This is my field of study, actually, but I'm not going to do your homework for you. One of the tricky points is determining what you mean when you say "internet," since today most people hear "internet" and thing "world wide web."

One of the underrated and understated reasons that internet networking was so revolutionary at the time and such a great challenge was getting the various, proprietary mega-computers with different operating systems to "play nice." Hopefully the development of the P in TCP/IP (Protocol) is going to get some major mention.

Hopefully you're reading or have read Where Wizards Stay Up Late, which is a great overview of the development of the earliest internet nodes by BBN and the early fights with telcom. Nerds 2.0 is another good text about the early networking pioneers.

At work right now, so I'll check back later and see if there are more and better answers or more specific questions.

Something interesting to add to your report and further research is a map of the early internet.

Since no one else has approached this, I'll give an answer that's less snarky framed in a way that I think can't be easily just copypasta'd into whatever paper you've read the wikipedia articles about. Most of this comes from the two sources listed below, so hopefully you'll do due diligence in terms of follow up, research, and citation.

A little less snarkily, you seriously need to consider what you're researching when you say "the Internet." That seems to be a view that approaches the Internet as some sort of natural phenomenon that was slowly discovered or revealed. The whole reason it's called "internet" is because its a simple (and increasingly invisible) hodge podge of applications and languages unified by their use of the BBN protocol as a backbone.

It sounds like you're interested in the history of the networking of computers, so your framework here isn't bad. You just need to build a firmer definition of what you're analyzing.

1. DARPA is the impetus for a program that attempts to connect the handful of very gigantic and and very expensive computers. These computers were all made basically to order by companies like Honeywell and Hewlett Packard and IBM. They didn't and couldn't communicate.

2. BBN solved that problem. They re the focus of Where Wizards Stay Up Late. To give an idea how new an idea this stuff is at the time, this little partnership company or whatever's bread and butter is acoustic engineering.

Ok, so now you have the ability for very eccentric computer systems to actually be connected to each other. Yay! Now what? You need to develop a method for them to actually communicate with each other in a way that has a high tolerance for loss and interference up to and including, you know, nuclear strike.

I have serious doubts the network ever was, will be, or could be robust enough to survive that, but whatever. It's turned out to be pretty good for everything short of Armageddon. That's your packet switching.

Basically, if you are talking about core architecture and not applications, then there are at least two separate but connected things going on you need to talk about. The physical architecture of the system and the protocol of communication across that architecture.

EVERYONE THANK YOU FOR YOUR DISCUSSION ON THIS.

FYI, this history of the internet is a small portion of my paper as I will majorly focus on communication and information on the internet such as clouding computing and how social media works...

Thanks for the awesome discussion, please send dm me a paypal and ill send you over a dollar for your help. Much love LT