THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET.
The base idea of the year 1969 is still living: Every node of the Net is
working by himself and no organisation is controlling the Internet allone. Everyone, who owns the technical possibilities can connect himself to the Internet.
Rules are made by a majority of votes by users so that nobody can control parts of the Internet. People
that do not please the existing rules can try to find other people which are thinking same and also want to make new rules. It is astonishing that such a great community is organizing itself
without running into a great chaos. Every controller of a node is interesting in proper use and working of his computer and to accept the rules of the Net. That's because he wants to take
use of the Net and never wants to be ignored by the others. The great success of the Internet is the Consequence.
PIONEERS of the INTERNET
( from L. to R. ) Jon Postel, Steve Crocker, and Vint Cerf
The developer of the WWW -
World Wide Web:
Here comes the History of the Internet in a short version of v5.1 with the ending date of Oct 2000.
NOTE: This version of the Timeline is no longer updated. See the Original under the following adress:
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Hobbes' Internet Timeline v5.1
by
Robert H'obbes' Zakon Hobbes' Internet Timeline Copyright (c)1993-2000 by Robert H Zakon. Permission is granted for use of this document in whole or in part for non-commercial purposes as long as this Copyright notice and a link to this
document, at the archieve listed at the end, is included. A copy of the material the Timeline appears in is requested. For commercial uses, please contact the author first. Links to this document are welcome after
e-mailing the author with the document URL where the link will appear. The author whishes to acknowledge the
Internet Evangelist
To get more information about growth of the Net ( graphics ), FAQ's ,sources and Links please visit the original site of Robert H Zakon at http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline .
1957
USSR launches SPUTNIK, first artificial earth satellite. In response, the United States forms the ARPA ( Advanced Research Projects Agency ) within the department of defence (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military. (:amk:)
1961
Leonard Kleinrock ( MIT ) : Information Flow in Large Communication Nets. First paper on packet-switching (PS) theory. (July)
1962
J.C.R. Licklider and W. Clark ( MIT ) : On-Line Man Computer Communication. Galactic Network concept encompassing distributed social interactions. (August)
1964
Paul Baran ( RAND Corporation ) : On Distributed Communications Networks. Packet-switching networks. No single outage point.
1965
ARPA sponsors a study on "cooperative network of time-sharing computers". A TX-2 at MIT Lincoln Lab and a AN/FSQ-32 at System Development Corporation (Santa Monica,CA ) are directly linked (witout packet switches) via a dedicated 1200bps phone line. A Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computer at ARPA is later added to form "The Experimental Network".
1966
Lawrence G. Roberts ( MIT ) : Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers. The first plan of the ARPANET was born.
1967
ARPANET design discussions held by Larry Roberts at ARPA IPTO PI meeting in Ann Arbor,Michigan in April.
ACM Symposium on Operating Principles in Gatlinboourg, Tennessee in October.
* First design paper on ARPANET published by Larry Roberts: "Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication".
* First meeting of the three independent packet network teams ( RAND, NPL, ARPA ).
National Physical Laboratory ( NPL ) in Middlesex, England develops NPL Data Network under Donald Watts Davies who coins the term packet. The NPL network, an experiment in packet-switching, used 768kbps lines.
1968
PS-network presented to the ARPA ( Advanced Research Projects Agenca ).
Request for proposals for ARPANET sent out in August; responses recieved in September.
University of California Los Angeles ( UCLA ) awarded Network Measurement Center contract in Oktober.
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. ( BBN ) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors ( IMPs ).
US Senator Edward Kennedy sends a congratulatory telegram to BBN for its million-dollar ARPA contract to
build the "Interfaith" Message Processor, and thanking them for their ecumenical efforts.
Network Working Group ( NWG ), headed by Steve Crocker, loosely organized to develop host level protocols for communication over the ARPANET.
Tymnet built as part of Tymshare service. (:vgc:)
1969
ARPANET
commissioned by DoD for research into networking. Nodes are stood up as BBN builds each IMP (Honeywell DDP-516 mini computer with 12 K of memory). AT&T provides 50kbps lines.
