Before the World Wide Web came into existence, the Internet needed a way for computers to speak to one another. This is where Vinton Cerf, known to some as ``the father of the Internet'' \cite[1]{cerf}, brought us {\it Transmission Control Protocol} (TCP) and {\it Internet Protocol} (IP),  the standardized protocols that enables any two computers to communicate.


It was October 29th, 1969 when the first transmission was sent across the ARPANET between Stanford and UCLA \cite[1]{cerf}, and by December that year the first four packet-switching nodes were up and running. The four nodes were located at Stanford Research Institute, UCLA, UCSB, and University of Utah \cite[1]{cerf}.


Robert Kahn came to UCLA to help test the ARPANET, and with Cerf found that the ARPANET needed to handle transmission failures. Kahn specifically ``foresaw the need to link together packet-switched networks with different designs so that any computers could communicate freely, no matter what the communication path'' \cite[1]{cerf}.


Then by 1973, Cerf and Kahn came up with the basis for transmission control protocol (TCP), and in May of 1974, they co-authored a paper ``A Protocol For Packet Network Intercommunication'', describing the protocol, which the basis our our Internet today \cite[1]{cerf}:


\begin{quotation}
In particular, we have described a simple but very powerful and flexible protocol which provides for variation in individual network packet sizes, transmission failures, sequencing, flow control, and the creation and destruction of process-to-process associations. \cite[647]{cerfkahn}.
\end{quotation}
Kahn and Cerf created the protocol on top of the technology that had been created at ARPANET. Their technology provided a platform upon which any computers that ran on different software could communicate. It also provided a mechanism to handle failures, which is extremely important due to instabile nature of computer networks. The point here is that they created a protocol, or on some level, a standard for computers to speak to each other. It is the standard that enabled the World Wide Web possible.


TCP/IP