LO and behold: the Internet turns 50

Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA Computer Science Professor whose work contributed to the early Internet. Photo by Jennifer Hu (Daily Bruin)

Published October 24, 2019

by Orly Stein

On October 29, 1969, researchers at UCLA tried to transmit the word LOGIN to a computer 314 miles away at Stanford. Only the first two letters LO  were transmitted before the system crashed—but nonetheless, the Internet was born!

The birth of the internet

Print

Author

UBIT Student Ambassador Orly Stein.

Orly Stein (UB Student, Class of 2022) is an Information Technology and Management major from Long Island, NY. In the future, she hopes to get more experience with cyber security and hopefully pursue a career in the field. In her free time, Orly enjoys playing soccer, going to SoulCycle with her friends and snowboarding.

In the 1960s, computers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, setting limitations for who could own and use them.

The Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded a project to connect a few large computers to each other in order to share software and research information.

ARPANET, as the original network was known, had four hubs initially:

  • UC Santa Barbara
  • UCLA
  • The University of Utah
  • SRI International

From ARPANET to Internet

According to Leonard Kleinrock, one of the developers of ARPANET from UCLA, the ARPANET was a culture of trust, ethics, collaboration, and information sharing.

In 1973, global networking became a reality as other institutions connected to the ARPANET, leading to the Internet’s birth. The network would grow exponentially over time:

  • By 1977, the number of connected host computers reached 100
  • By 1987, 100,000
  • By the early 1990’s, one million
  • By 2012, one billion

In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, developed HTML which has a large impact on how we navigate and view the Internet today.

During this time, spam began to appear, leading to fraud, privacy invasion, and fake news – things we associate with the Internet today.

Internet at UB

The UB community uses the Internet to further our institution’s mission of bringing the benefits of our research and scholarship to the world.

UB provides fast and convenient access to students on campus through ResNet, our wired network access and in UB residence halls and apartments.

Students living on campus: connect to ResNet

Students, faculty and staff can also connect to eduroam Wi-Fi for secure Wi-Fi access on campus, and when you travel.

Get connected to eduroam Wi-Fi

During Fall 2019 move-in weekend alone, the UB community connected over 100,000 devices at University at Buffalo. In these past 50 years, the Internet has given us an immense amount of opportunities for collaboration and access to information.  

“[Let's take this] opportunity to realize how important the Internet has become to the University at Buffalo,” said UB VPCIO Brice Bible in an address on Facebook, “Both in terms of our success as students and faculty, but also our ability at UB to contribute to knowledge growth across the world."

Here's to the next 50 years of the Internet.