The Internet is a global network of networks enabling computers of all kinds
to directly and transparently communicate and share services throughout much of
the world. Because the Internet is an enormously valuable, enabling capability
for so many people and organizations, it also constitutes a shared global
resource of information, knowledge, and means of collaboration, and cooperation
among countless diverse communities
In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques
and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The
objective was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked
computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks.
This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks which
emerged from the research was known as the "Internet." The system of
protocols which was developed over the course of this research effort became
known as the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, after the two initial protocols developed:
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).
In 1986, the U.S. National Science Foundation
(NSF) initiated the development of the NSFNET which, today, provides a major
backbone communication service for the Internet. With its 45 megabit per second
facilities, the NSFNET carries on the order of 12 billion packets per month
between the networks it links. The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Energy contributed additional
backbone facilities in the form of the NSINET and ESNET respectively. In
Europe, major international backbones such as NORDUNET and others provide
connectivity to over one hundred thousand computers on a large number of
networks. Commercial network providers in the U.S. and Europe are beginning to
offer Internet backbone and access support on a competitive basis to any
interested parties.
"Regional" support for the Internet is
provided by various consortium networks and "local" support is
provided through each of the research and educational institutions. Within the
United States, much of this support has come from the federal and state
governments, but a considerable contribution has been made by industry. In
Europe and elsewhere, support arises from cooperative international efforts and
through national research organizations. During the course of its evolution,
particularly after 1989, the Internet system began to integrate support for
other protocol suites into its basic networking fabric. The present emphasis in
the system is on multiprotocol interworking, and in particular, with the
integration of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols into the
architecture.
Both public domain and commercial implementations
of the roughly 100 protocols of TCP/IP protocol suite became available in the
1980's. During the early 1990's, OSI protocol implementations also became
available and, by the end of 1991, the Internet has grown to include some 5,000
networks in over three dozen countries, serving over 700,000 host computers
used by over 4,000,000 people.
A great deal of support for the Internet community
has come from the U.S. Federal Government, since the Internet was originally
part of a federally-funded research program and, subsequently, has become a
major part of the U.S. research infrastructure. During the late 1980's,
however, the population of Internet users and network constituents expanded
internationally and began to include commercial facilities. Indeed, the bulk of
the system today is made up of private networking facilities in educational and
research institutions, businesses and in government organizations across the
globe.
The Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental
Networks (CCIRN), which was organized by the U.S. Federal Networking Council
(FNC) and the European Reseaux Associees pour la Recherche Europeenne (RARE),
plays an important role in the coordination of plans for government- sponsored
research networking. CCIRN efforts have been a stimulus for the support of
international cooperation in the Internet environment.
Over its fifteen year history, the Internet has
functioned as a collaboration among cooperating parties. Certain key functions
have been critical for its operation, not the least of which is the
specification of the protocols by which the components of the system operate.
These were originally developed in the DARPA research program mentioned above,
but in the last five or six years, this work has been undertaken on a wider
basis with support from Government agencies in many countries, industry and the
academic community. The Internet Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983 to
guide the evolution of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and to provide research advice
to the Internet community.
During the course of its existence, the IAB has reorganized
several times. It now has two primary components: the Internet Engineering Task
Force and the Internet Research Task Force. The former has primary
responsibility for further evolution of the TCP/IP protocol suite, its
standardization with the concurrence of the IAB, and the integration of other
protocols into Internet operation (e.g. the Open Systems Interconnection
protocols). The Internet Research Task Force continues to organize and explore
advanced concepts in networking under the guidance of the Internet Activities
Board and with support from various government agencies.
A secretariat has been created to manage the
day-to-day function of the Internet Activities Board and Internet Engineering
Task Force. IETF meets three times a year in plenary and its approximately 50
working groups convene at intermediate times by electronic mail,
teleconferencing and at face-to-face meetings. The IAB meets quarterly
face-to-face or by videoconference and at intervening times by telephone,
electronic mail and computer-mediated conferences.
Two other functions are critical to IAB operation:
publication of documents describing the Internet and the assignment and
recording of various identifiers needed for protocol operation. Throughout the
development of the Internet, its protocols and other aspects of its operation
have been documented first in a series of documents called Internet Experiment
Notes and, later, in a series of documents called Requests for Comment (RFCs).
