
Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols? - joddystreet
I would like to read about the initial proposals, email exchanges, discussions, about why any specific technology or protocol was built, who all were involved - designer, funders, contributors, etc.
History, timeline, discussions, proposals - accepted &amp; rejected, ideas - accepted &amp; rejected, philosophy, restrictions. 
In general I would like to read about all the technologies, but want to start with the internet and the TCP stack (protocols).
======
jonjacky
Here is an overview from the people who created it:

[https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-
internet/br...](https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-
internet/brief-history-internet/)

An internet timeline, 1957 -- 2017:

[https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/](https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/)

The recent article linked here reviews some of the important early papers
about the Internet and alternatives:

[http://named-data.net/publications/main/](http://named-
data.net/publications/main/)

A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade, Report no. 4799, Bolt Beranek and
Newman Inc.

[http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a115440.pdf](http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a115440.pdf)

The Wikipedia article on Arpanet has many many links to its technical and
political history.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET)

The Arpanet was the immediate predecessor of the Internet, and was built and
operated by many of the same people. Arpanet did not use the TCP protocol, but
experience with Arpanet very much informed the design of TCP.

------
no_protocol
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

By Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684832674](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684832674)

\--

I read the Audiobook version of this book. It presents a narrative of the
development of the very early stages of the internet. I enjoyed it. I think it
would also have been fine in print or ebook formats. It is not too long and
seems to present the events in a mostly linear fashion.

You'll get a great overview of the names, organizations, and machines that
were used in this period.

~~~
aphextron
> "Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today [1998], twenty million people
> worldwide are surfing the Net."

The scale of the web today is truly staggering. The entirety of Yahoo era
internet users would be a single celebrity's Twitter followers now. It's no
wonder things felt so much more intimate and real back then. It really was a
qualitatively different time and place.

~~~
WalterGR
_twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. "_

Facebook alone has two orders of magnitude (2 billion) more users than 1998
had in its entirety.

Crazy.

------
godelmachine
"The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols" is what you are
looking for →

[http://ccr.sigcomm.org/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark.pdf](http://ccr.sigcomm.org/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark.pdf)

Excellent summary of the same by Adrian Colyer →

[https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/22/the-design-philosophy-
of...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/22/the-design-philosophy-of-the-darpa-
internet-protocols/)

You can also read "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson to get acquainted with
how it gained momentum.

~~~
jimpudar
Reading the design philosophy was a life changing experience for me. It's
really incredible how much we take this incredible system for granted.

~~~
godelmachine
You spoke my mind :)

------
AndyMcConachie
I've read an absurd number of Internet histories. And I think one of the
problems with studying the history of the Internet is that it very quickly
grew up and out of the small group of people who got it started, and thus
writing its history must take into account the increasing number of
perspectives that chronologically track its development. Also, it can be very
difficult to disambiguate the history of the Internet with that of general
computing. The Internet developed and continues to develop both simultaneously
influencing, and being influenced by, the development of general computing.
Sometimes just reading the changelog of a particular old piece of
infrastructure software(BIND, AT&T UNIX) can reveal more to you than reading
about the Internet specifically.

I could throw tons of links here, but below are a couple that provide detailed
accounts that people may find interesting.

RSSAC023: History of the Root Server System. I'm biased because I helped edit
this a little ;)

[https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/rssac-023-04nov1...](https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/rssac-023-04nov16-en.pdf)

Chapter 3 of my friend Ashwin's dissertation. It's IMO a very well written and
accessible social history of the Internet.

[https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/ashwin-...](https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/ashwin-
dissertation.pdf)

Really old messages on the namedroppers ML like this. If someone could figure
out how to view all messages on namedroppers I would be eternally grateful.

[https://marc.info/?l=namedroppers&m=95837667426457&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=namedroppers&m=95837667426457&w=2)

~~~
kmxm
The link to the dissertation is not working for me…

~~~
MisterTea
Looks like some copypasta got in there. Delete the angle bracket at the end.

