Communications and Networks

DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office (STO) is focused on technologies that enable fighting as a network to increase military effectiveness, cost leverage, and adaptability.

DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office (STO) is focused on technologies that enable fighting as a network to increase military effectiveness, cost leverage, and adaptability. STO's areas of interest include: Battle Management, Command and Control; Communications and Networks; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance; Electronic Warfare; Positioning, Navigation, and Timing; and Foundational Strategic Technologies and Systems.

ARPA research played a central role in launching the “information revolution,” including developing or furthering much of the conceptual basis for ARPANET, a pioneering network for sharing digital resources among geographically separated computers. Its initial demonstration in 1969 led to the Internet, whose world-changing consequences unfold on a daily basis today. A seminal step in this sequence took place in 1968 when ARPA contracted BBN Technologies to build the first routers, which one year later enabled ARPANET to become operational.

ARPA research played a central role in launching the Information Revolution. The agency developed and furthered much of the conceptual basis for the ARPANET—prototypical communications network launched nearly half a century ago—and invented the digital protocols that gave birth to the Internet.

A groundbreaking computer framework known as oN-Line System (NLS) got off the ground thanks to funding from DARPA and the U.S. Air Force. Conceived by Douglas Engelbart and developed by him and colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the NLS system was the first to feature hypertext links, a mouse, raster-scan video monitors, information organized by relevance, screen windowing, presentation programs and other modern computing concepts. In what became known as "The Mother of All Demos," because it demonstrated the revolutionary features of NLS as well as never-before-seen video presentation technologies, Engelbart unveiled NLS in San Francisco on December 9, 1968, to a large audience at the Fall Joint Computer Conference.