Chapter 2
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNET IN COMMUNICATIONS
The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location.
This history of the Internet revolves around four different aspects. The first aspect is the technological evolution that began with early research on packet switching and the ARPANET, and where current research continues to expand the horizons of the infrastructure along several dimensions, such as scale, performance, and higher level functionality. The second aspect is the operations and management aspect of a global and complex operational infrastructure. The third is the social aspect, which resulted in a broad community of Internauts working together to create and evolve the technology. The fourth aspect is the commercialization aspect, resulting in an extremely effective transition of research results into a broadly deployed and available information infrastructure.
Nothing epitomizes modern life better than the computer. For better or worse, computers have penetrated every aspect of our lives. Today computers do much more than simply compute. It revolutionized the way we communicate with each other from virtually anywhere in the world through the Internet. But where did all this technology come from and where is it heading? To fully understand and appreciate the impact computers and the Internet have on our lives and promises they hold for our future, it is very important for us to understand their evolution.
1455
" Johannes Guttenberg printed the Bible that facilitated the widespread
of knowledge.
1822
" British Mathematician Charles Babbage proposed a machine to perform differential
equations, called a Difference Engine. Powered by steam and large as a locomotive,
the machine would have a stored program and could perform calculations and print
the results automatically. After working on the Difference Engine for 10 years,
Babbage was suddenly inspired to begin work on the first general-purpose computer,
which he called the Analytical Engine.
1825
" British inventor William Sturgeon exhibited a device that laid the foundations
for large-scale electronic communications: the electromagnet. Sturgeon displayed
its power by lifting nine pounds with a seven-ounce piece of iron wrapped with
wires through which the current of a single cell battery was sent Alexander
Graham Bell invented telephone.
1830
" In 1830 an American, Joseph Henry, demonstrated the potential of Sturgeon's
device for long distance communication by sending an electronic current over
one mile of wire to activate an electromagnet which caused a bell to strike.
Thus the electric telegraph was born.
1835
" While a professor of arts and design at New York University, Samuel F.B.
Morse proved that signals could be transmitted by wire. He used pulses of current
to deflect an electromagnet, which moved a marker to produce written codes on
a strip of paper - the invention of Morse Code.
1876
" Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone.
1937
John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry design and build the first electronic digital
computer.
1941
" German engineer Konrad Zuse had developed a computer, the Z3, to design
airplanes and missiles.
1943
" British scientist Alan Turing designs Colossus, an electronic computer
created for the military to decode German messages during the World War.
1944
" Howard H. Aiken, a Harvard engineer working with IBM, succeeded in producing
an all-electronic calculator. The purpose of the computer was to create ballistic
charts for the U.S. Navy. It was about half as long as a football field and
contained about 500 miles of wiring. The Harvard-IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled
Calculator, or Mark I for short, was an electronic relay computer. It used electromagnetic
signals to move mechanical parts.
1945
" John Von Neumann designed the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic
Computer (EDVAC) with a memory to hold both a stored program as well as data.
This "stored memory" technique as well as the "conditional control
transfer," that allowed the computer to be stopped at any point and then
resumed, allowed for greater versatility in computer programming. The key element
to the von Neumann architecture was the central processing unit, which allowed
all computer functions to be coordinated through a single source. His idea of
memory holding both data and stored programs laid the foundation for all digital
computers that have since been built.
1947
" William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen invent the transistor
which would later revolutionize computers. The transistor replaced the large,
cumbersome vacuum tube in televisions, radios and computers. As a result, the
size of electronic machinery has been shrinking ever since.
1951
" The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer), built by Remington Rand,
became one of the first commercially available computers to take advantage of
these advances.
1957
" Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite was launched by USSR. In
response, the United States of America 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.
1958
" The second generation of computers which were built with transistors
was introduced.
