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The Internet began life as a research project sponsored by ARPA. Previously US defense computers were connected to each other in a one way fashion such that each computer was connected to the others in series. In case of one computer being destroyed all others would lose communication. To avoid this the government decided to connect the computers in a web with each computer connected to all others. The motivation was to connect the few then existing proprietary computer networks to one interconnected network. The first version of the Internet was called ARPANET and was implemented in 1969. It then consisted of 4 Nodes in UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Lab, and the University of Utah. It was to be the predecessor of what is today called the Internet.