Distributed Network

Paul Baran developed the concept at the RAND Corporation in the early 1960s, commissioned to design a communications system survivable in a nuclear attack. His landmark 1964 series On Distributed Communications introduced the three-topology diagram — centralized, decentralized, and distributed — and paired the distributed model with packet switching, routing data in discrete chunks through redundant paths. His work directly influenced ARPANET (1969), the precursor to the internet.