The following are excerpts from my book, which details how I co-founded Digital Island, an international telecommunications company, in 1996. In this role, I was responsible for acquiring the network infrastructure that connected all of the regionally significant ISPs together worldwide, seamlessly over one autonomous network, for the effective globalization of the internet and web.

In addition to other internet milestones that we achieved, this book explains how this new global network enabled:

1. The globalization of eCommerce in collaboration with Visa, MasterCard, Charles Schwab, and E*Trade
2. The globalization of eLearning and ePublishing with Stanford University
3. The largest media streaming network in the world, in partnership with Microsoft, Intel, and Compaq
4. The first commercial internet connectivity with the People's Republic of China, which I contracted for during my travels to Beijing to negotiate the terms of service with the Minister of Telecom
5. The first on-demand allocation of bandwidth over the internet, aka Reservation Resource Protocol
6. The first global Content Delivery Network (CDN), aka Local Content Manager
7. The award and recognition as the world's first "Cisco Powered Network," which became the industry benchmark

For a common understanding of what the internet is actually made of, we must first clarify that the software codes of the Internet protocol suite, also known as TCP/IP (Robert Kahn & Vinton Cerf, c. 1974), and the World Wide Web (WWW, Timothy Berners-Lee, c. 1989), initiated the software development of what later became a seamless global physical networking infrastructure, commonly referred to as the "internet" or "web."

Clearly, however, the software running on a website server or displayed in a desktop browser application does not physically constitute the internet or web. The actual realization of the internet as a functioning global network is a totally separate endeavor, costing billions of dollars in capital investment and requiring many different and entirely distinct areas of physical network, infrastructure specialization, and vast amounts of expert human collateral.

For historical context, keep in mind that even though the software code for TCP/IP was written in 1974 and for WWW in 1989, there was only one website at the beginning of 1992, and this had to do with the WWW code being restricted to government use only until 1994. Consequently, despite their conceptual importance, before the date of the public software release of the WWW code, the internet, as a physical platform, had not experienced any investment or user adoption.

This book provides an overview of how the financial and commercial sectors became involved in my team's entrepreneurial journey, which started with the creation and assembly of a business case, network architecture, customer acquisitions, specialized human collateral, and a $779 million speculative venture capital investment. Beginning in 1996, we started making this investment to fully realize the potential of those software codes, originally written and intended for worldwide implementation twenty-two years prior for TCP/IP and seven years prior for WWW.

These networking inventions, investments, and installations are what sparked the revolution of information sharing and, in doing so, contributed to changing the way humans communicate. The creation and globalization of the internet are widely considered among the most transformational events in human history.

Subsequently, the realization of the internet protocol suite, when combined as originally intended with the physical global network infrastructure, triggered the explosive exponential growth of the internet and web, thereby fundamentally and profoundly transforming our modern societies and civilization.