Node 1: UCLA ( 30 August )
* Function: Network Measurement Center
* System, OS: SDS SIGMA 7, SEX
Node 2: Stanford Research Institute ( SRI ) ( 1 October )
* Network Information Center ( NIC )
* SDS 940 / Genie
* Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect"
Node 3: University of California Santa Barbara ( UCSB ) ( 1 November )
* Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics
* IBM 360/75, OS/MVT
Node 4: University of Utah ( 10 December )
* Graphics
* DEC PDP-10, Tenex
First Request for Comment ( RFC ): "Host Software" by Steve Crocker
( 7 April ).
RFC 4: Network Timetable.
First packets sent by Charley Kline at UCLA as he tried logging into SRI. The first attempt resulted in the
system crashing as the letter G of LOGIN was entered ( Oktober ).
University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State University establish X.25-based Merit network for students, faculty, alumni.
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, University of Hawaii, becomes operational. (July) It was connected to the ARPANET in 1972.
ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Ptotocol ( 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.
1971
15 nodes ( 23 hosts ) are working: UCLA, SRI, UCSB, University of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CNU, 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
programm was derived from two others: an intra-mashine email program ( SENDMSG ) and an experimental file transfer program ( CPYNET ).
1972
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 mashines and the Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn. (October)
First computer-to-computer chat
takes place 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 1994, INWG became IFIP WG 6.1 .
Louis Pouzin leads the French effort to build its own ARPANET - CYCLADES.
RFC 318: Telnet specification.
1973
First international connections to the ARPANET: University College of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway).
Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for
ETHERNET. The concept was tested on Xerox PARC's Alto
computers, and the first Ethernet network called the Alto Aloha System. (May)
Bob Kahn poses Internet problem, starts internetting research program at ARPA.
Vint Cerf sketches gateway architecture in March on back of envelope in a San Francisco hotel lobby.
Cerf and Kahn present basic INTERNET
ideas at INWG in September at University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
RFC 454: File Transfer specification.
Network Voice Protocol ( NVP ) specification ( RFC 741 ) and implementation enabling conference calls over the ARAPANET.
SRI ( NIC ) begins publishing ARPANET News in March; number of ARPANET users estimated at 2000.
ARPA study shows email composing 75% of all ARPANET traffic.
Christmas Day Lockup - Harvard IMP hardware problem leads it to broadcast zero-length hops to any ARPANET destination, causing all other IMPs to send their traffic to Harvard. (25 December)
RFC 527: ARPAWOCKY.
RFC 602: The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care.
1974
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish " A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection" which specified in detail the design of a Transmission Control Program ( TCP )
.
BBN opens Telenet, the first public packet data service ( a commercial version of ARPANET ).
1975
Operational management of Internet transferred to DCA ( now DISA ).
First ARPANET mailing list, MsgGroup, is created by Steve Walker. Einar Stefferud soon took over as moderator as the list was not automated at first. A science fiction list, SF-Lovers, was to become the most
popular unofficial list in the early days.
John Vittal develops MSG, the first all-inclusive email program providing replying, forwarding, and filing capabilities.
Satellite links cross two oceans ( to Hawaii and UK ) as the first TCP tests are run over them by Stanford, BBN, and UCL.
"Jargon File", by Raphael Finkel at SAIL, first released.
Shockwave Rider by John Brunner.
1976
Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom sends out an email in February from RSRE ( Malvern ).
UUCP ( Unix-toUnix Copy ) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.
Multiprocessing Pluribus IMPs are deployed.
1977
THEORYNET created by Larry Landweber at University of Wisconsin providing electronic mail to over 100
researchers in computer science ( using a locally developed email system over TELENET ).
RFC 733: Mail specification.
Tymshare launches Tymnet.
First demonstration of ARPANET / SF Bay Packet Radio Net / Atlantic SATNET operation of Internet protocols with BBN-supplied gateways on November 22, 1977.
1978
TCP split into TCP and IP. (March)
RFC 748: TELNET RANDOMLY-LOSE Option.
1979
Meeting between University of Wisconsin, DARPA, National Science Foundation ( NSF ), and computer scientists from many universities to establish a Computer Science Departement reasearch computer network, organized by Larry Landweber.
