1945

"As We May Think", Vannevar Bush

---

1950s

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

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.

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)

• 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)

Univ of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State Univ establish X.25-based Merit network for students, faculty, alumni

1970

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)

• 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)

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)

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 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. Vinton 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 Univ of Sussex, Brighton, UK

RFC 454: File Transfer specification

Network Voice Protocol (NVP) specification (RFC 741) and implementation enabling conference calls over ARPAnet.

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]

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-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

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
• 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.

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

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 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

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

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

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 Society 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 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.

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

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

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

First Canadian regionals join NSFNET: ONet via Cornell, RISQ via Princeton, BCnet via Univ of Washington

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 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.

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

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

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

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, 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)

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

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 (44.736Mbps)

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.

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 search tool, is released by Univ of Nevada

World Bank comes on-line

The term surfing the Internet is coined by Jean Armour Polly

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 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

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 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)

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)

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.

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

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)

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)

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 gerenation 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),

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

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)

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

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

The Internet Fiesta kicks off in March across Europe, building on the success of La Fête de l'Internet held in 1998

MCI/Worldcom, the vBNS provider for NSF, begins upgrading the US backbone to 2.5GBps

Melissa virus storms through the Net in late March

Hacks of the Year: Star Wars (8 Jan), E-Bay (Mar)

Internet growth:

   Date       Hosts        |      Date       Hosts     Networks   Domains
   -----    ---------      +      -----    ---------   --------  ---------
   12/69            4      |      07/89      130,000        650      3,900
   06/70            9      |      10/89      159,000        837
   10/70           11      |      10/90      313,000      2,063      9,300
   12/70           13      |      01/91      376,000      2,338
   04/71           23      |      07/91      535,000      3,086     16,000
   10/72           31      |      10/91      617,000      3,556     18,000
   01/73           35      |      01/92      727,000      4,526
   06/74           62      |      04/92      890,000      5,291     20,000
   03/77          111      |      07/92      992,000      6,569     16,300
   12/79          188      |      10/92    1,136,000      7,505     18,100
   08/81          213      |      01/93    1,313,000      8,258     21,000
   05/82          235      |      04/93    1,486,000      9,722     22,000
   08/83          562      |      07/93    1,776,000     13,767     26,000
   10/84        1,024      |      10/93    2,056,000     16,533     28,000
   10/85        1,961      |      01/94    2,217,000     20,539     30,000
   02/86        2,308      |      07/94    3,212,000     25,210     46,000
   11/86        5,089      |      10/94    3,864,000     37,022     56,000
   12/87       28,174      |      01/95    4,852,000     39,410     71,000
   07/88       33,000      |      07/95    6,642,000     61,538    120,000
   10/88       56,000      |      01/96    9,472,000     93,671    240,000
   01/89       80,000      |      07/96   12,881,000    134,365    488,000
                           |      01/97   16,146,000               828,000
                           |      07/97   19,540,000             1,301,000
                                          *** see Note below ***

   Hosts    = a computer system with registered ip address (an A record)
   Networks = registered class A/B/C addresses   
   Domains  = registered domain name (with name server record)

   Note: A more accurate survey mechanism was developed in 1/98; new and 
         some corrected numbers are shown below.  For further info, see 
         Sources section.

   Date      Hosts      |   Date      Hosts      |   Date      Hosts
   -----  -----------   +   -----  -----------   +   -----  -----------
   01/95    5,846,000   |  07/96    16,729,000   |   01/98   29,670,000
   07/95    8,200,000   |  01/97    21,819,000   |   07/98   36,739,000
   01/96   14,352,000   |  07/97    26,053,000   |   01/99   43,230,000

Worldwide Networks Growth: (I)nternet (B)ITNET (U)UCP (F)IDONET (O)SI

           ____# Countries____                         ____# Countries____
   Date     I   B   U   F   O                  Date     I   B   U   F   O
   -----   --- --- --- --- ---                 -----   --- --- --- --- ---
   09/91    31  47  79  49                     02/94    62  51 125  88  31
   12/91    33  46  78  53                     07/94    75  52 129  89  31
   02/92    38  46  92  63                     11/94    81  51 133  95  --
   04/92    40  47  90  66  25                 02/95    86  48 141  98  --
   08/92    49  46  89  67  26                 06/95    96  47 144  99  --
   01/93    50  50 101  72  31                 06/96   134  -- 146 108  --
   04/93    56  51 107  79  31                 07/97   171  -- 147 108  --
   08/93    59  51 117  84  31

WWW Growth:

   Date     Sites     |   Date     Sites     |   Date     Sites     
   -----  ----------  +   -----  ----------  +   -----  ----------  
   06/93         130  |   04/97   1,002,512  |   10/98   3,358,969
   09/93         204  |   05/97   1,044,163  |   11/98   3,518,158
   10/93         228  |   06/97   1,117,255  |   12/98   3,689,227
   12/93         623  |   07/97   1,203,096  |   01/99   4,062,280
   06/94       2,738  |   08/97   1,269,800  |   02/99   4,301,512
   12/94      10,022  |   09/97   1,364,714  |   03/99   4,389,131
   06/95      23,500  |   10/97   1,466,906  |   
   01/96     100,000  |   11/97   1,553,998  |   
   06/96     252,000  |   12/97   1,681,868  |
   07/96     299,403  |   01/98   1,834,710  |
   08/96     342,081  |   02/98   1,920,933  |
   09/96     397,281  |   03/98   2,084,473  |
   10/96     462,047  |   04/98   2,215,195  |
   11/96     525,906  |   05/98   2,308,502  |
   12/96     603,367  |   06/98   2,410,067  |
   01/97     646,162  |   07/98   2,594,622  |
   02/97     739,688  |   08/98   2,807,588  |
   03/97     883,149  |   09/98   3,156,324  |

   Sites = # of web servers (one host may have multiple sites by 
                             using different domains or port numbers)

USENET Growth:

   Date  Sites  ~MB  ~Posts  Groups  |  Date   Sites   ~MB   ~Posts  Groups
   ----  -----  ---  ------  ------  +  ----  -------  ---   ------  ------
   1979      3            2       3  |  1987    5,200    2      957     259
   1980     15           10          |  1988    7,800    4     1933     381
   1981    150  0.05     20          |  1990   33,000   10    4,500   1,300
   1982    400           35          |  1991   40,000   25   10,000   1,851
   1983    600          120          |  1992   63,000   42   17,556   4,302
   1984    900          225          |  1993  110,000   70   32,325   8,279
   1985  1,300  1.0     375          |  1994  180,000  157   72,755  10,696
   1986  2,200  2.0     946     241  |  1995  330,000  586  131,614

      ~ approximate: MB - megabytes per day, Posts - articles per day

Security (CERT) Incidents:

                     1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
                   + ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
   Incidents       |    6  132  252  406  773 1334 2340 2412 2573 2134 2497
   Advisories      |    1    7   12   23   21   19   15   18   27   28   12
   Vulnerabilities |                                     171  345  311  200