A short history of the early Internet
The starting point for the Internet is considered to be some memos by J Licklider of MIT sent in August 1962 discussing his “Galactic Network” concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. Licklider was also first head of the computer research programme at DARPA.

In 1965 Lawrence Roberts and Thomas Merrill – watched anxiously by Leonard Kleinrock, who had proposed using packets of information – connected two computers together across the US, making it the first WAN (wide area network).

Working at DARPA in 1967, Roberts proposed ARPANET based on the packet network concept. ARPANET came online in 1969 with four host computers connected together. The technology was demonstrated to the general public in 1972. The same year the concept of electronic mail was introduced, with Ray Tomlinson of BBN writing the basic email message send and read software.

It was from here that ARPANET grew into the Internet, the concept that a group of multiple independent networks could work together. The idea of the open-network architecture came from Robert E. Khan, also in 1972. His program was called “Internetting” and based on a packet radio scenario. Having problems with the original NCP (network control protocol) he came up with the basis for the idea of what would eventually become the common TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

The first paper on the subject was a joint effort between Khan and Vinton G. Cerf that outlined the TCP part of the TCP/IP protocol. In 1983 ARPANET moved off NCP to TCP/IP but it had already been adopted by the military three years earlier.

In 1973 came the advent of Ethernet technology and by the early 1980s the growth of Local Area Networks (LANs), PCs and other workstations saw the young Internet grow. One big step was the introduction of the Domain Name System (DNS), invented by Paul Mockapetris of USC/ISI. The DNS permitted a scalable distributed way to resolve hierarchical host names (eg, www.seansite.net) into an Internet address.

The next step was to improve the message routing systems, which spawned the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) used inside each region of the Internet, and an Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) used to tie the regions together. This design permitted different regions to use a different IGP, giving greater flexibility to the network.

So by 1985 the Internet was already in place as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers. Even before 1985, a number of networks were built specifically for individual groups. They primarily served scholars and researchers along with various government and military organisations.

ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990 but due to the efforts of NSFNET, TCP/IP was dominating most of the other wide-area computer network protocols worldwide, and IP was well on its way to becoming the standard service for the global information infrastructure.

A major key to the rapid growth of the Internet has been the free and open access to basic documents, especially the specifications of the protocols. Groups like the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), and a host of others including IAB, IESG and IETF , to throw some alphabet soup at you, eventually led to the formation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This was initially led from MIT’s Lab for Computer Science by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web.

Taking the Internet commercial
Up until the middle of 1985, there were no real commercial uses of the technology and it was mostly a research sharing and communication platform.

People started by adding TCP/IP support to their products while at the same time supporting their own protocols like SNA, NetBios and others. With some workshops in 1985 presented to over 300 different interests, the community was surprised by how open the innovators were and it started the kind of bilateral information sharing that has continued until today.

By 1988 the first Interop trade show was conducted and people saw how things could work together for their benefit. Since then Interop has grown to be conducted in multiple locations around the world. During the same period IETF meetings were held to talk about extensions to the TCP/IP protocol.

Also by 1988 the Simple Network Management Protocol, or SMTP, was chosen to allow for remote management of elements like network routers. Even today SMTP is still the most common network management protocol in use.

From here the Internet grew into what we have today – a vastly commercialised and in some ways over-burdened structure. At one end are the vendors with their basic networking solutions and in the middle are the service providers or ISPs who give us the connectivity and basic services. At the other end are the users and browsers also connecting through an ISP.

The result is a commodity-driven service and to a large extent the original purpose of the Internet as an information sharing resource has been overshadowed by the commercial elements. The result is a shift in focus towards better ways to support this commercialism and hence new initiatives like the updated forms and XML specifications.

We saw the early browser wars won by Microsoft and now the new mini war, which I hope is won by Opera or Firefox. The next battle will be how to get more people connected to the Internet to be able to exchange goods and services for money.

On October 24, 1995 the Federal Networking Council (FNC) unanimously passed a resolution defining the term Internet. The definition was as follows:

“‘Internet’ refers to the global information system that _ (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.”

In other words, a network based on TCP/IP for everyone’s use.

How the Internet develops from here will depend on how the change is managed. In the past the decisions came from a core group of engineers who were not looking at the business considerations but the best way to get it all hooked together and working correctly and smoothly.

Over time the focus has gradually shifted and a large number of special interest groups with a lot of commercial might have started to influence even the so called standards bodies. The shift continues from intellectual to economic stakeholding and in some cases the shifts are towards proprietary technology and not open ones.

We are seeing domain name wars where the individual is forced to give up their long-held domain because some company wants it and, worse, these actions are sometimes supported by bodies like the W3C.

As more and more people want to join the Internet club the question becomes how to manage the growth. There are real costs in expanding network bandwidth and the resulting structures need to be coordinated and controlled not by business interests but by groups who want to continue to see the Internet be what it was intended to be.

Without a coordinated approach we could start to see some serious fracturing of the network and see segments become isolated, within regions or countries or by socio economic groupings. Once that happens it will signal the end of the original dream.

In the early stages of the Second World War (1939-1945) Thailand continued receiving its opium from countries like Iran and Turkey, but after the Thais sided with the Japanese Empire late in 1941, these markets were quickly cut off. In May 1942 the Thai Northern Army, commanded by General Phin Choonhaven, moved into the Shan States of northeastern Burma in support of the overall Japanese invasion of that country, establishing its headquarters in the town of Kengtung and thereby gaining access to the locally grown product as well as Chinese opium.

By virtue of their alliance with the Japanese, Thailand was granted permission to annex the Shan States, becoming known as the United Thai State. Within a few months, nearly 37,000 kilos of opium had been exported to Bangkok. The war had little effect on Chinese opium exports into the the Southeast Asian region. The nationalist Chinese, or Kuomintang (KMT), controlled southern China and although they were engaged in a bitter war the Chinese continued to sell large quantities to the Japanese.

For the first time, the Golden Triangle region became a significant opium producer, increasing output from just over 15,000 kilos in 1940 to 98,000 kilos in 1944.

As the war began to go badly for Japan- and consequently Thailand as well, the Northern Army was ordered to quit the Shan States. A number of key Thai military figures who dominated the opium trade after the Second World War saw service in the Shan States. With the surrender of Japan and the end of the war in 1945, the number of opium addicts in Thailand remained virtually unchanged from pre-war levels.

Considering the size and proximity of the market, is is somewhat surprising there was very little poppy cultivation in Thailand prior to the 1940s. However, from 1945 on wards, the Golden Triangle region continued its massive expansion. The region became the number one producer of opium and its derivative, heroin, in less than three decades.

In December 1946, the United Nations sponsored Commission on Narcotic Drugs passed a resolution calling for the abolition of ‘opium-smoking in the Far East’, invoking an article in the international drug convention signed at The Hague in January 1912. The Commission criticized Thailand for being the only country in the Southeast Asian region where a legal government monopoly still operated.

The Commission also passed a resolution calling for an end to non-medical opium exports as soon as possible. Iran, a major exporter Thailand, had passed a ban on opium production in April 1946 thereby forcing the Thai government to authorize poppy cultivation in the northern hills.

In November 1947, a coup returned Marshal Pibulsongkram to power in Thailand. The coup saw the rise of two powerful army cliques, one controlled by Colonel Sarit Thanarat and the other led by the Army Commander, General Phin and his son-in-law Colonel Phao Sriyanonda.

In 1948, the Thai government announced the introduction of an anti-opium campaign designed to end smoking of the substance by 1953. Yet it became clear to the two controlling cliques the opium trade was very lucrative and the anti-opium campaign was quietly abandoned. They recognized the enormous profits to be made from opium and both harbored desires to control it.

In 1949, when Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung) led his communist forces to victory over the Kuomintang in China, the bulk of the KMT forces fled to Taiwan while elements crossed the southern Chinese border and set up camps in the Shan States of northern Burma, as well as parts of Laos and Thailand.

Within a decade, mainland China ceased to be the world’s major opium market as the new government instituted harsh measures to eradicate drug addiction. Shanghai’s narcotics syndicates fled to British-controlled Hong Kong, opening heroin factories and expanding into Southeast Asia.

During the early 1950′s, the KMT-controlled areas of northern Burma turned to opium trading to finance their military incursions into southern China. Through a mixture of incentives and coercion, the KMT compelled local hill tribes to markedly expand their production of opium. The opium caravans then trekked south into Thailand and were sold to brokers who distributed the drug around the world.

Although ostensibly opposed to the growing of opium and production of heroin, forces within the United States government were prepared to turn a blind eye in favor of the bigger picture: the war against communism.

The growth of opium production in the Golden Triangle region was spurred by two factors. The first was the abolition of legal or government-controlled opium monopolies, thereby creating a demand for the now illegal substance. The second was the Cold War, which brought together an unholy alliance of right-wing forces opposed to the spread of communism.

Thus, the American, French and Thai intelligence services became loosely allied and supported KMT operations in northern Burma, Laos and Thailand, turning a blind eye to opium production and using the profits as a source of revenue to wage the Cold War against communist China.