USENET established using UUCP between Duke and UNC by Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. All original groups were und net.* hierarchy.
First MUD, MUD1, by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw at University of Essex.
ARPA establishes the Internet Configuration Control Board ( ICCB ).
Packet Radio Network ( PRNET ) experiment starts with DARPA funding. Most communications take place between mobile vans. ARPANET connection via SRI.
On April 12, Kevin McKenzie emails the MsgGroup a suggestion of adding some emotion back into the dry text medium of email, such as -) for indicating a sentence was tongue-in-cheek. Though flamed by many at the time, emoticons
became widely used.
1980
ARPANET grinds to a complete halt on 27 October because of an accidentally-propagated status-message virus.
First C/30-based IMP by BBN.
1981
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. 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 University of Delaware, Purdue University, University 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 an Science Network.
C/30 IMPs prdominate the network; first C/30 TIP at SAC.
Minitel ( Teletel ) is deployed across France by France Telecom.
True Names by Vernor Vinge.
RFC 801: NCTP/TCP Transition Plan.
1982
Norway leaves network to become an Internet connection via TCP/IP over SATNET; UCL follows suit.
DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (
TCP ) and Internet Protocol ( IP ), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET. 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.
EUnet ( European UNIX Network ) is created by EUUG to provide email and USENET services. Original connections between the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and UK.
Exterior Gateway Protocol ( RFC 827 ) specification. EGP is used for gateways between networks.
1983
Name server developed at University of Wisconsin, no longer requiring users to know the exact path to other systems.
Cutover from NCP to TCP/IP. (1 January)
No more Honeywell or Pluribus IMPs; TIPs replaced by TACs.
Germany
( Stuttgart ) and Korea get connected.
Movement Information Net ( MINET ) started early in the year in Europe, connected to internet in September.
CSNET / ARPANET gateway put in place.
ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET; the latter became integrated with the Defence Data Network created the previous year. 68 of the 113 existing nodes went to MILNET.
Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX ( 4.2 BSD ) which includes IP networking software.
Networking needs switch from having a single, large time-sharing computer connected to the internet at each site, to instead connecting entire local networks.
Internet Activities Board ( IAB ) established, replacing ICCB.
EARN
( European Academic and Research Network ) established. Very similar to the way BITNET works with a geteway funded by IBM.
FidoNet developed by Tom Jennings.
1984
Domain Name System ( DNS ) introduced.
Number of hosts breaks 1000.
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.
Kremvax message announcing USSR connectivity to USENET.
1985
Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link ( WELL ) started.
Information Sciences Institute ( ISI ) at USC is given responsibility for DNS root management by DCA, and SRI for DNS NIC registrations.
Symbolics.com
is assigned on 15 March to become the first registered domain. Other firsts: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, ucla.edu (April); css.gov (June); mitre.org,
.uk (July).
100 years to the day of the last spike being driven on the cross-Canada railroad, the last Canadian university is connected to NetNorth in a one-year effort to have coast-to-coast connectivity.
RFC 968: 'Twas the Night Before Start-up.
1986
NSFNET created ( backbone speed of 56Kbps ). NSF establishes 5 super-computing centers to provide
high-computing power for all ( JVNC @ Princeton, PSC @ Pittsburgh, SDSC @ UCSD, NCSA @ UIUC, Theory Center @ Cornell ). This allows an explosion of connections, especially from universities.
NSF-funded SDSCNET, JVNCNET, SURANET, and NYSERNET operational.
Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF ) and Internet Research Task Force ( IRTF ) comes into existence under
the IAB. First IETF meeting held in January at Linkabit in San Diego.
The first Freenet ( Cleveland ) comes on-line 16 July under the auspices of the Sciciety for Public Access
Computing ( SoPAC ). Later Freenet program management assumed by the National Public Telecomputing Network ( NPTN ) in 1989.
Network News Transfer Protocol ( NNTP ) designed to enhance Usenet news performance over TCP/IP.
Mail Exchanger ( MX ) records developed by Craig Partridge allow non-IP network hosts to have domain adresses.
The great USENET name change; moderated newsgroups changed in 1987.
