History of Internet

1950s 1957 USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the following year, within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military (:amk:)

1960s 1961 Leonard Kleinrock, MIT: "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" (July) First paper on packet-switching (PS) theory 1962 J.C.R. Licklider & W. Clark, MIT: "On-Line Man Computer Communication" (August) Galactic Network concept encompassing distributed social interactions 1964 Paul Baran, RAND: "On Distributed Communications Networks" Packet-switching networks; no single outage point

1970s 1970 First publication of the original ARPANET Host-Host protocol: C.S. Carr, S. Crocker, V.G. Cerf, "HOST-HOST Communication Protocol in the ARPA Network," in AFIPS Proceedings of SJCC (:vgc:) First report on ARPANET at AFIPS: "Computer Network Development to Achieve Resource Sharing" (March) ALOHAnet, the first packet radio network, developed by Norman Abramson, Univ of Hawaii, becomes operational (July) (:sk2:) connected to the ARPANET in 1972 ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), first host-to-host protocol First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps. This line is later replaced by another between BBN and RAND. A second line is added between MIT and Utah

1980s 1980 ARPANET grinds to a complete halt on 27 October because of an accidentally-propagated status-message virus First C/30-based IMP at BBN 1984 Domain Name System (DNS) introduced Number of hosts breaks 1,000 JUNET (Japan Unix Network) established using UUCP JANET (Joint Academic Network) established in the UK using the Coloured Book protocols; previously SERCnet Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET (mod.*) Neuromancer by William Gibson Canada begins a one-year effort to network its universities. The NetNorth Network is connected to BITNET in Ithaca from Toronto (:kf1:) Kremvax message announcing USSR connectivity to USENET 1987 NSF signs a cooperative agreement to manage the NSFNET backbone with Merit Network, Inc. (IBM and MCI involvement was through an agreement with Merit). Merit, IBM, and MCI later founded ANS. UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access. Originally an experiment by Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell First TCP/IP Interoperability Conference (March), name changed in 1988 to INTEROP Email link established between Germany and China using CSNET protocols, with the first message from China sent on 20 September. (:wz1:) 1000th RFC: "Request For Comments reference guide" Number of hosts breaks 10,000 Number of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000

1990s 1990 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is founded by Mitch Kapor Archie released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill Hytelnet released by Peter Scott (Univ of Saskatchewan) The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access ISO Development Environment (ISODE) developed to provide an approach for OSI migration for the DoD. ISODE software allows OSI application to operate over TCP/IP (:gck:) CA*net formed by 10 regional networks as national Canadian backbone with direct connection to NSFNET (:ec1:) The first remotely operated machine to be hooked up to the Internet, the Internet Toaster by John Romkey, (controlled via SNMP) makes its debut at Interop. Pictures: Internode, Invisible RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers RFC 1178: Choosing a Name for Your Computer Countries connecting to NSFNET: Argentina (AR), Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Brazil (BR), Chile (CL), Greece (GR), India (IN), Ireland (IE), Korea (KR), Spain (ES), Switzerland (CH) 1998 Hobbes' Internet Timeline is released as RFC 2235 & FYI 32 US Depart of Commerce (DoC) releases the Green Paper outlining its plan to privatize DNS on 30 January. This is followed up by a White Paper on June 5 La F�te de l'Internet, a country-wide Internet fest, is held in France 20-21 March Web size estimates range between 275 (Digital) and 320 (NEC) million pages for 1Q Companies flock to the Turkmenistan NIC in order to register their name under the .tm domain, the English abbreviation for trademark Internet users get to be judges in a performance by 12 world champion ice skaters on 27 March, marking the first time a television sport show's outcome is determined by its viewers. Network Solutions registers its 2 millionth domain on 4 May Electronic postal stamps become a reality, with the US Postal Service allowing stamps to be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web. Canada kicks off CA*net 3, the first national optical internet Compaq pays US$3.3million for altavista.com CDA II and a ban on Net taxes are signed into US law (21 October) ABCNews.com accidentally posts test US election returns one day early (2 November) Indian ISP market is deregulated in November causing a rush for ISP operation licenses US DoC enters into an agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers (ICANN) to establish a process for transitioning DNS from US Government management to industry (25 November) San Francisco sites without off-city mirrors go offline as the city blacks out on 8 December Chinese government puts Lin Hai on trial for "inciting the overthrow of state power" for providing 30,000 email addresses to a US Internet magazine (December) [ He is later sentenced to two years in jail ] French Internet users give up their access on 13 December to boycott France Telecom's local phone charges (which are in addition to the ISP charge) Open source software comes of age RFC 2321: RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent RFC 2322: Management of IP numbers by peg-dhcp RFC 2323: IETF Identification and Security Guidelines RFC 2324: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0) Country domains registered: Nauru (NR), Comoros (KM) Bandwidth Generators: Winter Olympics (Feb), World Cup (Jun-Jul), Starr Report (11 Sep), Glenn space launch Top 10 Domains by Host #: com, net, edu, mil, jp, us, uk ,de, ca, au Hacks of the Year: US Dept of Commerce (20 Feb), New York Times (13 Sep), China Society for Human Rights Studies (26 Oct), UNICEF (7 Jan) Technologies of the Year: E-Commerce, E-Auctions, Portals Emerging Technologies: E-Trade, XML, Intrusion Detection

2000s 2000 The US timekeeper (USNO) and a few other time services around the world report the new year as 19100 on 1 Jan

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