1992

1992


NSFNet Backbone, 1992


MOSAIC, the predecessor of Netscape

The Internet becomes such a part of the computing establishment that a professional society forms to guide it on its way. The Internet Society (ISOC), with Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn among its founders, validates the coming of age of inter-networking and its pervasive role in the lives of professionals in developed countries. The IAB and its supporting committees become part of ISOC.

The number of networks exceeds 7,500 and the number of computers connected passes 1,000,000. The MBONE for the first time carries audio and video. The challenge to the telephone network’s dominance as the basis for communicating between people is seen for the first time; the Internet is no longer just for machines to talk to each other.

During the summer, students at NCSA in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign modify Tim Berners-Lee’s hypertext proposal. In a few weeks MOSAIC is born within the campus. Larry Smarr shows it to Jim Clark, who founds Netscape as a result.

The WWW bursts into the world and the growth of the Internet explodes like a supernova. What had been doubling each year, now doubles in three months. What began as an ARPA experiment has, in the span of just 30 years, become a part of the world’s popular culture.



This timeline was initially created for the Supercomputing 97 Conference as a forty-foot long by ten-foot high wall. This wall embedded actual physical artifacts relating to the timeline and was produced with support from ACM/IEEE CS SC97.

Credits:
Web Layout and Design: Dan Lythcott-Haims
Poster Layout and Design: Dan Lythcott-Haims
Historical Research: Dag Spicer, Gwen Bell (Computer History Museum), Jan Zimmerman, Jacqueline Boas, Bill Boas (AbbaTech).

1991

1991


T-3 Network Map, 1991

The net’s dramatic growth continues with NSF lifting any restrictions on commercial use. Interchanges form with popular providers such as UUNET and PSInet. Congress passes the Gore Bill to create the National Research and Education Network, or NREN initiative. In another sign of popularity, privacy becomes an ‘issue,’ with proposed solutions such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).

The NSFNET backbone upgrades to T3, or 44 Mbps. Total traffic exceeds 1 trillion bytes, or 10 billion packets per month! Over 100 countries are now connected with over 600,000 hosts and nearly 5,000 separate networks.

WAIS’s and Gophers help meet the challenge of searching for information throughout this exploding infrastructure of computers.

1990

1990

ARPANET formally shuts down. In twenty years, ‘the net’ has grown from 4 to over 300,000 hosts. Countries connecting in 1990 include Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Ireland, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland.

Several search tools, such as ARCHIE, Gopher, and WAIS start to appear. Institutions like the National Library of Medicine, Dow Jones, and Dialog are now on line.

More ‘worms’ burrow on the net, with as many as 130 reports leading to 12 real ones! This is a further indication of the transition to a wider audience.

1989

1989


Tim Berners-Lee


Berners-Lee's diagram describing 'hypertext'

The number of hosts increases from 80,000 in January to 130,000 in July to over 160,000 in November!

Australia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom join the Internet.

Commercial e-mail relays start between MCIMail through CNRI and Compuserve through Ohio State. The Internet Architecture Board reorganizes again reforming the IETF and the IRTF.

Networks speed up. NSFNET T3 (45Mbps) nodes operate. At Interop 100Mbps LAN technology, known as FDDI, interoperates among several vendors. The telephone companies start to work on their own wide area packet switching service at higher speeds - calling it SMDS.

Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf at CNRI hold the first Gigabit (1000Mbps) Testbed workshops with funding from ARPA and NSF. Over 600 people from a wide range of industry, government and academia attend to discuss the formation of 6 gigabit testbeds across the country.

The Cray 3, a direct descendant of the Cray line, starting from the CDC 6600, is produced.

In Switzerland at CERN Tim Berners-Lee addresses the issue of the constant change in the currency of information and the turn-over of people on projects. Instead of an hierarchical or keyword organization, Berners-Lee proposes a hypertext system that will run across the Internet on different operating systems. This was the World Wide Web.

1988

1988


NSFNet T-1 Backbone Map, 1988


NCAR Network Map, 1987

The upgrade of the NSFNET backbone to T1 completes and the Internet starts to become more international with the connection of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

In the US more regionals spring up - Los Nettos and CERFnet both in California. In addition, Fidonet, a popular traditional bulletin board system (BBS) joins the net.

Dan Lynch organizes the first Interop commercial conference in San Jose for vendors whose TCP/IP products interoperate reliably. 50 companies make the cut and 5,000 networkers come to see it all running, to see what works, and to learn what doesn’t work.

The US Government pronounces its OSI Profile (GOSIP) is to be supported in all products purchased for government use, and states that TCP/IP is an interim solution!

The Morris WORM burrows on the Internet into 6,000 of the 60,000 hosts now on the network. This is the first worm experience and DARPA forms the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to deal with future such incidents.