" Jack Kilby, an engineer with Texas Instruments, developed the integrated
circuit (IC). The IC combined three electronic components onto a small silicon
disc, which was made from quartz. Scientists later managed to fit even more
components on a single chip, called a semiconductor. As a result, computers
became ever smaller as more components were squeezed onto the chip
1961
" Leonard Kleinrock at MIT published the first paper on packet switching
theory in July 1961.
1962
" The first recorded description of the social interactions that could
be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider
of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He
envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone
could quickly access data and programs from any site.
" Starting in October, Licklider was the first head of the computer research
program at DARPA, 4. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan
Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance
of this networking concept.
" Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation (a government agency), was commissioned
by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and
control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be
a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized
so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could
still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack. The goal was to build
a robust communication network that could survive under adverse conditions.
" The first active communications satellite was launched; it provided the
first live television broadcast between the United States, Europe, Japan, and
South America.
1964
" Leonard Kleinrock published the first book on packet switching theory.
" Paul Baran develops packet-switching networks and produces several papers
on distributed communication networks. His final proposal was a packet switched
network. Packet switching is the breaking down of data into datagrams or packets
that are labeled to indicate the origin and the destination of the information
and the forwarding of these packets from one computer to another computer until
the information arrives at its final destination computer. This was crucial
to the realization of a computer network. If packets are lost at any given point,
the message can be resent by the originator.
" The number of computers has grown to 18,000.
" Third generation computers with their controlling circuitry stored on
chips were introduced by IBM.
1965
" British mathematician, Donald Davies of National Physical Laboratory
(NPL) also explores on the idea of networks sending pieces of data in units;
thus he coined the term "packet." Though funding limited research,
he envisions his system having commercial uses in: business, recreational activities,
point-of-sale transactions, and even online betting.
" ARPA sponsors study on "Cooperative network of time-sharing computers"
and the first "Wide Area Network" (WAN) is created. Lawrence G. Roberts
working with Thomas Merrill connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to the Q-32
in California with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however
small) wide-area computer network ever built. The result of this experiment
was the realization that the time-shared computers could work well together,
running programs and retrieving data as necessary on the remote machine, but
that the circuit switched telephone system was totally inadequate for the job.
Kleinrock's conviction of the need for packet switching was confirmed.
1966
" Packet theory scientists come together from: ARPA, NPL, and RAND.
" At the Association for Computing Machines Symposium on Operating Principles
in Gatlingburg, Tennessee, Lawrence G. Roberts presents a paper entitled "Multiple
Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication" which summarizes standards
for the ARPANET network design. At the conference where he presented the paper,
there was also a paper on a packet network concept from the UK presented by
Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury of NPL. Scantlebury told Roberts about the
NPL work as well as that of Paul Baran and others at RAND, who had written several
papers on communication networks.
" The RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure
voice in the military in 1964. It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967),
at RAND (1962-1965), and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without
any of the researchers knowing about the other work. The word "packet"
was adopted from the work at NPL and the proposed line speed to be used in the
ARPANET design was upgraded from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps
" Davies continues with his work and forms the NPL Data Network in Middlesex,
England.
1967
" Lawrence G. Roberts and Thomas Merrill, at the Lincoln Laboratory at
MIT publish "Towards a Cooperative Network of Time Shared Computers"
which documents their computer networking experiments for ARPA
1968
" Proposals are made for ARPANET to begin the project.
" In August, after Roberts and the DARPA funded community had refined the
overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, an RFQ was released by
DARPA for the development of one of the key components, the packet switches
called Interface Message Processors (IMP's).
" Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) headed by Frank Heart are awarded
a million-dollar contract by ARPA to build IMPs. BBN had selected a Honeywell
minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch.
" University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is granted Network Measurement
Center contract in October.
1969 The Most Important Year for Last Century
" The first ARPANET connections are made. Nodes (hosts) are set as BBN
builds each IMP machine, which is a Honeywell DDP-516 minicomputer with 12K
memory, set with 50 kbps lines, which AT&T provides.