BARRNET ( Bya Area Regional Research Network ) established using high speed links. Operational in 1987.
New England gets cut off from the Net as AT&T sufers a fibre optics cable braek between Newark/NJ and White
Plains/NY. Yes, all seven New England ARPANET trunk lines were in the one served cable. Outage took place between 1:11 and 12:11 EST on 12 December.
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.
1000th RFC: "Request For Comments reference guide".
Number of hosts breaks 10000.
Number of BITNET hosts breaks 1000.
1988
2 November - Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting ~6000 of the 60000 hosts on the Internet.
CERT ( Computer Emergency Response Team ) formed by DARPA in response to the needs exhibited during the Morris worm incident. The worm is the only advisory issued this year.
DoD chooses to adopt OSI and sees use of TCT/IP as an interim. US Government OSI Profile ( GOSIP ) defines the set of protocols to be supported by Government purchased products.
Los Nettos Network created with no federal funding, instead supported by regional members ( founding: Caltech, TIS, UCLA, USC, ISI ).
NSFNET backbone upgrated to T1 ( 1.544 Mbps ).
CERFnet ( California Education and Research Federation network ) founded by Susan Estrada.
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ( IANA ) established in December with Jon Postel as its Director. Postel was also the RFC Editor and US Domain registrar for many years.
Internet Relay Chat ( IRC ) developed by Jarkko Oikarinen.
First Canadian regionals join NSFNET: ONet via Cornell, RISQ via Princeton, BCnet via University of Washington D.C.
FidoNet gets connected to the Net, enabling the exchange of email and news.
Countries connecting to NSFNET:
Canada (CA), Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), France (FR), Iceland (IS), Norway (NO), Sweden (SE).
1989
Number of hosts breaks 100000.
RIPE ( Reseaux IP Europeens ) formed ( by European service providers ) to ensure the necessary administrative
and technical coordination to allow the operation of the pan-European IP Network.
First relays between a commercial electronic mail carrier and the Internet:
MCI Mail through the Corporation for the National Research Initiative ( CNRI ), and Compuserve through Ohio State University.
Corporation for Research and Education Networking ( CREN ) is formed by merging CSNET into BITNET (August).
AARNET - Australien Academic Research Network - set up by AVCC and CSIRO; introduced into service the following year.
First link between Australia and NSFNET via Hawaii on 23 June.
Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities.
UCLA sponsors the Act One symposium to celebrate ARPANET's 20th anniversary
and its decomissioning (August)
RFC 1121: Act One - The Poems.
RFC 1097: TELNET SUBLIMINAL-MESSAGE Option.
Countries connecting to NSFNET:
Australia (AU), Germany (DE), Israel (IL), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Mexico (MX), Netherlands (NL), New Zealand (NZ), Puerto Rico (PR), United Kingdom (UK).
1990
ARPANET ceases to exist.
Electronic Frontier Foundiation ( EFF ) is founded by Mitch Kapor.
Archie released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill.
Hytelnet released by Peter Scott ( University 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.
CA*net formed by 10 regional networks as national Canadian backbone with direct connection to NSFNET.
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, Invisable.
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).
1991
First connection takes place between Brazil, by Fapesp, and the Internet at 9600 baud.
Commercial Internet eXchange ( CIX ) Association, Inc. formed by Gereral Atomics ( CERFnet ), Performance Systems International, Inc. ( PSInet ), and UUNET Technologies, Inc. ( AlterNet ), after NSF lifts restrictions on
the commercial use of the net. ( March )
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 University of Minnessota.
World-Wide-Web ( WWW
) released by CERN; Tim Berners-Lee developer.
PGP ( Pretty Good Privacy ) released by Philip Zimmerman.
US High Performance Computing Act ( Gore 1 ) establishes the National Research and Education Network (NREN).
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 ( 44.736 Mbps ).
NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes / month and 10 billion packets / month.
Defence 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 .
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).
1992
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.
Veronica, a gopherspace searchtool, is released by University of Nevada.
World Bank comes on-line.
The term "surfing the Internet" is coined by 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 (TH), Venezuela (VE).
