Internet History


1960's

Leonard Kleinrock, MIT: "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" (July) First paper on packet-switching (PS) theory J.C.R. Licklider & W. Clark, MIT: "On-LineManComputerCommunication"(August)Galactic Network concept encompassing distributed social interactions Paul Baran, RAND: "On Distributed Communications Networks"Packet-switching networks; no single outage point ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing computers" TX-2 at MIT Lincoln Lab and AN/FSQ-32 at System Development Corporation (Santa Monica, CA) are directly linked (without packet switches) via a dedicated 1200bps phone line; Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computer at ARPA later added to form "The Experimental Network".


1970's

First publication of the original ARPANET Host-Host protocol: C.S. Carr, S. Crocker,V.G.Cerf,"HOST-HOSTCommunication 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, becomesoperational (July) (:sk2:) connected to the ARPANET in 1972 ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), firsthost-to-hostprotocol 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. 15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames BBN starts building IMPs using the cheaper Honeywell 316. IMPs however are limited to 4 host connections,and so BBN develops a terminal IMP (TIP) that supports up to 64 hosts (September) Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network. The original program was derived from two others: an intra-machine email program (SENDMSG) and an experimental file transfer program (CPYNET) (:amk:irh:) Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March) Larry Roberts writes first email management program (RD) to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages (July) International Conference on Computer Communications (ICCC) at the Washington D.C. Hilton with demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines and the Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn. (October) First computer-to-computer chat takes place at UCLA, and is repeated during ICCC, as psychotic PARRY (at Stanford) discusses its problems with the Doctor (at BBN). International Network Working Group (INWG) formed in October as a result of a meeting at ICCC identifying the need for a combined effort in advancing networking technologies. Vint Cerf appointed first Chair. By 1974, INWG became IFIP WG 6.1 (:vgc:) Louis Pouzin leads the French effort to build its own ARPANET - CYCLADES RFC 318: Telnet specification.


1980's

ARPANET grinds to a complete halt on 27 October because of an accidentally-propagated status-message virus First C/30-based IMP at BBN BITNET, the "Because It's Time NETwork" Started as a cooperative network at the City University of New York, with the first connection to Yale (:feg:) Original acronym stood for 'There' instead of 'Time' in reference to the free NJE protocols provided with the IBM systems. Provides electronic mail and listserv servers to distribute information, as well as file transfers CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) built by a collaboration of computer scientists and Univ of Delaware, Purdue Univ, Univ of Wisconsin, RAND Corporation and BBN through seed money granted by NSF to provide networking services (especially email) to university scientists with no access to ARPANET. CSNET later becomes known as the Computer and Science Network. (:amk,lhl:) C/30 IMPs predominate the network; first C/30 TIP at SAC Minitel (Teletel) is deployed across France by France Telecom. True Names by Vernor Vinge (:pds:) RFC 801: NCP/TCP Transition Plan Norway leaves network to become an Internet connection via TCP/IP over SATNET; UCL does the same DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET. (:vgc:) This leads to one of the first definitions of an "internet" as a connected set of networks, specifically those using TCP/IP, and "Internet" as connected TCP/IP internets. DoD declares TCP/IP suite to be standard for DoD (:vgc:) EUnet (European UNIX Network) is created by EUUG to provide email and USENET services. (:glg:) original connections between the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and UK Exterior Gateway Protocol (RFC 827) specification. EGP is used for gateways between networks.


1990's

ARPANET ceases to exist 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) First connection takes place between Brazil, by Fapesp, and the Internet at 9600 baud. Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Association, Inc. formed by General Atomics (CERFnet), Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSInet), and UUNET Technologies, Inc. (AlterNet), after NSF lifts restrictions on the commercial use of the Net (March) (:glg:) Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle, released by Thinking Machines Corporation Gopher released by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the Univ of Minnesota World-Wide Web (WWW) released by CERN; Tim Berners-Lee developer (:pb1:) PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman (:ad1:) US High Performance Computing Act (Gore 1) establishes the National Research and Education Network (NREN) NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps) NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion packets/month Defense Data Network NIC contract awarded by DISA to Government Systems Inc. who takes over from SRI in May Start of JANET IP Service (JIPS) which signalled the changeover from Coloured Book software to TCP/IP within the UK academic network. IP was initially 'tunneled' within X.25. (:gst:) RFC 1216: Gigabit Network Economics and Paradigm Shifts RFC 1217: Memo from the Consortium for Slow Commotion Research (CSCR) Countries connecting to NSFNET: Croatia (HR), Czech Republic (CZ), Hong Kong (HK), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Singapore (SG), South Africa (ZA), Taiwan (TW), Tunisia (TN) Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered (January) IAB reconstituted as the Internet Architecture Board and becomes part of the Internet Society Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000 First MBONE audio multicast (March) and video multicast (November) RIPE Network Coordination Center (NCC) created in April to provide address registration and coordination services to the European Internet community (:dk1:) Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by Univ of Nevada World Bank comes on-line The term "surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly (:jap:) Zen and the Art of the Internet is published by Brendan Kehoe (:jap:) Internet Hunt started by Rick Gates RFC 1300: Remembrances of Things Past RFC 1313: Today's Programming for KRFC AM 1313 - Internet Talk Radio Countries connecting to NSFNET: Antarctica (AQ), Cameroon (CM), Cyprus (CY), Ecuador (EC), Estonia (EE), Kuwait (KW), Latvia (LV), Luxembourg (LU), Malaysia (MY), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI), Thailand


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