" Node 1: UCLA (September)
" Node 2: Stanford Research Institute (SRI) (October)
" Node 3: University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) (November)
" Node 4: University of Utah (December)
" Charley Kline at UCLA sends the first packets; however, the system crashes
as he types the letter "G" of "LOGIN." The error was corrected
by the programmers at BBN.
1970's Connections Established, ARPANET Expands
1970
" ALOHAnet, which is the first packet network, is developed at the University
of Hawaii. Funded by ARPA and the Navy, the project explores packet switching
as an alternative to costly dial-up telephone connections for accessing the
University's computers.
" In December the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S. Crocker
finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control
Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP and start using
NCP during the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop
applications.
1971
" ARPANET increases up to 15 nodes (23 hosts) which include: University
of California at Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles, Stanford Research Institute,
University of Utah, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BNN), MIT, RAND, System Development
Corporation, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, UIU(C), CWRU, Carnegie Mellon University,
NASA/Ames.
" Ray Tomlinson of BBN creates the first email program that is able to
send messages across a distributed network.
" Ted Hoff of Intel Corporation develops a microprocessor called Intel
4004.
1972
" Ray Tomlinson modifies his email program for ARPANET and quickly gains
popularity. Initially there were some variations of the program, but the "@"
was finally chosen as the standard. ARPANET was currently using the Network
Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between
hosts running on the same network
" ARPAnet made its first public appearance flashily, as the star of Washington
D.C.'s International Conference on Computers and Communications (now International
Conference on Computer Communication) in October at Hilton. The Terminal Interface
Processor (TIP) is organized by Robert (Bob) Kahn. Arranging for an ARPAnet
IMP to be on-site, head researchers demonstrated the abilities of the network.
Terminals set up at over 40 locations were able to locate the IMP and other
processors. More than 1000 people witnessed a new technological revolution,
as remote access to files became possible. This was the first public demonstration
of this new network technology to the public
1973
" ARPA changes its name to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency
" ARPANET makes its first international connection to the University College
of London (England) and the Royal Establishment in Norway (NORSAR).
" 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."
" Bob Kahn starts research at DARPA, working for Lawrence Roberts. Kahn
enlists Vinton Cerf of Stanford University to assist in creating solutions for
linking diverse systems. Additional Internet projects are radio-based such as
PRnet and SATNET, which is satellite driven; moreover, the systems all have
different interfaces, labeling conventions and transmission rates. Kahn and
Cerf work together in designing a net-to-net connection protocol
1974
" Bob Kahn and Vinton Cerf publish "A Protocol for Packet Network
Intercommunication" which specifies the architecture of a Transmission
Control Program (TCP). Messages are encapsulated and decapsulated in "datagrams"
to the end user. The paper also introduces the idea of gateways, where only
the receiving hosts can read the contents of messages. First use of term Internet
by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn in their paper on Transmission Control Protocol.
1975
" Internet operations are transferred to the Defense Communications Agency.
" Steve Walker, an ARPA program manager, establishes first mailing list
concerning ARPANET.
" Satellite links across two oceans to Hawaii and UK are formed, and the
first TCP tests are layered over them by Stanford, BBN, and UCL. The two-network
communications test was performed by establishment of a link between the Stanford
and UCL systems through a Satellite Network (SATNET) connection
1976
" Robert M. Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which allowed coaxial cable to
move data extremely fast. This was a crucial component to the development of
LANs.The packet satellite project went into practical use. SATNET, Atlantic
packet Satellite network, was born. This network linked the United States with
Europe. It used INTELSAT satellites that were owned by a consortium of countries
and not exclusively the United States government. UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed
at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.
" The Department of Defense began to experiment with the TCP/IP protocol
and soon decided to require it for use on ARPANET.
" Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs build Apple computer.
1977
" Email service, "Theorynet" at the University of Wisconsin provides
electronic mail to over 100 researchers in computer science using a system over
Telenet.
