29
October
2004
|
07:44 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Friday Watch: Military intelligence in action---happy 35th birthday to the internet!

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com


The internet grew out of work on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. A key goal of ARPANET was to create a communications network that could survive a nuclear war.


If parts of the network were to be disabled due to nuclear blasts, messages could be automatically routed around damaged parts of the network to reach their destination. This continues to be a key capability of the internet, routing data packets across a variety of intermediate networks, to their destination.


It’s lucky that the DoD decided not to use the technology. Surviving a nuclear blast is one thing (cockroaches can do it)--surviving the script kiddies who send out worms and viruses is a lot more difficult.