------
jonjacky
Then if you really want to get into the details you could begin working
through the RFCs:

[https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-index.html](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-
index.html)

in contrast to this, a brief and lively history is the book Where Wizards Stay
Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon.

~~~
artie_effim
Came here to say this. Learning BNF (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form)
) and knowing how to go to the roots have helped me more than once in my
career (started as tester, moved to security engineer, then net engineer, then
CISSP, then ISSO, then HIPPA SPO -- now senior sec engineer at top10 UNI)

Here is a good site to see what obsoletes and is superseded by what.
[https://www.potaroo.net/ietf/html/rfcindex.html](https://www.potaroo.net/ietf/html/rfcindex.html)

~~~
nurettin
I have no idea what those acronyms mean, (UNI is University?) But that is an
excellent resource for internet RFCs, thanks.

------
dedalus
Inventing the Internet ([https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inventing-
internet](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inventing-internet)) is a fantastic
place to start

Innovations in Internetworking ([https://www.amazon.com/Innovations-
Internetworking-Artech-Te...](https://www.amazon.com/Innovations-
Internetworking-Artech-Telecommunication-Library/dp/0890063370)) is a great
collection of papers that help you understand the original thinking behind
each protocol

The Elements of Networking Style ([https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Networking-
Style-Animadversi...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Networking-Style-
Animadversions-Intercomputer/dp/0595088791)) explains why you see only 4
layers in the real Internet while ISO slices it into 7 and all the fun parts
os standard bodies while retaining a unique sense of satire

------
alankay
The best all around book about the ARPA/Parc research community is Mitchell
Waldrop's "The Dream Machine". Covers pretty much everything pretty much
outstandingly.

~~~
westoncb
I'd second this. I'm about halfway through the book right now and still being
blown away. It's sort of like the version of 'Hackers' more appropriate to the
version of me that has 14 more years engineering, design, and business
experience (than when I originally read and loved Hackers, I mean). It's very
in depth and interesting, and it's crazy to me that it's not a better known
book.

(That said, I'm just getting into the more internet-focused section at the
moment, so I can't speak too much to that part specifically.)

------
some1else
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z685OF-
PS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z685OF-PS8)

This April 2006 Google Tech Talk by Van Jacobson of PARC proposes a content-
addressing based replacement for the IP protocol. But before doing so, he
explains what shaped the telephony and the current networking paradigms.

------
yodon
Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but from a historical perspective
The Cuckoo's Egg does a wonderful job of capturing what the state of
networking was in the late 1980's

~~~
yathern
Definitely highly recommend! Also check out what Clifford (if I remember his
name correctly) is up to these days! He sells Klein bottles and builds little
robots to help him. Definitely someone I want to be when I grow up haha.

~~~
droidist2
Ohh, he's the Silicon Snake Oil guy!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil)

------
takashiuan
Computer History Museum and their youtube channel. They do a great job
producing the oral history series.

i.e. Oral History of Robert "Bob" Kahn Part 1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKxNMTVnBzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKxNMTVnBzM)

CHM oral history playlist:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQsxaNhYv8daKdGi7s85u...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQsxaNhYv8daKdGi7s85ubzbWdTB36-_q)

[http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/](http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/)

------
hliyan
Twenty years on, _Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia_ is still my go-to
resource for a human readable understanding of what makes the Internet tick:
[https://www.freesoft.org/CIE/](https://www.freesoft.org/CIE/)

~~~
n_t
Never knew about it. Really good for quick introduction and revision. Thanks.

------
jwbensley
I urge you to watch this video. This is a great talk from a networking legend:
"Network Protocols: Myths, Missteps, and Mysteries" by Radia Perlman.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfiMBegejQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfiMBegejQM)

These videos are part of an ongoing series about the history of the Internet
in UK but there are general industry history facts that are interesting
independent of whether you're in the UK:

[https://www.uknof.org.uk/history.html](https://www.uknof.org.uk/history.html)

You also can't go wrong with the TCP/IP Illustrated books (there are 3 volumes
in total, I think 2nd edition is the most recent) although, they are very in
depth if yii only want an overview:

[https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/TCP_IP_Illustrated_Th...](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/TCP_IP_Illustrated_The_protocols.html?id=-btNds68w84C&redir_esc=y)

------
okket
If you can understand German, the "Request for Comments" podcast is gold:

[https://requestforcomments.de](https://requestforcomments.de)

Some episodes are in English, sadly they are not labelled as such as far as I
can see.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Even more interesting would be an in depth analysis of the OSI protocols and
comparison to their IP equivalents. The actual technical details of OSI are
largely absent from the internet and hard to search since IP lifted it's
terminology.

