Classroom Companion: Business

Box 2.2 The ARPANET
The ARPANET was a project with the 
major goal of building and demonstrat-
ing a data communication network based 
on packet switching. It was also the first 
communication network to implement 
the TCP/IP protocols. The ARPANET 
was funded by the US Department of 
Defense and launched in 1966. Packet 
switching was a novel technology at that 
time, challenging the established circuit 
switching technique used in telephone 
networks. The two key advantages of 
packet switching over circuit switching 
were efficient resource sharing and resil-
ience against node and link failures. Some 
scientists and engineers doubted packet 
switching could be implemented due to its 
complexity.
In 1969, the ARPANET project built 
an experimental packet switched net-
work connecting a few computer sites. In 
subsequent years, the ARPANET was 
refined and expanded to the network 
shown in 
.
Fig.
2.2
. The first interna-
2.2 · Timeline for the ICT Evolution

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Optical fibers were invented in 1965 and, as the technology matured during the 1980s, 
eventually provided a high-speed global ICT infrastructure for the Internet. Most of 
the Internet backbone network is built using optical fibers. A single optical fiber, 
which is thinner than a human hair, can carry several hundred terabytes of data per 
second. An optical cable, consisting of several (sometimes hundreds of) optical fibers, 
can accommodate all traffic generated on the Internet today. With optical fiber tech-
nology, the Internet can be built with abundant capacity for decades to come.
One of the first “killer applications” of the Internet was e-mail which was stan-
dardized in 1982 with the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). E-mail soon 
became the key technology for exchange of messages.
The first commercially available microprocessor was the Intel 4004, released in 
1971. It was based on the transistor technology that had been commercialized two 
decades earlier, enabling reliable and low-cost digital computing. Today, microprocessors 
are found in everything from computers to smartphones, refrigerators, cars, and toys. 
The personal computer (PC) was developed in the early 1970s, but it did not reach the 
mass market until 1977 with the release of Apple II and Commodore PET.
The PC disrupted the existing time-sharing mainframe and minicomputer sys-
tems by offering a dedicated low-cost multipurpose computing device for end users. 
The Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) was released in 1981. It pro-
vided the technological basis for Microsoft’s later products and dominance in the 
digital economy. The first laptop available for the mass market was the Toshiba 
T1100, released in 1985. The laptop is a PC combining display, keyboard, input- 
output devices, and storage in a miniaturized package. In 2018, more than 160 
million laptops were sold (Shipment forecast of tablets, laptops and desktop PCs 
worldwide from 2010 to 2024. Statista, 2020). However, this number is small com-
pared to the over 1.5 billion smartphones sold the same year (Number of smart-
phones sold worldwide from 2007 to 2021. Statista, 2020).
tional connection in the ARPANET was 
to Norway via a satellite link in 1973.
ARPANET was the predecessor of 
the Internet where the key technologies in 
the current Internet were developed and 
tested. This includes packet switching, 
protocol layering, and the TCP/IP proto-
col suite. Many of the early services of 
the Internet, such as e-mail and file trans-
fers, were also first developed and tested 
on the ARPANET. The ARPANET 
was decommissioned and replaced by 
NSFNET in 1990 and became the first