The latter were used initially to document the protocols of the first packet
switching network developed by DARPA, the ARPANET, beginning in 1969, and have
become the principal archive of information about the Internet. At present, the
publication function is provided by an RFC editor.
The recording of identifiers is provided by the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) who has delegated one part of this
responsibility to an Internet Registry which acts as a central repository for
Internet information and which provides central allocation of network and
autonomous system identifiers, in some cases to subsidiary registries located
in various countries. The Internet Registry (IR) also provides central
maintenance of the Domain Name System (DNS) root database which points to
subsidiary distributed DNS servers replicated throughout the Internet. The DNS
distributed database is used, inter alia, to associate host and network names
with their Internet addresses and is critical to the operation of the higher
level TCP/IP protocols including electronic mail.
There are a number of Network Information Centers
(NICs) located throughout the Internet to serve its users with documentation,
guidance, advice and assistance. As the Internet continues to grow
internationally, the need for high quality NIC functions increases. Although
the initial community of users of the Internet were drawn from the ranks of
computer science and engineering, its users now comprise a wide range of
disciplines in the sciences, arts, letters, business, military and government administration.
In 1980-81, two other networking projects, BITNET
and CSNET, were initiated. BITNET adopted the IBM RSCS protocol suite and
featured direct leased line connections between participating sites. Most of
the original BITNET connections linked IBM mainframes in university data
centers. This rapidly changed as protocol implementations became available for
other machines. From the beginning, BITNET has been multi-disciplinary in
nature with users in all academic areas. It has also provided a number of
unique services to its users (e.g., LISTSERV). Today, BITNET and its parallel
networks in other parts of the world (e.g., EARN in Europe) have several
thousand participating sites. In recent years, BITNET has established a
backbone which uses the TCP/IP protocols with RSCS-based applications running
above TCP.
CSNET was initially funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF) to provide networking for university, industry and government
computer science research groups. CSNET used the Phonenet MMDF protocol for
telephone-based electronic mail relaying and, in addition, pioneered the first
use of TCP/IP over X.25 using commercial public data networks. The CSNET name
server provided an early example of a white pages directory service and this
software is still in use at numerous sites. At its peak, CSNET had
approximately 200 participating sites and international connections to
approximately fifteen countries.
In 1987, BITNET and CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN). In the Fall of 1991, CSNET service 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 Internet, by definition is a "network of
networks." That is, it is a world-wide network that links many smaller
networks. In total, there are close to 70 million users of the internet, and on
any given day it connects 30 million people in 50+ countries. No one
"owns" the Internet. It is funded and managed locally within
different countries. Having access to the Internet means being able to send and
receive email, partake in interactive conferences , access information
resources and network news, and transfer files.
The World Wide Web is a new subdivision of the
Internet. It is an ongoing project that was begun in March 1989 by CERN, the
European Laboratory for Participle Physics, as a method of transferring
information more quickly to an international research community. The World Wide
Web consists of computers (servers) all over the world that store information in
a textual as well as a multimedia format. Their are currently over 300,000
active Web servers across the world. Each of these servers has a specific
Internet address which allows users to easily locate information. Files stored
on a server can be accessed in two ways. The first is simply by clicking on a
link in a Web document (better known as a Web page) that points to the address
of another document. The second way to locate a particular Web page is by
typing the Universal Resource Locator (URL) of the page in your browser (the
software interface used to navigate the World Wide Web). The URL of a page is
the string of characters that appears in the Location
World Wide Web pages are written in Hypertext
Markup Language or HTML. This format allows text to appear in various colors
and sizes when loaded by a Web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer,
two software programs that navigate the World Wide Web. Most Web browsers also
display graphics files which can be embedded in the HTML code of a Web page,
allowing pictures to appear in various parts of a document, as well as using
them as a background.
The greatest advantage of producing information in
this format, is that files may be linked to one another via hyperlinks (or
links) within the documents. Links usually appear in a different color than the
rest of the text on a Web page and are often underlined. Navigating the Web is
as simple as clicking a mouse button. Clicking the mouse on a link tells the
computer to go to another Internet location and display a specific file. Also,
most Web browsers allow easy navigation of the Web by utilizing
"Back" and "Forward" buttons that can trace your path
around the Web. Links within Web pages aren't limited to just other Web pages.
