The DARPA Internet: Interconnecting Heterogeneous Computer Networks with Gateways

TLDR: There are networks everywhere; networks span continents and oceans; tie office buildings in iiles of wire, fiber, and other nerse media; reach into land, air, and space vehicles; and confront microcomputers as well as large maint'rame computers.

Abstract: Armies of spiders could not weave a wider web networks are everywhere. Networks span continents and oceans; tie office buildings in iiles of wire, fiber, and other nerse media; reach into land, air, and space vehicles; and confront microcomputers as well as large maint'rame computers. Someii networks are incredibly fast and others are pragmatically slow; some work better than others, and some do not work well at all. However, despite the present abundance, new networks are still being developed coinstantly to challeinge the competitioni. If' we had a way to initerconnect various networks, many problems could be solved. For example, a user may want to comiimuilicate with a site that is not on the same public network as the host computer. Perhaps there are sev eral hosts but no single network to which they will all coinnect. In some cases, the cost of coninection will be a factor; coninecting 100 hosts on a coaxial local net is more cost-effective than putting them all on a public net, but running 1000 miles of coaxial cable to the 101st host is ab.surd. In other cases, pragmatics or the basic laws of nature apply; for example, radio-based networks are about the only choice if mobility is needed. A network technology that supports a maximum of 256 hosts becomies a problenm when you acquire the 257th. G,iven that all hosts caninot be put on a single network, the next best option is to interconniect networks.