considered too slow and not
application friendly
– WHATWG was formed in response
WHATWG
• Web Hypertext Application Technology
Working Group (WHATWG)
• Did not like that W3C adopted XML-based
technology.
• XML is great and robust, but its too complex
(bandwidth inefficient) and parsing requires
too much overhead (bad for mobile devices)
• WHATWG is setting the new standards:
HTML5, CSS, JavaScript.