They can include any type of file at all. Some of the more common types of
files found on the Web are graphics files, sound files, and files containing
movie clips. These files can be run by different helper applications that the
Web browser associates with files of that type.
While the World Wide Web can provide information
crucial to your academic and professional career, the information contained on
it is not limited to such serious matters. The Web can also provide some
entertaining diversions from academics. No matter what your particular hobbies
or interests are, you are sure to find information on the Web pertaining to
them. From music to the artworks of the Louvre to the latest breaking sports
news, you are bound to find something you are interested in on the Web.
As the 21st century approaches, it seems
inevitable that computer and telecommunications technology will radically
transform our world in the years to come. The Internet and the World Wide Web,
in particular, appear to be the protocol that will lead us into the Information
Age. The social and political implications for this new technology are
astounding. Never before has such an enormous amount of information been
available to a limitless number of people. Already, issues of censorship and
free-speech have come to take center stage, as the world scrambles to deal with
the power of modern technology.
W3C:
the World-Wide Web Consortium.
Jointly run by INRIA in Europe and MIT in the US. Members from all over the
world. Members sign a three-year contract and pay a fee, for which they get a
variety of benefits such as access to advance information, participation in the
development of the standards and protocols and so on. Members must be organisations
or companies, there is no individual membership.
http://www.w3.org/
IW3C2:
the International WWW Conference
Committee. It organises the series of academic-level conferences about Web
technology and development. It endorses local or regional conferences with the
same goals.
http://jeeves.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Public/IW3C2/
Web Society:
A society for users of the Web as
individuals. Companies and organisations are not members. This is like an
automobile club.
http://www.websoc.at/
Internet Society:
Forum for issues concerning the
Internet, its protocols, the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet
Engineering Task Force etc. Is not web-specific and not related to the W3C.
http://www.isoc.org/
It must be understood that these bodies are composed of individuals who often serve on more than one body. Therefore there is a lot of synergy and cooperation, but the goals of each body are quite well-defined, separate and not to be confused.
http://www.cern.ch/
In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a CERN computer scientist
invented the World Wide Web (that you are currently
using). The "Web" as it is affectionately called, was originally
conceived and developed for the large high-energy physics collaborations
which have a demand for instantaneous information sharing between physicists
working in different universities and institutes all over the world. Now it
has millions of academic and commercial users. |
Tim together with Robert Cailliau wrote the first WWW
client (a browser-editor running under NeXTStep) and the first WWW server
along with most of the communications software, defining URLs, HTTP and HTML.
In December 1993 WWW received the IMA award and in 1995 Tim and Robert shared
the Association for Computing (ACM) Software System Award for developing the
World-Wide Web with M.Andreesen and E.Bina of NCSA |
|
The World-Wide Web was first developed as a tool for
collaboration in the high energy physics community. From there it spread
rapidly to other fields, and grew to its present impressive size. As an easy
way to access information, it has been a great success. But there is another
side to the Web, its potential as a tool for collaboration between people.
Here is some background to the early development of the World-Wide Web, a
brief overview of its present state and an introduction to the concepts on
which it is based. |
WWW was invented and launched at CERN: how did that come about? By taking a
look at the context, the associated needs and the services which were missing ten years ago, we
can see why CERN was a natural place to foster such a development.
CERN is an international organisation with 20 member states, whose business is
scientific research into the fundamental laws of matter. CERN builds and
operates facilities for particle physicists to do their experiments. It is one
of the world's largest scientific laboratories and one of the oldest European
joint ventures (more information about CERN can be found there).
Science is a community effort, and depends on free access to information and
exchange of ideas. In this spirit, CERN is not an isolated laboratory, but
rather a focus for a extensive community that now includes about 80 countries.
Around 6500 scientists use the CERN facilities, and more than half the world's
high energy physicists are now involved in its experiments. This number is
increasing as CERN becomes more and more a world-wide laboratory. Although
these scientists typically spend some time on the CERN site, they usually work
at universities and national laboratories in their home countries.
In spite of all this enthusiasm for electronic communication, there were many
obstacles in the 1980s to the effective exchange of information. There was a
great variety of computer and network systems, with hardly any common features.
Users needed to understand many inconsistent and complicated systems. Different
types of information had to be accessed in different ways, involving a big
investment of effort by users. The result was frustration and inefficiency.
