Timeline
President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the need for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik.
The organization united some of America's most brilliant people, who developed the United States' first successful satellite in 18 months. Several years later ARPA began to focus on computer networking and communications technology.
1962: Survivability Impetus
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. Baran's finished document described several ways
to accomplish this. 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."
ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.
The first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA). ARPANET was currently using
the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed
communications between hosts running on the same network.
1972: TCP/IP Concept Developed
Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.
1973: International Connections
First international connections to the ARPANET: University College of London (England) via NORSAR (Norway). Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for Ethernet.
Operational management of Internet transferred to DCA. First ARPANET mailing list, MsgGroup, is created by Steve Walker. 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
USENET established using UUCP between Duke and UNC by Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. Packet Radio Network (PRNET) experiment starts with DARPA funding. Most communications take place between mobile vans. ARPANET connection via SRI.
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.
1984: Domain Names System Established
JUNET (Japan Unix Network) established using UUCP; JANET (Joint Academic Network) established in the UK using the Colored Book protocols; previously SERCnet; moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET; 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.
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.
1988: Organization of Addresses
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.
The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access. 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.
1991+: Development of Enabling Technologies
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 Minnesota, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman, Java, etc.