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Overview of the Internet and TCP/IP
The INTERNET is a worldwide system of interconnected networks. The concept of the Internet began in the early 1970s, when applications running under different network protocols needed to communicate with one another. A set of protocols, layered in a well-designed suite, needed to be defined so that applications could talk to other applications, regardless of their underlying network technologies.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) set out to design an inter-networking protocol suite. At that time, DARPA was well known for its pioneering of packet-switching over radio networks and satellite channels with its networking system, DARPANET. The inter-networking communication capabilities of DARPANET proved to be so useful that researchers decided to expand beyond the limitations imposed by the Department of Defense. As a result, ARPANET was formed around 1980. Later, ARPANET, with its well-defined protocol software suite, became the Internet.
There are currently three major divisions of the Internet: commercial, governmental, and educational. These divisions appear in a full network host name as com, gov, and edu, respectively.
The Southern Illinois University System is a class B member of the Internet. The numeric representation of the given portion of our address is 131.230. The assigned name for this portion is siu.edu. This indicates that we are a class B member and an educational institution. As a class B member, we are allowed 512 LANs. Each LAN may consist of up to 128 machines, or nodes, where each node has a unique Internet address. Any machine on the Internet can send and receive mail, transfer programs and data, and execute programs on any other machine in the Internet, providing the appropriate permissions and conditions are met. The universal communicative services of the Internet are available from any machine at SIU that has been connected to the Campus Area Network (CAN) and supports the Internet protocol software suite.
The Internet protocol software suite is commonly known as TCP/IP. TCP/IP is an acronym for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP/IP contains a number of protocols in the Internet package that provide differing levels of security and communication access. The Internet protocol software suite must be available to any machine wanting to communicate over the Internet.
Each Internet protocol software suite includes a set of application programs that provide some basic inter-operability functions. These functions are as follows:
Telnet. Telnet is the terminal emulation function. It makes your logon session look like an appropriate terminal for a remote host somewhere on the Internet.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP is the file transfer function.
Also included in this software suite is the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) which provides a subset of the FTP capabilities.
Simplified Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP is the electronic mail function, which handles outbound e-mail at SIUC.