------
sardon
As mentioned previously, "When Wizard Stay Up Late - The Origins of the
Internet" is considered by many as the authoritative text on how the Internet
came to be.

For more technical aspects and if you're inclined to sift through tons of
emails, mailing lists archives may be of interest

for example the end-to-end mailing list
[http://www.postel.org/e2e.html](http://www.postel.org/e2e.html) (seems down
at the moment)

also various IETF mailing lists archives -
[https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/wg/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/wg/)

------
ebcode
Werner Herzog's "Lo and Behold" is a gem of a documentary that details a bit
of this. It is wide-ranging and sheds light on various impacts that the
internet is having on our civilization.

------
js2
A few folks are pointing to the RFCs. In particular, let me recommend RFC 1000
as a place to start:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1000](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1000)

(This RFC is a reference guide for the Internet community which summarizes of
all the Request for Comments issued between April 1969 and March 1987. This
guide also categorizes the RFCs by topic.)

 _Where Wizards Stay Up Late_ , also recommender by a bunch of folks here, is
also a great read.

------
8bitsrule
This short, 1995 history of the web (a timeline) may prove handy.

[http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/robert_cailliau_sp...](http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/robert_cailliau_speech.htm)

Edit: Here's one from Tim Berners Lee circa 1993-4.

[https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TimBook-
old/History.html](https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TimBook-old/History.html)

~~~
siosonel
This book [1] by Robert Cailliau and James Gillies is very approachable,
entertaining, and somewhat comprehensive.

Edit: The book has lots of historical details about competing early
technologies such as the OSI vs TCP/IP, C vs well-structured languages,
Archie/WAIS/Gopher, attempts from different parts of the world such as
AlohaNet in Hawaii and Minitel in France. That's just a sampler, but the story
telling does not get too bogged down with too much details and moves along at
a quick pace.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/How-Web-was-Born-
Story/dp/0192862073](https://www.amazon.com/How-Web-was-Born-
Story/dp/0192862073)

------
mkay3131
Try Kurose's "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach". The points you
mention are not the focus of the book but get touched on the way, plus it's
extremely accessible. I vividly remember reading it as a CS student and being
happy that I finally reached a satisfactory level of understanding on the
topic.

------
phodo
Follow the RFCs. Even if don’t read them in their entirety, you will have a
frame of reference from which to dive deeper.

------
mrisoli
A few years ago I took this MOOC: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/internet-
history](https://www.coursera.org/learn/internet-history)

It was great for me because it was very light in coursework and easy, so it
was a good gateway drug to MOOCs, unlike the more advanced classes which I
often dropped halfway due to lack of time.

The content itself is very good, includes some old videos and interviews with
some of the people who worked on internet technology in the 80s and 90s, and
even does a quick explanation of some concepts of computer networks(TCP/IP,
ethernet, etc).

------
Habesha
Check out IEEE Computing Conversations Podcast by Chuck Severance. Fascinating
history and chat with people who made great impact in computing. You can
subscribe to the podcast, read the column and also check the youtube channel.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/computing-
conversations/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/computing-
conversations/id731495760?mt=2)

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4660FB7F523B1770](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4660FB7F523B1770)

------
luizfzs
This Coursera Course is pretty interesting:
[https://www.coursera.org/learn/internet-
history](https://www.coursera.org/learn/internet-history)

------
tonyg
You will find an interesting point of view on these matters presented in:

    
    
      "Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals"
      by John Day
      Prentice-Hall 2008
      ISBN 0-13-225242-2

~~~
tinktank
Thank you for this!

