History of the Internet

By mhillard

  • ARPA creation

    ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online, connecting four major U.S. universities. It was designed for research, education, and government organizations. It provides a communications network linking the country in case a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.

  • E-mail creation

    Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.

  • TCP/IP Stanardized

    Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of these protocols, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), allows users to log onto a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download files from that computer.

  • DNS is established

    Domain Name System (DNS) is established, with network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu.

  • Internet Worm Causes Trouble

    A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.

  • Dial-up Provided

    The World (world.std.com) debuts as the first provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers.

  • Gopher creation

    Gopher, which provides point-and-click navigation, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot. Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.

  • Develpoment of Mosiac

    Mosaic is developed by Marc Andreeson at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It becomes the dominant navigating system for the World Wide Web, which at this time accounts for merely 1% of all Internet traffic.

  • More Internet Viruses

    To the chagrin of the Internet population, deviant computer programmers begin designing and circulating viruses with greater frequency. “Love Bug” and “Stages” are two examples of self-replicating viruses that send themselves to people listed in a computer user's email address book. The heavy volume of email messages being sent and received forces many infected companies to temporarily shut down their clogged networks.

  • Internet Worm Causes Trouble Again

    Internet Worm, called MyDoom or Novarg, spreads through Internet servers. About 1 in 12 email messages are infected.