CS5229 Lecture 1: Design Principles of the Internet

David D. Clark's 1988 paper outlines the design philosophy of the early ARPANET network protocols. It describes how the ARPANET was designed to survive a nuclear war by using multiple redundant paths between hosts and dividing messages into blocks that could be forwarded independently through store-and-forward switching. The goal was to create a communications network that was robust and could continue operating even if parts of the network failed.