" In November, a three-network test was conducted, successfully simulating
complex, military-grade communications, and verifying the internetworking functionality
inherent in the TCP/IP design. It was the first demonstration of ARPANET, San
Francisco Bay Packet Radio Net (PRNET) and Atlantic Packet Satellite Network
(SATNET) operation of Internet protocols with BBN-supplied gateways.
" Although ARPANET, SATNET, and PRNET are separate research projects, each
system is based on the premise of a network that will communicate with independent
equipment, i.e. satellite and radio.
1978
" TCP split into TCP and IP. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is designated
as the host-to-host protocol and an IP or inter network protocol, would pass
individual packets between machines. The pair becomes collectively known as
"TCP/IP."
1979
" Meeting at Madison, Larry Landweber department head for computer sciences
at the University of Wisconsin, meets with representatives of DARPA, NSF (National
Science Foundation) and six other universities to develop a network independent
of ARPANET. The proposed network (CSNET) will be designed to provide greater
access to universities.
" USENET (newsgroups) is established by Steve Bellovin, a graduate student
at University of North Carolina and Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, two graduate
students at Duke University. It was based on UUCP. Users from around the world
join these discussion groups to talk about the net, politics, religion, and
thousands of other subjects
1980's ARPANET Expands and Other Networks Emerge
1980
" Due to virus ARPANET comes to a complete halt.
" ARPANET has 213 hosts, with a new host added approximately once every
20 days.
" CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) is built by the University of Wisconsin,
the University of Delaware, Purdue University, RAND Corp., and BBN through grant
funds from the National Science Foundation. CSNET is later known as the Computer
and Science Network, and was not connected to ARPANET.
" TCP/IP was adopted as a defense standard. This enabled defense to begin
sharing in the DARPA Internet technology base and led directly to the eventual
partitioning of the military and non- military communities
" BITNET, "Because It's Time NETwork"
" The system serves as a cooperative network between the City University
of New York and Yale. The low-cost network later expands throughout United States
and to overseas.
" BITNET provides electronic mail, listserves, as well as, file transfers
(FTP) to distribute information.
1981
" National Science Foundation created backbone called CSNET 56 Kbps network
for institutions without access to ARPANET. Vinton Cerf proposed a plan for
an inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET.
" IBM PC is introduced.
1982
" DCA (Defense Communication Agency) and DARPA establish the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) and the protocol suite, commonly
known as TCP/IP for ARPANET.
" DOD also declares TCP/IP as a standard.
" Thus, the first definition of an "Internet" is established
as a connected set of networks, specifically those using TCP/IP.
" EUnet, the European UNIX Network is formed by EUUG for email and USENET
services. The original connections include: the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden
and the UK
1983 The Official Beginning Of the Internet
" A gateway between CSNET/ARPANET is created.
" On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP.
TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely.
" Many people view January 1, 1983, when all of ARPAnet was switched over
from NCP to TCP, as the official beginning of the Internet.
" ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET. The military network, MILNET,
became integrated with the Defense Data Network created the previous year. Sixty-eight
of the 113 existing nodes went to MILNET.
" The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed
packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server
database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people
to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers
" Networking usage changes from having a single, large time sharing computer,
to connecting entire local networks
1984
" Dan Lynch and the Internet Architecture Board held a three day workshop
on TCP/IP for the computer industry, which was attended by about 50 researchers
and 250 vendor representatives. This meeting helped popularize TCP/IP in the
computer industry, and triggered the development of several TCP/IP networking
products by different companies
" Domain Name System or DNS is introduced to identify the type of institution
which represents the host. Six large domains were named: edu (education), gov
(government), mil (military), com (commercial), org (organization), and net
(network resources). Others were added to represent a country, or government
entity, such as .biz, .info, .us etc.
" Upgrade to CSNET was contracted to MCI. New circuits would be T1 lines,
1.5 Mbps which is twenty-five times faster than the old 56 Kbps lines. IBM would
provide advanced routers and Merit would manage the network. New network was
to be called NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network), and old lines were
to remain called CSNET.
