On January 1, 1983, ARPANET system architects began the cutover from the existing Network Control Program (NCP) to Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) on all hosts. The transformation would be completed by June 1983. By 1984, more than 100 universities and research facilities in the United States and Europe were linked using what is now considered the universal standard for global networking. TCP/IP became the foundation of the Internet as we know it.
Before this important decision, networks would use a mix of incompatible protocols and proprietary vendor stacks. NCP, which was superseded by TCP/IP, was designed only for the ARPANET, and had no internetworking capabilities. With TCP/IP, an internetworking (and thus ‘Internet’) protocol was born, connecting these networks to networks beyond their initial extent.
In addition to its Internet functionality, TCP/IP was attractive on several other fronts. It was an open standard, vendor neutral, extensible, and free to implement. These features not only made it a victory for the ARPANET, but they provided speed that the entire world could keep up with.
TCP/IP was designed by Dr. Vinton Cerf and Dr. Robert Kahn. Its layered design also introduced innovations that would become essential to the development of the Internet. It has features like congestion control, end-to-end reliability, and will give rise to future Internet-essential service protocols like HTTP, SMTP, DNS, and others.
If not TCP/IP, then what?
IBM famously described the era’s networking landscape as like the Tower of Babel, with lots of incompatible proprietary protocols available to users. However, its own solution, called SNA, was suffering part of this proprietary problem. Similarly, Xerox will advance the adoption of its XNS and DEC its DECnet.
In contrast, the open, scalable, and hardware-agnostic TCP/IP achieved widespread adoption and success. One could say that it won – not by being the best protocol designed to connect everything – but by being the only protocol. Additionally, its open and free nature, ability to run on everything from PCs to supercomputers, allowed it to become the common denominator among the multitude of multiprotocol network routers. All of this fueled the success of TCP/IP.
to follow Tom’s Hardware on Google NewsOr Add us as a favorite sourceTo get our latest news, analysis and reviews in your feed.
<a href