Wikipedia:The Internet The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust,fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks.This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S.backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s,and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life.As of 2009,an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet. Introduction 1-10Introduction 1-10 Wikipedia: The Internet q The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet