Protocol that opened up the internet turns 25

MUMBAI: If you happened to see the Google homepage on January 1, you would be wondering why the internet giant tweaked the figure of 2008 into a wire and plug.

Well, January 1, 2008, marks the 25th anniversary of a protocol that has become the foundation of internet connectivity around the world.

On January 1, 1983, ARPAnet, a network run by the US Department of Defense, switched over to a set of protocols called TCP/IP for communication between a few hundred computers.

According to Rohit Srivastwa, an internet security expert, “TCP/IP is the most simple, flexible and easiest to implement protocol.”

What is TCP/IP? It is a set of rules on how packets of information are transmitted from one computer to another. “The simplicity of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) took the internet out of universities and brought it to the common public,” Srivastwa said.

According to Dror Shalev, a security expert from Israel, “one of the founders of TCP/IP had told me more than a decade ago that this would be one of the greatest inventions of all time.”

Indeed it has been. TCP/IP gave us the http that precedes every website address. The hypertext transfer protocol falls in the application level of TCP/IP. Also the fact that more than 90 per cent of computers globally run on TCP/IP makes it more significant.

Thus, January 1 is not about welcoming the New Year alone; it’s about celebrating the spread of the internet as well. So let’s raise a toast to TCP/IP.