A dot address (sometimes known as a dotted quad address) refers to the notation that expresses the four-byte (32-bit) IP address as a sequence of four decimal numbers separated by dots. Each number represents the binary value of one of four bytes. Look at this Internet address, for example: 205.245.172.72.
In 1974, after many failed attempts, a paper published by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, also known as âthe fathers of the Internet,â resulted in the protocol TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), which by 1978 would become TCP/IP (with the IP standing for Internet Protocol).
The Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah).