As Net turns 40, barriers threaten its growth

From connecting two computers together to get a network in an office to world wide social networking, the Internet has come a long way in its 40-year life. Yet there are more breakthroughs to achieve and a long way to go.

Here's how those responsible for creating the internet look back at how their baby has grown in past years...

Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online. Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web.

Social networking and shopping online may be the shape of the Internet today,
but 40 years ago this was the Internet.

It was on September 2, 1969, that engineers first successfully made two computers share information creating the first network that today we use as the Internet.

Kleinrock told AP that their team were motivated to developed a system to share information in order to beat Soviet Union in the technology game. And that led to the invention of this big and slow hawking machine that sent and received information on phone lines.

"We were thinking about machine to machine communication," said Kleinrock

Not exactly how Twitter sends messages but Klienrock said they soon achieved a breakthrough that helped them send not just data but personal messages.

And this creation of networks was further developed in laboratories and experts say what they did then was nothing like what we have today.

Since then the possibilities of communication have only increased

However, scientists say it is worrying how companies are controlling and putting limits on the free Web and hope there remains much more freedom for their experiment to keep growing in future.

There's still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness fostering it may be eroding. While the Internet is more widely available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth.