The Internet has become quite an important tool in today's society. It has provided people all over the world with a way to gain access to information more conveniently that ever before. The rapid growth of the online world has been evident in the last two decades that in so short a time, it has become from an unknown entity into an essential tool that society today cannot do without.

But if some people think that the history of the Internet began just years ago, they can't be more wrong. In fact, the Internet has its origins dating back to the late 1950's although the idea of having a worldwide information network has become an idea earlier than that. What made it remain as an idea is due to the fact that the infrastructure to make such an information network possible was not yet in place. It was at the time when the telephone, the telegraph, the fiber optic cable and the computer were fast gaining its acceptance that the idea of a wide reaching information network spanning the globe became a possibility.

The Internet and the technology that would someday run it began as a study to improve information networks especially in the Defense sector.  This network was first established UCLA in October of 1969, the first node of a network that would later be called as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Network). The ARPANET was the first network to make use of the packet switching technology where information was transmitted in bits and pieces in order to create a more robust and stable network. Not long after, with the collaboration of other countries in North America, Asia and Europe, the network grew to cover the major areas in the world.

It was sometime in 1983 that the first TCP/IP wide area network was made operational in the form of a university network backbone that later became known as the NSFNet which allowed academic researchers from all over the US to gain access to supercomputers. The use of this network grew rapidly and researchers became excited as to where this newly discovered technology will be able to lead. It was not long after in 1985 that a network aimed to serve commercial interests was put up based on the technology used in both ARPANET and the NSFNet. During the 1990's, several separate commercial and educational networks started to merge with each other, wherein "Internet" slowly becoming a term used to describe the single growing information and commercial networks that has began around this time.

By 1994, there was a growing interest in the Internet that was previously being used mostly for technical and academic purposes. And during this decade, the Internet rapidly grew into a worldwide information network where the growth was seen at a 100 percent per year with the fastest period of growth seen during the 1996 and 1997. The open nature this established information network without a single entity or company having control overt it further fueled its explosive growth in so short a time span. At present, the Internet has become a very valuable tool used to make our world a smaller place in terms of reaching out to each other. It has provided humans in general with a way to become more closely knit in terms of understanding and communicating with each other to create a world where information has become king.