1. A wide area network (WAN), created in 1969 with funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Undergoing constant research and development in the earls to mid-l970s, ARPAnet served as the testbed for the development of TCP/IP (the protocols that make the Internet possible). A major goal of the ARPAnet project was to increase the military's command and control capability enabling communication across a variety of physically dissimilar media, including satellites. An allied goal was to create a robust network capable of withstanding outages, such as those that might result from a nuclear exchange. ARPAnet met these objectives, but it also surprised its creators: It was found in short order that most ARPAnet users preferred to use the network for communication, such as electronic mail and discussion groups. Initially, the ARPAnet was available only to government research institutes and to universities holding Department of Defense (DoD) research contracts. In 1983, ARPAnet was divided into a high-security military network (Milnet) and an ARPAanet that was recast as a research and development network. From QUECID