1993
InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: directory and database services ( AT&T ),
registration services ( Network Solutions Inc. ), information services ( General Atomics / CERFnet ).
US White House comes on-line ( http://www.whitehouse.gov ): President Bill Clinton: president@whitehouse.gov
, Vice-President Al Gore:
vice-president@whitehouse.gov .
Worms of a new kind find their way around the Net - WWW Worms ( W4 ), joined by Spiders, Wanderers, Crawlers, and Snakes ...
Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting.
United Nations ( UN ) comes on-line.
US National Information Infrastructure Act.
Businesses and media begin taking notice of the Internet.
InterCon International KK ( IIKK ) provides Japan's first commercial Internet connection in September. TWICS,
though an IIKK leased line, begins offering dial-up accounts the following month.
Mosaic takes the Internet by storm: WWW proliferates at a 341.634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997% .
RFC 1437: The Extension of MIME Content-Types to a New Medium.
RFC 1438: IETF Statements of Boredom ( SOBs ).
Countries connecting to NSFNET: Bulgaria (BG), Costa Rica (CR), Egypt (EG), Fiji (FJ), Ghana (GH), Guam
(GU), Indonesia (ID), Kazakhstan (KZ), Kenya (KE), Liechtenstein (LI), Peru (PE), Romania (RO), Russian Fedaration (RU), Turkey (TR), Ukraine (UA), UAE (AE), US Virgin Islands (VI).
1994
ARPANET / Internet celebrates 25th anniversary.
Communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet ( Lexington and Cambridge, Mass., USA ).
US Senate and House provide information servers.
Shopping malls arrive on the Internet.
First cyberstation, RT-FM, broadcasts from Interop in Las Vegas.
Vladimir Levin of St. Petersburg, Russia, is the first publicly-known Internet bank robber, electronically
transfering millions of dollars from Citibank between June and August.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology ( NIST ) suggests that GOSIP should incorporate TCP/IP and drop the "OSI-only" requirement.
Arizona law firm of "Canter & Siegel"
spams the Internet with email advertising green card
lottery services; net citizens flame back.
NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes / month.
Yes it's true - you can now order pizza from the Hut online.
WWW edges out telnet to became 2nd most popular service on the Net ( behind ftp-data ) based on % of
packets and bytes traffic distribution on NSFNET.
Japanese Prime Minister on-line.
UK's HM Treasury on-line.
New Zealand's Info Tech Prime Minister on-line.
First Virtual, the first cyberbank, open up for business.
Radio stations start rockin' ( rebroadcasting ) round the clock on the Net: WXYC at University of NC, WJHK at University of KS-Lawrence, KUGS at Western WA University.
Trans-European Research and Education Network Association (
TERENA ) is formed by the merger of RARE
and EARN, with representatives from 38 countries as well as CERN and ECMWF. TERENA's aim is to promote and participate in the development of a high quality international information and telecommunications
infrastructure for the benefit of research and education. ( October )
After noticing that many network software vendors used domain.com in their documentation examples, Bill
Woodcock and Jon Postel register the domain. Sure enough, after looking at the domain access logs, it was evident that many users were using the example domain in configuring their applications.
RFC 1605: SONET to Sonnet Translation.
RFC 1606: A Historical Perspective On The Usage Of IP Version 9.
RFC 1607: A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY.
Countries connecting to the NSFNET:
Algeria (DZ), Armenia (AM), Bermuda (BM), Burkina Faso (BF), China (CN), Colombia (CO), Jamaica (JM), Jordan (JO), Lebanon (LB), Lithuania (LT), Macau (MO), Marocco (MA),
New Caledonia (NC), Nicaragua (NI), Niger (NE), Panama (PA), Philippines (PH), Senegal (SN), Sri Lanka (LK), Swaziland (SZ), Uruguay (UY), Uzbekistan (UZ).
Top 10 Domains by Host # : com, edu, uk, gov, de, ca, mil, au, org, net
1995
NSFNET reverts back to a research network. Main US backbone traffic now routed through interconnected network providers.
The new NSFNET is born as NSF establishes the "very high speed Backbone Network Service" (vBNS) linking super-computing centers: NCAR, NCSA, SDSC, CTC, and PSC.
