-
Vennevar Bush publishes paper on memex machine.
-
U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite
-
The U.S. forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD)
-
J.C.R. Licklider publishes his paper,"Man-computer symbioisis"
-
Leonard Kleinrock, MIT: "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets".
-
Licklider funds Engelbarts new "Augmentation Research Center" at Stanford.
-
Paul Baran gets funding from U.S. Air Force to experiment with block switching.
-
Larry Roberts, MIT: "Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers"
-
ACM Symposium on operation principles plan presented for a packet-switching network.
-
ARPA mails out 140 Requests for Proposals to prospective contractors to build the first four IMPs.
-
ARPAnet commissioned by DoD for research into networking.
-
ALOHAnet developed by Norm Abramson
-
15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames.
-
International Conference on Computer Communications with demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines and the Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn.
-
First internation connections to ARPAnet
-
Larry Roberts founds Telenet, the first commercial packet-switched data service
-
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" which specified in detail the design of a Transmission Control Program (TCP). [IEEE Trans Comm]
-
Operational management of Internet transferred to DCA (now DISA
-
Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom sends out an e-mail
-
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 and TELENET for access to server).
-
Tymshare launches Tymnet, competition for Telenet
-
Meeting between Univ of Wisconsin, DARPA, 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.
-
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.
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.
-
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:)
-
ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET; the latter became integrated with the Defense Data Network created the previous year.
-
Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX which includes IP networking software.
-
Domain Name System (DNS) introduced.
-
Number of hosts breaks 1,000
-
On march 15th, Symbolics.com is assigned the first registered domain. Other firsts: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, ucla.edu (April); css.gov (June); mitre.org, .uk (July)
-
Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL), operated by Stewart Brand on his houseboat, is open for calls.
-
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
-
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 -
Number of hosts breaks 1,000
-
UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access. Originally an experiment by Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell
-
ARPANET ceases to exist
-
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)
-
Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000
-
NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes/month
-
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
-
Microsoft releases Windows 98. Months later the government orders Microsoft to change its Java virtual machine to pass Sun's Java compatibility test.
-
Napster is released
-
A massive denial of service attack is launched against major web sites, including Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay in early February
-
NASA successfully tests the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet, using the Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) software to transmit images to/from a science spacecraft ~20 million miles above Earth
-
Twitter and Facebook are the primary means of communication for the Middle East revolts.
-
A major protest online in January shakes up Congressional support for anti-Web piracy measures. The protest, including a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia site, is over two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate. The main goal of both bills is to stop illegal downloading and streaming of TV shows and movies online. The tech industry is concerned that the bills will give media companies too much power to shut down websites. Read mo
