What happened next
The Department of Defense also developed the MILnet, a network for not as much top-secret information, which linked with the ARPAnet. And in 1986 another US government agency the National Science Foundation (NSF) created a network of five supercomputer centers called (unsurprisingly) NSFnet. NSFnet was so successful that in 1990 it replaced ARPAnet. NSFnet provided links to academic institutions all round the country, this was accomplished by making smaller regional set of networks connecting universities to there nearest neighbors in chains that connect at one end to one of the five supercomputer centers. This meant that any computer on the network could communicate with any other computer on any of the chains by passing the conversation on through its neighbor. (Like 'pass the parcel'.) This could be interpreted as the first sight of the Internet as we know it.
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