Before there was the Internet, there was ARPANET, a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the federal government's Department of Defense. ARPANET allowed government and research institutions to share information through "packet switching," which allowed a message on a network to find its way to its destination via any route available. The current Internet grew out of the technology developed for ARPA.

ARPANET: A General Overview - where did it come from, what did it do, and what happened to it.

The Birth of the ARPANET - or "How the Internet Came to Be."

U.S. DoD-Sponsored Network - a brief introduction to the development of ARPANET.

Computer Networking - on the evolution of the ARPANET and the consequent Internet phenomenon.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (formerly ARPA) - the government agency that developed ARPANET.

Requiem for the ARPANET - a poem written by Vint Cerf, the "Father of the Internet."

"ARPANET began in the fall of 1969 with the successful linking of four computers known as IMPS or Interface Message Processors, which were located at the University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah."

From ARPANET--U.S. DoD-SPONSORED NETWORK