Hong Kong police disconnect all but 1 of the colony's Internet providers in search of a hacker. 10000 people are left without Net access.
SUN
launches JAVA on May 23.
RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time.
Radio HK, the first commercial 24 hr., Internet-only radio station starts broadcasting.
WWW
surpasses ftp-data in March as the service with greatest traffic on NSFNet based on packet count, and in April based on byte count.
Traditional online dial-up systems ( Compuserve, American Online, Prodigy ) begin to provide Internet access.
Thousends in Minneapolis-St. Paul (USA) lose Net access after transients start a bonfire under a bridge at the
University of MN causing fiber-optic to melt.
A number of Net related companies go public, with NETSCAPE leading the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value. ( 9 August )
Registration of domain names is no longer free. Beginning 14 September, a $50 annual fee has been imposed,
which up until now was subsidized by NSF. NSF continues to pay for .edu registration, and on an interim basis for .gov .
The Vatican comes on-line ( http://www.vatican.va ).
The Canadian Government comes on-line.
The first official Internet wiretap was successful in helping the Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) apprehend three individuals who were illegally manufacturing and selling cell phone cloning equipment and electronic devices.
Operation Home Front connects, for the first time, soldiers in the field with their families back home via the Internet.
Richard White becomes the first person to be declared a munition, under the USA's arms export control laws,
because of an RSA file security encryption program tattooed on his arm.
RFC 1882: The 12-Days of Technology Before Christmas.
Country domains registered: Ethiopia (ET), Cote d'Ivoire (CI), Cook Islands (CK), Cayman Islands (KY), Anguilla (AI), Gibraltar (GI), Vatican (VA), Kiribati (KI), Kyrgyzstan (KG), Madagascar (MG), Mauritius (MU), Micronesia
(FM), Monaco (MC), Mongolia (MN), Nepal (NP), Nigeria (NG), Western Samoa (WS), San Marino (SM), Tanzania (TZ), Tonga (TO), Uganda (UG), Vanuatu (VU).
Top 10 Domains by Host # : com, edu, net, gov, mil, org, de, uk, ca, au
Technologies of the Year: WWW , Search engines.
Emerging Technologies: Mobile code (JAVA, JAVAscript), Virtual environments (VRML), Collaborative tools.
Hacks of the Year: The Spot (12 Jun), Hackers Movie Page (12 Aug)
1996
Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology ( which has been around for years ).
Malaysian Prime Minister Mathahir Mohamed, PLO Leader Yasser Arafat, and Phillipine President Fidel Rhamos meet for ten minutes in an online interavtive chat session on 17 January.
The controversial US Communications Decency Act ( CDA ) becomes law in the US in order to prohibit distribution of indecent materials over the Net. A few months later a three-judge panel imposes an injunction
against its enforcement. Supreme Court unanimously rules most of it unconstitutional in 1997.
9272 organizations find themselves unlisted after the InterNIC drops their name service as a result of not having paid their domain name fee.
Various ISPs suffer extended service outages, bringing into question whether they will be able to handle the growing number of users. AOL (19 hours), Netcom (13 hours), AT&T WorldNet (28 hours - email only).
Domain name tv.com sold to CNET for US$ 15000.
Domain name "tv.com" sold to CNET for US$ 15.000 .
New York's Public Access Networks Corporation ( PANIX ) is shut down after repeated SYN attacks by a
cracker using methods outlined in a hacker magazine.
MCI upgrades Internet backbone adding ~13000 ports, bringing the effective speed from 155 Mbps to 622 Mbps.
The "Internet Ad Hoc Committee" announces plans to add 7 new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD): .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info, .nom . The IHAC plan also calls for a competing group of domain registrars worlwide.
A malicious cancelbot is released on USENET wiping out more than 25000 messages.
The WWW browser war, fought primarily between Netscape and Microsoft
, has rushed in a new age in software development, whereby new releases are made quarterly with the help of Internet users eager to test upcoming ( beta ) versions.
RFC 1925: The Twelve Networking Truths.
Restrictions on Internet use around the world:
* China: requires users and ISPs to register with the police.
