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Network Geeks

How They Built the Internet

  • Book
  • © 2013

Overview

Authors:
  1. Brian E. Carpenter

    1. Auckland, New Zealand

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  • An entertaining and accessible account of the creation of the Internet

  • Written from first-hand experience of working on the development of the Internet in Europe

  • Explains the science and technology in simple and easy-to-understand language

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Hey Folks!

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 1-7

  3. Before My Time

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 9-25

  4. Where Do Geeks Come From?

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 27-38

  5. Going Up

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 39-52

  6. In Control

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 53-62

  7. Two Ivory Towers

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 63-77

  8. Diversity

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 79-95

  9. Economy Class

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 97-109

  10. Parallel Universes

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 111-125

  11. The Years of Miraculous Growth

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 127-140

  12. Going Under

    • Brian E. Carpenter
    Pages 141-150

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 151-161
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Keywords

About this book

The impact on modern society made by the Internet is immeasurable. Yet some questioned “why anyone would want such a thing” when the idea was first introduced.

Part history, part memoir and part cultural study, Network Geeks charts the creation of the Internet and the establishment of the Internet Engineering Task Force, from the viewpoint of a self-proclaimed geek who witnessed these developments first-hand. With boundless enthusiasm and abundant humour, Brian Carpenter leads the reader on a journey from post-war Britain to post-millennium New Zealand, describing how the Internet grew into today’s ubiquitous, global network, including the genesis of the World-Wide Web in the hotbeds of a particle collider at CERN. Illuminating the science and technology behind the apparent “magic trick” of the Internet, Network Geeks opens a window into the initially bewildering world of the Internet engineering geek. After reading this book, you may wish to join this world yourself.

Reviews

This is a geek page-turner! I learned much about the European side of the Internet's history that I did not know in detail and a lot about Brian himself, too. I don't know how he remembered so much in detail!

Vint Cerf

Internet Pioneer

Authors and Affiliations

  • Auckland, New Zealand

    Brian E. Carpenter

About the author

Dr. Brian Carpenter is a physicist, computer scientist, and engineer born in Leicester, England just after World War II and educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester. As leader of the networking group at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, he was in at the birth of the European Internet in the late 1980s, and the World-Wide Web was invented elsewhere in the same building. He has been an active participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force for many years and chaired it in 2005-2007. He’s also chaired both the Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Society. As well as CERN, he’s worked for IBM, and for Massey University and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He has numerous technical publications to his name, including more than thirty Internet Request for Comment documents.

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