" EARN, the European Academic and Research Network, is formed with funding
from IBM.
1985
" Internet was established as a technology supporting a broad community
of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities
for daily computer communications. Electronic mail was being used broadly across
several communities, often with different systems, but interconnection between
different mail systems was demonstrating the utility of broad based electronic
communications between people.
" Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California
is given responsibility for DNS root management by the Defense Communications
Agency and Stanford Research Institute for DNS Network Information Center registrations.
" Symbolics.com is assigned to become the first registered domain. Other
firsts include: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, ucla.edu, css.gov, mitre.org.
" Electronic Bulletin Boards, such as the WELL, (Whole Earth 'Lectronic
Link) by Steward Brand are released. Using his personal computer on his houseboat
in Sasalito, California, he organized discussion groups, from topics such as
the "Grateful Dead" to "Parenting."
" National Science Foundation awards five supercomputer contracts: Cornell
Theory Center (CTC), the John Von Neumann Center at Princeton (JVNC), the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois,
the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), the San Diego Supercomputer Center
(SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego and the General Atomics Company
with nuclear engineer Sid Karin as director.
" National Science Foundation began deploying its new T1 lines, which would
be finished by 1988
1986
" NSFNET system is created with a backbone speed of 56Kbps.
" NSF centers lead to formation of other regional feeder networks and the
hub infrastructure expands.
" Craig Partridge, a programmer at BBN develops Mail Exchanger (MX), which
allows non-IP network hosts to have domain addresses.
" A severed fiber-optic cable in New England cuts off the Net as AT&T
loses connections between Newark/NJ and White Plains/NY. Seven New England ARPANET
trunk lines were in one spliced cable.
" The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF was created to serve as a
forum for technical coordination by contractors for DARPA working on ARPANET,
US Defense Data Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system.
1987
" NSF signs a cooperative agreement to manage the NSFNET backbone with
Merit Network Inc., which is assisted by IBM and MCI. NSFNET was a T1 line that
connected 170 smaller networks together and operated at 1.544 Mbps.
" BITNET and CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research and Educational
Networking (CREN), another work of the National Science Foundation.
" Number of hosts breaks 10,000.
1988
" Soon after the completion of the T1 NSFNET backbone, traffic increased
so quickly that plans immediately began on upgrading the network again. T3 (45
Mbps) was developed.
" Robert Morris, son of a computer security expert for the National Security
Agency, sent a worm through the Internet, affecting 6,000 of the 60,000 hosts
on the net. He programmed the worm to reproduce itself and filter through network
computers; consequently, the size of the files filled computers' memories, thus
disabling numerous machines.
" 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.
1989
" Commercial services emerge, with CompuServe through Ohio State University.
" First relays between a commercial electronic mail carrier and the Internet
are established through MCI Mail and the Corporation for the National Research
Initiative (CNRI).
" BITNET and CSNET merge to form CREN, Corporation for Research and Education
Networking.
" UCLA holds a symposium called Act One to celebrate the ARPANET 20th anniversary
and its decommissioning.
" Number of hosts breaks 100,000.
1990's ARPANET experiment ends and the World Wide Web is born
1990
" February 28, ARPANET was formally decommissioned and the remaining
hardware dismantled. The changeover causes little disruption on the network
" Dr. Vinton Cerf, one of the pioneers of the Internet laments: "It
was the first, and being first, was best, but now we lay it down to ever rest.
Now pause with me a moment, shed some tears. For auld lang syne, for love, for
years and years of faithful service, duty done, I weep. Lay down thy packet,
now. O Friend, and sleep." Cerf's sentiments of ARPANET were shared by
other ARPANET veterans, who engaged their efforts into an uncertain experiment
to a system that presently routinely serves hundreds of thousands of users.
" Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is established by Mitchell D. Kapor.
" Institutions, such as the National Library of Medicine go online.