* Germany: cuts off access to some newsgroups carried on Compuserve.
* Saudi Arabia: confines Internet access to universities and hospitals.
* Singapore: requires political and religious content providers to register with the state.
* New Zealand: classifies computer disks as "publications" that can be censored and seized.
* source: Human Rights Watch.
Country domains registered: Qatar (QA), Central African Republic (CF), Oman (OM), Norfolk Island (NF), Tuvalu (TV), French Polynesia (PF), Syria (SY), Aruba (AW), Cambodia (KH), French Guiana (GF), Eritrea (ER), Cape
Verde (CV), Burundi (BI), Benin (BJ), Bosnia-Hercegovina (BA), Andorra (AD), Guadeloupe (GP), Guernsey (GG), Isle of Man (IM), Jersey (JE), Lao (LA), Maldives (MV), Marshall Islands (MH), Mauritania (MR), Northern
Mariana Islands (MP), Rwanda (RW), Togo (TG), Yemen (YE), Zaire (ZR).
Top 10 Domains by Host # : com, edu, net, uk, de, jp, us, mil, ca, au
Hacks of the year: US Dept of Justice (17 Aug), CIA (19 Sep), Air Force (29 Dec), UK Labour Party (6 Dec).
Technologies of the year: Search engines, JAVA, Internet Phone.
Emerging Technologies: Virtual environments ( VRML ), Collaborative tools, Internet appliance (Network Computer).
1997
2000th RFC: Internet Official Protocol Standards.
71618 mailing lists registered at Liszt, a mailing list directory.
The American Registry for Internet Numbers ( ARIN ) is established to handle administration and registration of IP numbers to the geographical areas currently handled by Network Solutions ( InterNIC ), starting in March 1998.
CA*net II launched in June to provide Canada's next generation Internet using ATM/SONET.
In protest of the DNS monopoly, AlterNIC's owner, Eugene Kashpureff, hacks DNS so users going to www. internic. net end up at www. alternic. net .
Domain name Business.com sold for US$ 150000 .
Early in the morning of 17 July, human error at Network Solutions causes the DNS table for .com and .net domains to become corrupted, making millions of systems unreachable.
Longest hostname registered with InterNIC: CHALLANGER.MED.SYNAPSE.UAH.UALBERTA.CA .
101803 Name Servers in whois database.
RFC 2100: The Naming of Hosts.
Country domains registered: Falkland Islands (FK), East Timor (TP), R of Congo (CG), Christmas Island (CX), Gambia (GM), Guinea-Bissau (GW), Haiti (HT), Iraq (IQ), Lybia (LY), Malawi (MW), Martinique (MQ), Montserrat
(MS), Myanmar (MM); French Reunion Island (RE), Seychelles (SC), Sierra Leone (SL), Somalia (SO), Sudan (SD), Tajkistan (TJ), Turkmensitan (TM), Turks and Caicos Islands (TC), British Virgin Islands (VG), Heard and
McDonald Islands (HM), French Southern Territories (TF), British Indian Ocean Territory (IO), Scalbard and Jan Mayen Islands (SJ), St Pierre and Miquelon (PM), St Helena (SH), South Georgia / Sandwich Islands (GS), Sao
Tome and Principe (ST), Ascension Island (AC), US Minor Outlying Islands (UM), Mayotte (YT), Wallis and Futuna Islands (WF), Tokelau Islands (TK), Chad Republic (TD), Afghanistan (AF), Cocos Island (CC), Bouvet
Island (BV), Liberia (LR), American Samoa (AS), Niue (NU), Equatorial New Guinea (GQ), Bhutan (BT), Pitcairn Island (PN), Palau (PW), DR of Congo (CD).
Top 10 Domains by Host # : com, edu, net, jp, uk, de, us, au, ca, mil
Hacks of the year: Indonesian Government (19 Jan, 10 Feb, 24 Apr, 30 Jun, 22 Nov), NASA (5 Mar), UK Conservative Party (27 Apr), Spice Girls (14 Nov) .
Technologies of the year: Push, Multicasting .
Emerging Technologies: Push, Streaming Media .
