ARPANET – the first wide-area packet switching network, developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States, and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite which later became a technical foundation of the Internet.
SATNET – an early satellite packet-switched network, also developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which implemented TCP/IP before the ARPANET.
Merit Network – a computer network created in 1966 to connect the mainframe computers at universities that is currently the oldest running regional computer network in the United States.
CYCLADES – a French research network created in the early 1970s that pioneered the concept of internetworking by making the hosts responsible for the reliable delivery of data on a packet-switched network, rather than this being a service of the network itself.
Computer Science Network (CSNET) – a computer network created in the United States for computer science departments at academic and research institutions that could not be directly connected to ARPANET, due to funding or authorization limitations. It played a significant role in spreading awareness of, and access to, national networking and was a major milestone on the path to development of the global Internet.
National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) – an American networking project, initially created to link researchers to the NSF-funded supercomputing centers that, through further public funding and private industry partnerships, developed into a major part of the early Internet backbone.
Censorship – the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or "inconvenient" as determined by government authorities or by community consensus.
Internet censorship – the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet enacted by regulators or self-censorship.
Content control software – a type of software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access.
Domain name registry or Network Information Center (NIC) – a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System of the Internet that allow third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name.
Private sub-domain registry – an NIC which allocates domain names in a subset of the Domain Name System under a domain registered with an ICANN-accredited or ccTLD registry.
Internet Society (ISOC) – an American non-profit organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet-related standards, education, access, and policy.
InterNIC (historical) – the organization primarily responsible for Domain Name System (DNS) domain name allocations until 2011 when it was replaced by ICANN.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces of the Internet, ensuring the network's stable and secure operation.
Google – an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
Cultural and societal implications of the Internet
Sociology of the Internet – the application of sociological theory and methods to the Internet, including analysis of online communities, virtual worlds, and organizational and social change catalyzed through the Internet.
Digital sociology – a sub-discipline of sociology that focuses on understanding the use of digital media as part of everyday life, and how these various technologies contribute to patterns of human behavior, social relationships and concepts of the self.
