Wide area network in the context of "Optical networking"

The history of the Internet originated in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom.

A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or via a wide area network, most commonly the Internet (e.g. World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, DayZ). Multiplayer games usually require players to share a single game system or use networking technology to play together over a greater distance; players may compete against one or more human contestants, work cooperatively with a human partner to achieve a common goal, or supervise other players' activity. Due to multiplayer games allowing players to interact with other individuals, they provide an element of social communication absent from single-player games.

The history of multiplayer video games extends over several decades, tracing back to the emergence of electronic gaming in the mid-20th century. One of the earliest instances of multiplayer interaction was witnessed with the development of Spacewar! in 1962 for the DEC PDP-1 computer by Steve Russell and colleagues at the MIT. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, multiplayer gaming gained momentum within the arcade scene with classics like Pong and Tank. The transition to home gaming consoles in the 1980s further popularized multiplayer gaming. Titles like Super Mario Bros. for the NES and Golden Axe for the Sega Genesis introduced cooperative and competitive gameplay. Additionally, LAN gaming emerged in the late 1980s, enabling players to connect multiple computers for multiplayer gameplay, popularized by titles like Doom and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Players can also play together in the same room using splitscreen.

A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of data and sharing network devices, such as printers.

The LAN contrasts the wide area network (WAN), which not only covers a larger geographic distance, but also generally involves leased telecommunication circuits or Internet links. An even greater contrast is the Internet, which is a system of globally connected business and personal computers.

Ethernet (/ˈiːθərnɛt/ EE-thər-net) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3. Ethernet has since been refined to support higher bit rates, a greater number of nodes, and longer link distances, but retains much backward compatibility. Over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as Token Ring, FDDI and ARCNET.

The original 10BASE5 Ethernet uses a thick coaxial cable as a shared medium. This was largely superseded by 10BASE2, which used a thinner and more flexible cable that was both less expensive and easier to use. More modern Ethernet variants use twisted pair and fiber optic links in conjunction with switches. Over the course of its history, Ethernet data transfer rates have been increased from the original 2.94 Mbit/s to the latest 800 Gbit/s, with rates up to 1.6 Tbit/s under development. The Ethernet standards include several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI physical layer.

A cooperative video game, often abbreviated as co-op video game, is a video game that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents (PvE). Co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers or over a network via local area networks, wide area networks, or the Internet.

Co-op gameplay has gained popularity as controller and networking technology has developed. On PCs, consoles and mobile devices, cooperative games have become increasingly common, and many genres of games—including shooter games, sports games, real-time strategy games, and massively multiplayer online games—include co-op modes.