The beginning of Internet technology can be traced to 1969, when the Advanced Research Projects Agency, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, conducted research on networking. Their goal was to design a network that allowed computers on different types of networks to communicate with each other.
During the 1960s and 1970s, many computer networking technologies were created, each based on a particular hardware design. Some of these networks, called Local Area Networks (LANs), connect computers over short distances, using cables and hardware installed on each computer. Other larger networks, called Wide Area Networks (WANs), connect many computers over larger distances, using transmission lines similar to those used in telephone systems.
Although LANs and WANs made it much easier to share information within organizations, the information stopped at the boundaries of each network. Each networking technology moved information around in a different way, often based on the design of its hardware. A particular LAN technology could only work with specific computers, and most LAN and WAN technologies were incompatible with each other.
The Internet was designed to interconnect the different types of networks and allow information to move freely among users, regardless of the machines or networks they used. It did this by adding special computers, called routers, to connect LANs and WANs of different types. The connected computers needed a common protocol, a shared set of rules describing how to transmit data. The new networking protocol was called TCP/IP. Together, TCP/IP and the system of connected networks formed the Internet.