IT lexicon Networking ARPANET

ARPANET

Networking På svenska → Updated: 2026-07-28
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Computer network

The packet-switched research network that became the internet.

Funded by the US ARPA. The first link came up on 29 October 1969 between UCLA and SRI; the first message was meant to be "LOGIN" but the system crashed after "LO". The nodes were IMPs — dedicated minicomputers that were effectively the world's first routers.

The myth that it was built to survive nuclear war is just that; the driver was sharing expensive computing resources. In 1983 NCP was replaced by TCP/IP, usually counted as the internet's birth. ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.

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