This was fertile soil for the invention of the World-Wide Web by Tim
Berners-Lee. Using WWW, scientists could at last access information from any
source in a consistent and simple way. The launching of this revolutionary idea
was made possible by the widespread adoption of the Internet around that time.
This provided a de facto standard for communication between computers, on which
WWW could be built. It also brought into being a "virtual community"
of enthusiastic computer and communications experts, whose attitude fostered
progress via the exchange of information over the Internet.
by
Robert H'obbes' Zakon
Internet Evangelist
Hobbes' Internet Timeline Copyright (c)1993-9 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 archive 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 wishes to acknowledge the Internet Society for hosting this document, and
the many Net folks who have contributed suggestions and helped with the
author's genealogy search.
1957
USSR launches Sputnik, first
artificial earth satellite. In response, US 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 (:amk:)
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
1965
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"
1966
Lawrence G. Roberts, MIT:
"Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers" (October)
·
First ARPANET plan
1967
ARPANET design discussions held by
Larry Roberts at ARPA IPTO PI meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan (April)
ACM Symposium on Operating Principles in
Gatlinburg, Tennessee (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 Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
Request for proposals for ARPANET
sent out in August; responses received in Setptember
University of California Los
Angeles (UCLA) awarded Network Measurement Center contract in October
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. (: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 12K of memory]; AT&T
provides 50kbps lines
Node 1: UCLA (30 August, hooked up
2 September)
·
Function: Network Measurement Center
·
System,OS: SDS SIGMA 7, SEX
Node 2: Stanford Research Institute
(SRI) (1 October)
·
Network Information Center (NIC)
·
SDS940/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
(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. (October 20 or 29 - being verified)
Univ of Michigan, Michigan State
and Wayne State Univ establish X.25-based Merit network for students, faculty,
alumni (:sw1:)
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
1971
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:)
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 machines 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 1974, INWG became IFIP WG 6.1 (:vgc:)
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 NORSAR
(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) (:amk:)
Bob Kahn poses Internet problem,
starts internetting research program at ARPA. Vinton Cerf sketches gateway
architecture in March on back of envelope in a San Francisco hotel lobby
(:vgc:)
Cerf and Kahn present basic
Internet ideas at INWG in September at Univ of Sussex, Brighton, UK (:vgc:)
RFC 454: File Transfer specification
Network Voice Protocol (NVP)
specification (RFC 741) and implementation enabling conference calls over
ARPAnet. (:bb1:)
SRI (NIC) begins publishing ARPANET
News in March; number of ARPANET users estimated at 2,000
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). [IEEE Trans Comm]
(:amk:)
BBN opens Telenet, the first public
packet data service (a commercial version of ARPANET) (:sk2:)
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 (:esr:)
Shockwave Rider by John Brunner
(:pds:)
1976
Elizabeth II, Queen of the United
Kingdom sends out an email in February from the Royal Signals and Radar
Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern
UUCP (Unix-to-Unix 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 Univ 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 in July (:vgc:)
1978
TCP split into TCP and IP (March)
RFC 748: TELNET RANDOMLY-LOSE Option
1979
Meeting between Univ of Wisconsin,
DARPA, National
Science Foundation (NSF), and computer scientists from many
universities to establish a Computer Science Department research 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 under net.* hierarchy.
First MUD, MUD1, by Richard Bartle
and Roy Trubshaw at U 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 MacKenzie 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 at 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 (: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
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. (: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.
1983
Name server developed at Univ 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 (terminal access controller)
Stuttgart and Korea get connected
Movement Information Net (MINET)
started early in the year in Europe, connected to Internet in Sept
CSNET / ARPANET gateway put in
place
ARPANET split into ARPANET and
MILNET; the latter became integrated with the Defense 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
(:mpc:)
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
gateway funded by IBM
FidoNet developed by Tom Jennings
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
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. (:kf1:)
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 (:sw1:)
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 Society for Public Access
Computing (SoPAC). Later Freenet program management assumed by the National
Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) in 1989 (:sk2,rab:)
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
addresses.
The great USENET name change;
moderated newsgroups changed in 1987.
BARRNET (Bay Area Regional Research
Network) established using high speed links. Operational in 1987.
