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1957 |
| The USSR
launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth
satellite. In response,the United States forms the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within
theDepartment 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.
"Packet switching is the breaking down of data
into datagrams or packets that are labeled to
indicate the origin and the destination of the
information and the forwarding of these packets from
one computer to another computer until the
information arrives at its final destination
computer. This was crucial to the realization of a
computer network. If packets are lost at any given
point, the message can be resent by the originator." |
|
1968 |
| 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.
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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. |
First Use of term
Internet by Vint Cerf and
Bob Kahn in paper on Transmission Control
Protocol.
|
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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.
|
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
|
1990 |
(Updated 8/2001) Merit, IBM and MCI
formed a not for profit corporation
called ANS, Advanced Network &
Services, 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.
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. |
|
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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
tosend 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
Foundationcontracted 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. |
|
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1996-DATE |
Most Internet
traffic is carried by backbones of
independent ISPs, including MCI,
AT&T, Sprint, UUnet, BBN planet, ANS,
and more.
Currently the Internet Society, the
group that controls the INTERNET, is
trying to figure out new TCP/IP to
be able to have billions of
addresses, rather than the limited
system of today. The problem that
has arisen is that it is not known
how both the old and the new
addressing systems will be able to
work at the same time during a
transition period. |
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