" Merit, IBM and MCI formed a not for profit corporation called ANS, Advanced
Network & Services, which was to conduct research into high speed networking.
It soon came up with the concept of the T3, a 45 Mbps line. NSF quickly adopted
the new network and by the end of 1991 all of its sites were connected by this
new backbone. While the T3 lines were being constructed, the Department of Defense
disbanded the ARPANET and it was replaced by the NSFNET backbone. The original
50Kbs lines of ARPANET were taken out of service.
" Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implement a hypertext system to provide
efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy
physics community.
" Archie, the grandfather of all search engines which stands for "Archive
Server" was created by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill.
at McGill University, Montreal.
1991 The Year the Web Was Born!
" National's Science Foundation NSFNET decides to lift commercial restrictions
on the use of the network, thus opening a means for electronic commerce. The
NSF established a new network, named NREN, the National Research and Education
Network. The purpose of this network is to conduct high speed networking research.
It was not to be used as a commercial network, nor was it to be used to send
a lot of the data that the Internet now transfers
" High Performance Computing Act, which is authored by Al Gore, is signed
into law. Former US Vice-President Al Gore plays a big part in the invention
of the Internet. Of all politicians in America, Al Gore is acknowledged by the
fathers of the Internet Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf as the politician that contributed
the most in the invention of the Internet. Malaysians should love Al Gore instead
of hating him. : Dr. Mahathir invented MSC but Al Gore invented the Internet
:
" CSNET (which consisted of 56Kbps lines) was discontinued having fulfilled
its important early role in the provision of academic networking service. A
key feature of CREN is that its operational costs are fully met through dues
paid by its member organizations
" Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle, is
released by Thinking Machines Corporation.
" Gopher is introduced by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the University
of Minnesota. Gopher allows users to search the network, but in just pure text.
Gopher is like FTP, but for documents instead of files. Gopher servers contain
plain text documents (no. images or hypertext) that can be retrieved.
" World-Wide Web (WWW) is released by CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. British
researcher, Tim Berners-Lee creates Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), which
uses specifications for URLs or Uniform Resource Locators, for web addresses.
It makes linking document on different computers possible.
1992
" Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered; the organization's members
include the founders of the early Internet, ARPANET.
" The Internet Activities Board was re-organized and re-named the Internet
Architecture Board operating under the auspices of the Internet Society
" Veronica, a gopher space search tool, is released by the University of
Nevada at Reno, System Computing Department. The same developers of Archie create
Veronica; however, Veronica allows the user to search gopher databases. Each
tool is just in plain text on computer monitors. It is the second search engine
after Archie.
" In U.S. presidential election, vice-presidential candidate Al Gore promised
to make the development of this so-called "information superhighway"
an administrative priority.
1993
" Matthew Gray's The Wanderer was born. The Wanderer was the first robot
on the web and was designed to track the growth of the World Wide Web.
" Excite the first popular public search engine was born. Initially it
was called Architext. It was started by six Stanford undergraduates.
" In response to The Wanderer, Martijn Koster created Archie-Like Indexing
of the Web (ALIWEB).
" InterNIC formed by the NSF, provides specific Internet services: (i)
Directory and database services (AT&T) (ii) Registration services (Network
Solutions Inc.) (iii) Information services (General Atomics/CERFnet)
" Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develops a graphical
user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X. Mosaic, which is one of
the first Internet browsers is released and proliferates the web with a 341,634%
annual growth rate of service traffic. Mosaic, provides a graphical interface
to search the Internet, thus making the Internet more visually appealing. Gopher's
growth is 997%
1994
" ATM (Asynchronous Transmission Mode, 145Mbps) backbone is installed on
NSFNET.
" Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications Corporation
and launch the browser Netscape Navigator 1.0.
" Infoseek search engine was born in January.
" Yahoo! which stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle"
is founded by two PhD candidates from Stanford, Jerry Yang and David.
" WebCrawler search engine was born.
