The history of the Internet begins with the development of electronic computers i
n the 1950s. Initial concepts of packet networking originated in several computer
science laboratories in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. The US Dep
artment of Defense awarded contracts as early as the 1960s for packet network sys
tems, including the development of the ARPANET. The first message was sent over t
he ARPANET from computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock's laboratory at Univ
ersity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to the second network node at Stanford R
esearch Institute (SRI). Packet switching networks such as ARPANET, NPL network, 
CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s an
d early 1970s using a variety of communications protocols. Donald Davies first de
signed a packet-switched network at the National Physics Laboratory in the UK, wh
ich became a testbed for UK research for almost two decades. The ARPANET project 
led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separa
te networks could be joined into a network of networks. Access to the ARPANET was
 expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer 
Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was introd
uced as the stan					     he early 1980s the N
SF funded the es					     rs at several univer
sities, and prov					     T project, which als
o created networ					     ited States from res
earch and educat					     e providers (ISPs) b
egan to emerge i					     issioned in 1990. Li
mited private co					     lly commercial entit
ies emerged in s					     and the NSFNET was d
ecommissioned in					      use of the Internet
to carry commerc					     n Switzerland by Bri
tish computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee resulted in the World Wide Web, linking h
ypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the ne
twork. Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on cultur
e, commerce, and technology, including the rise of near-instant communication by 
electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone
calls, two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussio
n forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites. The research and e
ducation community continues to develop and use advanced networks such as NSF's v
ery high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), Internet2, and National LambdaRai
l. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fi
ber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more. The Internet's take
over of the global communication landscape was almost instant in historical terms
: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunic
ations networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the t
elecommunicated information by 2007. Today the Internet continues to grow, driven
by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and socia
l networking.