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 Fête 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 1 Q .
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 30000 email addresses to a US Internet magazine (December).
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 .
1999
Internet access becomes available to the Saudi Arabian public in January.
vBNS sets up an OC48 link between CalREN South and North using Juniper M40 routers
First Internet Bank of Indiana, the first full-service bank available only on the Net, opens for business on 22 February.
IBM becomes the first Corporate partner to be approved for Internet2 access.
European Parliament proposes banning the caching of Web pages by ISPs.
The Internet Fiesta kicks off in March across Europe, building on the success of La Fête de l'Internet held in 1998.
US State Court rules that domain names are property that may be garnished.
MCI/Worldcom, the vBNS provider for NSF, begins upgrading the US backbone to 2.5 Gbps .
A forged Web page made to look like a Bloomberg financial news story raised shares of a small technology company by 31% on 7 April.
ICANN announces the five testbed registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System on 21 April: AOL, CORE, France Telecom/Oléane, Melbourne IT, Register.com . 29 additional post-testbed registrars are also
selected on 21 April, followed by 8 on 25 May, 15 on 6 July, and 7 on 11 August. The testbed, originally scheduled to last until 24 June, is extended until 10 September ( first registrar - Register.com - does not come online until 7 June ).
First large-scale Cyberwar takes place simulatenously with the war in Serbia/Kosovo.
Abilene, the Internet2 network, reaches across the Atlantic and connects to NORDUnet and SURFnet.
The Web becomes the focal point of British politics as a list of MI6 agents released on a UK Web site. Though
forced to remove the list from the site, it was too late as the list had already been replicated across the Net (15 May) .
'SETI @ Home' project launches 17 May. The first attempt at making use of the large number of computers hooked to the Net that are constantly idle.
Activists Net-wide target the world's financial centers on 18 June, timed to concicide with the G8 Summit. Little actual impact is reported.
MCI/Worldcom launches cBNS+, a commercialized version of vBNS targeted at smaller educational and
research institutions.
Somalia gets its first ISP - Olympic Computer (Sep).
ISOC approves the formation of the Internet Societal Task Force ( ISTF
). Vint Cerf serves as first chair.
Free computers are all the rage ( as long as you sign a long term contract for Net service ).
ps. is registered to Palestine (11 Oct).
vBNS reaches 101 connections.
"business.com" is sold for US$ 7.5million (it was purchased in 1997 for US$ 150.000 on 30 Nov).
RFC 2549: IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service.
RFC 2550: Y10K and Beyond.
RFC 2551: The Roman Standards Process -- Revision III .
RFC 2555: 30 Years of RFCs .
RFC 2626: The Internet and the Millennium Problem (Year 2000) .
Top 10 Domains by Host # : com, net, edu, jp, uk, mil, us, de, ca, au
Hacks of the Year: Star Wars (8 Jan), .tp (Jan), USIA (23 Jan), E-Bay (Mar), US Senate (27 May), NSI (2 Jul),
Paraguay Government (20 Jul), AntiOnline (5 Aug), Microsoft (26 Oct), UK Railtrack (31 Dec) .
Technologies of the Year: E-Trade, Online Banking, MP3 .
Emerging Technologies: Net-Cell Phones, Thin Computing, Embedded Computing
Virii of the Year: Melissa (March), ExploreZip (June).
2000
The US timekeeper (USNO) and a few other time services around the world report the new year as 19100 on 1 Jan.
A massive denial of service attack is launched against major web sites, including Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay in early February.
Web sites estimates by NEC-RI and Inktomi surpass 1 billion indexable pages.
ICANN redelegates the .pn domain, returning it to the Pitcairn Island community (February) .
Various domain name hijackings took place in late May and early June, including internet.com, bali.com and web.net .
RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite
Hacks of the Year: RSA Security (Feb), Apache (Ma), Nike (June) .
Technologies of the Year: ASP, NAPSTER?, IPV6? .
Viruses of the Year: Love Letter
(May) .
(C) Copyright 1993-2000 by
Robert H Zakon Updated: 01 Oct 2000.
To see the updated version > visit site:
(C) 1999-2003 Michael Kaul
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