The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is always a good source for the latest in Internet advances.
Here is a good web page index which gives you everything you wanted to know about the history of the Internet.
And PBS has an interesting visual display of Internet history.
For the latest on IPv6, check out the IPv6 organization's web page.
For the technical details on XML, read W3's technical documents.
For a tutorial on XML, examine this web page.
To read a tutorial on TCP, look at SSFNET's web page.
For the latest on Internet2, go to the Internet2 home page.
Remember that during the virtual circuit example, a circuit made of tables is created before any packets travel the network.