Beginning of Essay
Some thirty years ago , the Rand corporation , America's formost cold war think tank, faced a strange straegic problem. How could the US authrieties succesfully communicate after a nuclear war? Postnuclear America would need a comand-and-control network, linked f ....

Middle of Essay
.... times . It would be designed from the get-go to transcend its own unrreliability. All the nodes from computers in the network would be equal in status to all other nodes , each node with its own authority to originate , pass , and recieve messages. The messages would be divided into packets, each packet seperatly addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified source node , and end at some other specified destination node . Each packet would wind its way through the network on an individual basis.In fall 1969, the first such node was insalled in UCLA. By December 1969, there were 4 nodes on the infant network, which was named arpanet, after i ....