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"The Internet is an outgrowth of a project from the 1970's by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The ARPANET, as it was then called, was designed to be a non-reliable network service for computer communications on over wide area. In 1973 and 1974, a standard networking protocol, a communications protocol for exchanging data between computers on a network, emerged from the various research and educational efforts involved in this project. This became known as TCP/IP or the IP suite of protocols. The TCP/IP protocols enabled ARPANET computers to communicate irrespective of their computer operating system or their computer hardware. We call such a protocol heterogeneous. UNIX was developed in the same era and TCP/IP became almost synonymous with the UNIX operating system as UNIX was spread throughout the many educational institutions around the US for a low cost. Multi-user systems such as UNIX and VMS soon became the most popular method of accessing the Internet."
Once the protocols were in place, much of the software and services that make up the Internet appeared. The basic services for remote connectivity, file transfer, and electronic mail appeared in the mid and late seventies. The Usenet news system appeared in 1981. The Internet gopher made its debut in 1982. The World Wide Web information service appeared in 1989.
In 1990, the ARPANET had many other networks connected to it and because its role as a network backbone was taken over by the NSFNET funded by the National Science Foundation . The networking companies and organizations which provided the data connections to all the Internet hosts continued in their goal of providing easy global network access.
The Internet as it now stands is still one thirds a research and educational network because of the many universities and institutes connected to it. In mid 1995 commercial communications realized the majority of Internet traffic when .com domain names for the first time exceeded .edu domain names."
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