------
contingencies
Start with the basics - _TCP /IP Illustrated - Volume 1: The Protocols_. Then
read RFCs for each protocol, and other 'meta' RFCs on best practices. Then
read histories.

------
rcarmo
Every now and then I read some of the early RFCs to remind myself of how nice
it is today, and yet how much sheer fun it must have been to craft some of the
protocols, so I recommend those as extra reading material - no need to read
specific ones in sequence, just search for them as topics arise.

Having lived through the original yellow-coax Ethernet years and filled out
actual site registrations with the infamous "ICBM Address" field, there is a
lot that I can directly relate to.

------
GauntletWizard
I found [http://grimoire.computer/](http://grimoire.computer/) to be one of
the best primers to how networking evolved.

------
timlangeman
The internet would not be nearly as useful as it is without Ted Nelson's
hypertext concepts.

For those of you who are interested in understanding Ted Nelson's role in
envisioning and evangelizing hypertext, I wrote a review of Ted Nelson's Ph.D.
thesis which he wrote in Japan.

[https://www.openpolitics.com/articles/ted-nelson-
philosophy-...](https://www.openpolitics.com/articles/ted-nelson-philosophy-
of-hypertext.html)

------
weirdkid
Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet

Robert X. Cringely's follow-up to Triumph of the Nerds was pretty good. It
looks like you can watch the whole thing fit free on line now too - check the
links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerds_2.0.1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerds_2.0.1)

------
mellamoyo
If you're interested in this type of information in podcast format, check out
the History of Networking series from The Network Collective:
[https://thenetworkcollective.com/category/episodes/history-o...](https://thenetworkcollective.com/category/episodes/history-
of-networking/)

------
WoodenChair
If you’re tangentially interested in the history of the technologies behind
web programming specifically, check this out (author):
[http://www.observationalhazard.com/2018/06/history-of-web-
pr...](http://www.observationalhazard.com/2018/06/history-of-web-
programming.html)

------
jonloldrup
For the darker aspects of Internet history, read 'Surveillance Valley' by
Yasha Levine: [https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-
History-...](https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-
Internet/dp/1610398025/ref=sr_1_1)

------
kps
[https://www.ietf.org/how/meetings/proceedings/](https://www.ietf.org/how/meetings/proceedings/)
and start at the bottom, from when the Internet Engineering Task Force was an
internet engineering task force.

------
Hernanpm
If you have time I suggest to take the Georgia Tech Computer Networking course
free at udacity [https://www.udacity.com/course/computer-networking--
ud436](https://www.udacity.com/course/computer-networking--ud436)

------
MichaelAO
Alan Kay's 'Normal Considered Harmful' is a good place to start (more about
computing in general): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-
Xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc)

------
spyder
Uh, did you try Wikipedia? It has a lot of info with lot of links:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet)

------
DanBC
A kind of easter egg perhaps about Jon Postel. (Read the title out loud.)

RFC 2468:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2468](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2468)

------
charlesholbrow
I've been reading "where wizards stay up late" which is a great history of the
internet being built. It's less focused on protocols, but a really valuable
read for telling the story.

------
hoppelhase
Some posts in this blog under the "Development" tab are pretty nice.
[https://eager.io/blog/](https://eager.io/blog/)

------
brudgers
IETF might be a place to start,
[https://ietf.org/standards/](https://ietf.org/standards/)

------
pzbitskiy
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard Hamming
is a nice one about computer history and codes in general.

------
rdednl
An awesome book is Where wizards stay up late: the origins of the internet.

------
pfd1986
I know you said _read_ but I found the Internet History Podcast very
enlightening and fun to listen to: [https://pca.st/miqr](https://pca.st/miqr)

~~~
mattl
It’s an interesting show but really ought to be the web history podcast.

------
paidleaf
You can start with an introductory overview ( Chuck Severance's Internet
History on coursera ) and then search the RFCs, books and material afterwards
for a more detailed view.

The coursera course is great because it covers the internet from inception to
today and includes interviews with individuals who made great contributions
along the way. It is impressive the people who he was able to track down and
interview.