" Lycos was born out of the labs at Carnegie Mellon University
1995
" The National Science Foundation announced that as of April 30, 1995 it
would no longer allow direct access to the NSF backbone. The National Science
Foundation contracted with four companies that would be providers of access
to the NSF backbone (Merit). These companies would then sell connections to
groups, organizations, and companies. US$50 annual fee is imposed on domains,
excluding .edu and .gov domains which are still funded by the National Science
Foundation. NSFnet was turned off, and Internet traffic was handed over to commercial
networks.
" Amazon.com is founded by Jeff Bezos. Today it is the biggest e-commerce
site.
" Sun Microsystems launches Java, an OOP that allows users to write one
application for a variety of platform.
" : Dan started to use the Internet for the first time. The ISP was Pacific Internet and the speed of the modem
was 28.8Kbps; upgraded to 33.6Kbps and later used 56Kbps and then in the year
2000 switched to unlimited SCV Broadband cable modem at the blazing speed of
1.5 Mbps and now (2002) is studying at APIIT and lamenting at the stupid ISPs
in Malaysia and the super slow 56Kbps that always get disconnected after a few
minutes of usage.9
1996
" Most Internet traffic is carried by backbones of independent ISPs, including
MCI, AT&T, Sprint, UUnet, BBN planet, ANS, and more.
" Inktomi Corporation was formed and HotBot search engine was unleashed.
Inktomi powered many search portals on the Internet.
" XML (Extensible Markup Language) is developed by the World Wide Web Consortium's
(W3C's) XML Working Group. It is set to replace HTML in the future.
1997
" AltaVista Search Engine was founded by Digital Equipment Corporation.
It was the most powerful search engine before Google came into the picture.
" Netscape is the dominant web browser commanding 95% of the browser market.
" World Wide Web Consortium launched the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Accessibility refers to the level of usability of an application or Web sire
for people with disabilities.
1998
" The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was formed
as a private sector, non-profit, organization to oversee the orderly progression
in use of Internet names and numbers, as well as certain protocol related matters
that required oversight.
" The release of Windows 98 in June 1998 with the Microsoft browser well
integrated into the desktop.
" Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two PhD students at Stanford University brought
Google search engine to life. Dan switched to Google from Alta Vista a year
later.
1999
" Old computers all over the world are expected to crash one second after
31st December 23:59:59. The next day many companies that spent millions of dollars
to upgrade their system realized that they have been duped by computer experts/consultants.
" Dot com BOOM!!! Shares of e-commerce sites soar at the Wall Street.
New Millennium
2000
" 2.1 billion Web pages online!
" Magellan, one of the first search engines closed down.
" Dan, a net addict quits his job to surf the Internet at home full time.
Dan a Netscape fan switched to IE5.0.
" Intel unveils its Pentium 4 chip with clock speeds starting at 1.4GHz.
2001
" 3 billion Web pages online!
" Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6.0. It is an improved version of
their highly successful IE 5.5.
" Microsoft launches .NET which is a new environment for developing and
running software applications featuring ease of development of Web-based services.
" Danny Levin, one of the founders of Akamai was killed on September 11.
Akamai is the biggest Content Delivery Network that specialized in internet
caching. Internet caching speed up the delivery of content to your browser.
Another good reason to hate Osama bin Laden :
" Dot com turns into Dot BOMB!! Dot com bubble burst! Many e-commerce sites
closed down. Among casualties are e-Toys, Webvan, Dr. Koop.
2002
" Currently the Internet Society, the group that monitors the INTERNET,
is trying to figure out new TCP/IP to be able to have billions of addresses,
rather than the limited system of today. The problem that has arisen is that
it is not known how both the old and the new addressing systems will be able
to work at the same time during a transition period.
" Excite search engine filed for bankruptcy.
" 20th of April - Total domains registered worldwide: 30900740. Total .COM
registered: 21522642. Dan already has a few domain names registered with
Register.com & Tucows.com and currently is using Hostway web server and
will register a few more. Hopefully.: