ARPANET Information Brochure

The purpose of this brochure is to provide a description of the ARPANET and an overview of its operational management policies and procedures. ARPANET is an operational, resource sharing inter-computer network linking a wide variety of computers in CONUS, Hawaii, Norway, and England. Its communications system introduced the revolutionary technique of packet switching where each message is broken up into small packets and each packet is switched to its destination over the quickest communications path available at any given instant. ARPANET was originally designed under a research and development program by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1969, Management responsibility of the network was transferred to Defense Communications Agency on July 1, 1975.