1957
The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response,
the United States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within
the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology
applicable to the military.
1962
RAND Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation (a government agency), was commissioned
by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and
control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to
be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized
so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military
could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.
Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish
this. His final proposal was a packet switched network.
ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer
as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was
constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles,
SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University
of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits
1972
The first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA)
ARPANET was currently using the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between hosts running on the same network.
1973
Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed
by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This
new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate
with each other.
1974
First Use of term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in paper on Transmission
Control Protocol
1976
Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which allowed coaxial cable to move
data extremely fast. This was a crucial component to the development of LANs.
The packet satellite project went into practical use. SATNET, Atlantic packet Satellite network, was born. This network linked the United States with Europe. Surprisingly, it used INTELSAT satellites that were owned by a consortium of countries and not exclusively the United States government.
UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.
The Department of Defense began to experiment with the TCP/IP
protocol and soon decided to require it for use on ARPANET
1979
USENET (the decentralized news group network) was created by Steve Bellovin,
a graduate student at University of North Carolina, and programmers Tom Truscott
and Jim Ellis. It was based on UUCP.
The Creation of BITNET, by IBM, "Because its Time Network",
introduced the "store and forward" network. It was used for email
and listservs
1981
National Science Foundation created backbone called CSNET 56 Kbps network
for institutions without access to ARPANET. Vinton Cerf proposed a plan for
an inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET
1983
Internet Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983.
On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely.
The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers.
1984
The ARPANET was divided into two networks: MILNET and ARPANET. MILNET was
to serve the needs of the military and ARPANET to support the advanced research
component, Department of Defense continued to support both networks.
Upgrade to CSNET was contracted to MCI. New circuits would
be T1 lines,1.5 Mbps which is twenty-five times faster than the old 56 Kbps
lines. IBM would provide advanced routers and Merit would manage the network.
New network was to be called NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network),
and old lines were to remain called CSNET.
1985
The National Science Foundation began deploying its new T1 lines, which would
be finished by 1988.
1986
The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF was created to serve as a forum
for technical coordination by contractors for DARPA working on ARPANET, US
Defense Data Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system
1987
BITNET and CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research and Educational
Networking (CREN), another work of the National Science Foundation.
1988
Soon after the completion of the T1 NSFNET backbone, traffic increased so
quickly that plans immediately began on upgrading the network again.
Merit and its partners formed a not for profit corporation
called ANS, Advanced Network Systems, which was to conduct research into high
speed networking. It soon came up with the concept of the T3, a 45 Mbps line.
NSF quickly adopted the new network and by the end of 1991 all of its sites
were connected by this new backbone
1990
While the T3 lines were being constructed, the Department of Defense disbanded
the ARPANET and it was replaced by the NSFNET backbone. The original 50Kbs
lines of ARPANET were taken out of service.
Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implements a hypertext
system to provide efficient information access to the members of the international
high-energy physics community.
1991
CSNET (which consisted of 56Kbps lines) was discontinued having fulfilled
its important early role in the provision of academic networking service.
A key feature of CREN is that its operational costs are fully met through
dues paid by its member organizations.
The NSF established a new network, named NREN, the National
Research and Education Network. The purpose of this network is to conduct
high speed networking research. It was not to be used as a commercial network,
nor was it to be used to send a lot of the data that the Internet now transfers.
1992
Internet Society is chartered.
World-Wide Web released by CERN.
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps)
1993
InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: directory and
database services (by AT&T), registration services (by Network Solutions
Inc.), and information services (by General Atomics/CERFnet).
Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develops
a graphical user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X".
1994
No major changes were made to the physical network. The most significant thing
that happened was the growth. Many new networks were added to the NSF backbone.
Hundreds of thousands of new hosts were added to the INTERNET during this
time period.
Pizza Hut offers pizza ordering on its Web page.
First Virtual, the first cyberbank, opens.
ATM (Asynchronous Transmission Mode, 145Mbps) backbone is
installed on NSFNET.
1995
The National Science Foundation announced that as of April 30, 1995 it would
no longer allow direct access to the NSF backbone. The National Science Foundation
contracted with four companies that would be providers of access to the NSF
backbone (Merit). These companies would then sell connections to groups, organizations,
and companies.
$50 annual fee is imposed on domains, excluding .edu and .gov
domains which are still funded by the National Science Foundation.
Source