Week 1: Introduction: History and structure of the Internet

History and structure of the Internet, terminology, ISP tiers, packet switching vs. circuit switching, sources of delay.

Lecture notes:
Introduction - Lecture slides (6 per page)
Recitation notes:
Introduction - Recitation slides (6 per page)
Supplemental notes:
Gerard J. Holzmann, Björn Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks, Wiley-IEEE Computer Society, December 1994
Discusses the emergence of communication networks through history. The link above contains the first three chapters of the book.
The Internet: changing the way we communicate, National Science Foundation
Light reading on a brief history of the Internet from the NSF's perspective
NSF and the Birth of the Internet
NSF's interactive timeline with a set of vidoes discussing the development of the Internet.
Cooke, J. Robert, The Origin and History of the Internet, a lecture by Ken King, Cornell Univeristy video, February 17, 2011.
Kenneth M. King traces the evolution of the Internet from its roots in higher education.
Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Lawrence G. Roberts, Stephen S. Wolff, The Past and Future History of the Internet, Communications of the ACM, February 1997, Vol. 40, No. 2, Copyright held by the authors.
A story of the origins of the Internet by a few of its creators.
Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff, Brief History of the Internet, Internet Society, © 2012.
Very similar to the above paper with slight extensions.
Terms with which you should be familiar:
Broadcast, unicast, synchronization, relay, control data, message data, acknowledgement, negative acknowledgement, congestion, flow control, message encoding, best-effort delivery, IMP, router, NCP, network core, network edge, peers, internetwork, media, switch, modem, ISP, ISP tier, FDM (frequency division multiplexing), TDM (time division multiplexing), circuit switching, packet switching, baseband, broadband, processing delay, queuing delay, transmission delay, propagation delay.