Network inventory discovery

At its inception, the Internet bore almost no resemblance to the lightning-fast Web we surf today. Created in the 1960s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the Department of Defense, the first generation of Internet (called ARPANET) was a way for military institutions and universities to trade information, according to Dave McClure, president and CEO of the US Internet Industry Association. "The idea popped up that maybe it was possible, with this new generation of computers, to kind of link them together so they could talk to each other," McClure said.

Using network inventory discovery, users could log into and print from computers in other locations, view text files and transfer files back and forth. There were no Web sites, Web browsers or chat rooms - it was simply the trading of information from computer to computer, McClure said. Because ARPANET's first four computers ran on different operating systems (a current-day example is a Windows PC communicating with a Mac), its designers needed to devise a set of rules, or protocols, that would allow them to communicate without crashing the system. In 1983, ARPANET adopted Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which is the same protocol that allows PCs and Macs to live in harmony on the Internet today, McClure said.