Improvements in the design and performance of the ARPA network

Abstract

In late 1968 the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense (ARPA) embarked on the implementation of a new type of computer network which would interconnect, via common-carrier circuits, a number of dissimilar computers at widely separated, ARPA-sponsored research centers. The primary purpose of this interconnection was resource sharing, whereby persons and programs at one research center might access data and interactively use programs that exist and run in other computers of the network. The interconnection was to be realized using wideband leased lines and the technique of message switching, wherein a dedicated path is not set up between computers desiring to communicate, but instead the communication takes place through a sequence of messages each of which carries an address. A message generally traverses several network nodes in going from source to destination, and at each node a copy of the message is stored until it is safely received at the following node.