New England gets cut off from the
Net as AT&T suffers a fiber optics cable break between Newark/NJ and White
Plains/NY. Yes, all seven New England ARPANET trunk lines were in the one
severed 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. (:wz1:)
1000th RFC: "Request For Comments
reference guide"
Number of hosts breaks 10,000
Number of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000
1988
2 November - Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting ~6,000 of
the 60,000 hosts on the Internet (:ph1:)
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 TCP/IP as an interim. US Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) defines the set
of protocols to be supported by Government purchased products (:gck:)
Los Nettos network created with no
federal funding, instead supported by regional members (founding: Caltech, TIS,
UCLA, USC, ISI).
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1
(1.544Mbps)
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 (:zby:)
First Canadian regionals join
NSFNET: ONet via Cornell, RISQ via Princeton, BCnet via Univ of Washington
(:ec1:)
FidoNet gets connected to the Net,
enabling the exchange of email and news (:tp1:)
The first multicast tunnel is
established between Stanford and BBN in the Summer of 1988.
Countries connecting to NSFNET:
Canada (CA), Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), France (FR), Iceland (IS), Norway
(NO), Sweden (SE)
1989
Number of hosts breaks 100,000
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. (:glg:)
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 Univ
(:jg1,ph1:)
Corporation for Research and
Education Networking (CREN)
is formed by merging CSNET into BITNET (August)
AARNET - Australian Academic
Research Network - set up by AVCC and CSIRO; introduced into service the
following year (:gmc:)
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 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)
1991
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 Minnessota
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)
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 (: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 (TH), Venezuela (VE)
1993
InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific
Internet services: (:sc1:)
·
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 (:sk2:)
United Nations (UN) comes on-line (:vgc:)
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 (:tb1:)
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 Federation (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
The National Institute for
Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests that GOSIP should incorporate TCP/IP
and drop the "OSI-only" requirement (:gck:)
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 become 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 (http://www.kantei.go.jp/)
UK's HM Treasury on-line (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/)
New Zealand's Info Tech Prime
Minister on-line (http://www.govt.nz/)
First Virtual, the first cyberbank,
open up for business
Radio stations start rockin'
(rebroadcasting) round the clock on the Net: WXYC at Univ of NC, WJHK at Univ
of KS-Lawrence, KUGS at Western WA Univ
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 NSFNET:
Algeria (DZ), Armenia (AM), Bermuda (BM), Burkina Faso (BF), China (CN),
Colombia (CO), Jamaica (JM), Jordan (JO), Lebanon (LB), Lithuania (LT), Macau
(MO), Morocco (MA), New Caledonia, 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, PSC
Hong Kong police disconnect all but
1 of the colony's Internet providers in search of a hacker. 10,000 people are
left without Net access. (:api:)
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,
America Online,
Prodigy)
begin to provide Internet access
Thousands in Minneapolis-St. Paul
(USA) lose Net access after transients start a bonfire under a bridge at the
Univ of MN causing fiber-optic cables to melt (30 July)
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 (http://canada.gc.ca/)
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
(:wired496:)
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
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 Mahathir
Mohamad, PLO Leader Yasser Arafat, and Phillipine President Fidel Rhamos meet
for ten minutes in an online interactive 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.
9,272 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$15,000
New Yorks' Public Access Networks
Corp (PANIX) is shut down after repeated SYN attacks by a cracker using methods
outlined in a hacker magazine (2600)
MCI upgrades Internet backbone
adding ~13,000 ports, bringing the effective speed from 155Mbps to 622Mbps.
The Internet Ad Hoc Committee announces plans to
add 7 new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD): .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec,
.info, .nom. The IAHC plan also calls for a competing group of domain
registrars worldwide.
A malicious cancelbot is released
on USENET wiping out more than 25,000 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"
71,618 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
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$150,000
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: CHALLENGER.MED.SYNAPSE.UAH.UALBERTA.CA
101,803 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), Turkmenistan (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), Tajikstan (TJ), 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 Govt (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 [:twc:]
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 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 performace 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
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
1999
Internet access becomes available
to the Saudi Arabian public in January
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 2.5GBps
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 is 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 concincide with the G8 Summit.
Little actual impact is reported.
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)
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
Top 10 TLDs 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 (13 Mar), US Senate (27 May), NSI (2
Jul), Paraguay Gov't (20 Jul), AntiOnline (5 Aug)
Technologies of the Year:
E-Trade, Online Banking
Virii of the Year: Melissa (March), ExploreZip (June)