CNRI obtains permission from the Federal Networking Council and from MCI to interconnect the commercial MCI Mail service to the Internet. This broke the barrier to carrying commercial traffic on the Internet backbone. By 1989 MCI Mail, OnTyme, Telemail and CompuServe had all interconnected their commercial email systems to the Internet and, in so doing, interconnected with each other for the first time. This was the start of commercial Internet services in the United States (and possibly the world).

1987

1987


Internet Map, 1987


NSFNet Map, 1987

The NSF, realizing the rate and commercial significance of the growth of the Internet, signs a cooperative agreement with Merit Networks which is assisted by IBM and MCI. Rick Adams co-founds UUNET to provide commercial access to UUCP and the USENET newsgroups, which are now available for the PC. BITNET and CSNET also merge to form CREN.

The NSF starts to implement its T1 backbone between the supercomputing centers with 24 RT-PCs in parallel implemented by IBM as ‘parallel routers’. The T1 idea is so successful that proposals for T3 speeds in the backbone begin.

In early 1987 the number of hosts passes 10,000 and by year-end there have been over 1,000 RFCs issued.

Network management starts to become a major issue and it becomes clear that a protocol is needed between routers to allow remote management. SNMP is chosen as a simple, quick, near term solution.

1986

1986


Map of the NSFNet Backbone

The 56Kbps backbone between the NSF centers leads to the creation of a number of regional feeder networks - JVNCNET, NYSERNET, SURANET, SDSCNET and BARRNET - among others. With the backbone, these regionals start to build a hub and spoke infrastructure. This growth in the number of interconnected networks drives a major expansion in the community including the DOE, DOD and NASA.

Between the beginning of 1986 and the end of 1987 the number of networks grows from 2,000 to nearly 30,000.

TCP/IP is available on workstations and PCs such as the newly introduced Compaq portable computer. Ethernet is becoming accepted for wiring inside buildings and across campuses. Each of these developments drives the introduction of terms such as bridging and routing and the need for readily available information on TCP/IP in workshops and manuals. Companies such as Proteon, Synoptics, Banyan, Cabletron, Wellfleet, and Cisco emerge with products to feed this explosion.

At the same time, other parts of the U.S. Government and many of the traditional computer vendors mount an attempt to validate their products being built to the OSI theoretical specifications, in the form of the Corporation for Open Systems.

USENET starts a major shakeup which becomes known as the ‘Great Renaming’. A driving force is that, as many messages are traveling over ARPANET, desirable new news groups such as ‘alt.sex’ and ‘alt.drugs’ are not allowed.

1985

1985


Computers & Communications, by Dr. Koji Kobayashi

NSF announces the award of five supercomputing center contracts:

* Cornell Theory Center (CTC), directed by Nobel laureate Ken Wilson;
* The John Von Neumann Center (JVNC) at Princeton, directed by computational fluid dynamicist Steven Orszag;
* The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), directed at the University of Illinois by astrophysicist Larry Smarr;
* The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), sharing locations at Westinghouse, the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University, directed by Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies;
* The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), on the campus of the University of California, San Diego, and administered by the General Atomics Company under the direction of nuclear engineer Sid Karin.

By the end of 1985, the number of hosts on the Internet (all TCP/IP interconnected networks) has reached 2,000.

MIT translates and publishes Computers and Communication by Dr. Koji Kobayashi, the Chairman of NEC. Dr. Kobayashi, who joined NEC in 1929, articulates his clear vision of ‘C & C’, the integration of computing and communication.

1984

1984

In January, Apple announces the Macintosh. Its user-friendly interface swells the ranks of new computer users.

Novelist William Gibson coins the term cyberspace in Neuromancer, a book that adds a new genre to science fiction and fantasy.

The newly developed DNS is introduced across the Internet, with the now familiar domains of .gov, .mil, .edu, .org, .net, and .com. A domain called .int, for international entities, is not much used. Instead, hosts in other countries take a two-letter domain indicating the country. The British JANET explicitly announces its intention to serve the nation’s higher education community, regardless of discipline.

Most important for the Internet, NSF issues a request for proposals to establish supercomputer centers that will provide access to the entire U.S. research community, regardless of discipline and location. A new division of Advanced Scientific Computing is created with a budget of $200 million over five years.

Datapoint, the first company to offer networked computers, continues in the marketplace, but fails to achieve critical mass.

1983

1983


Internet Topographic Map, 1983


Apollo Workstation

In January, the ARPANET standardizes on the TCP/IP protocols adopted by the Department of Defense (DOD). The Defense Communications Agency decides to split the network into a public ‘ARPANET’ and a classified ‘MILNET, ‘ with only 45 hosts remaining on the ARPANET. Jon Postel issues an RFC assigning numbers to the various interconnected nets. Barry Leiner takes Vint Cerf’s place at DARPA, managing the Internet.

Numbering the Internet hosts and keeping tabs on the host names simply fails to scale with the growth of the Internet. In November, Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris of USC/ISI and Craig Partridge of BBN develop the Domain Name System (DNS) and recommend the use of the now familiar user@host.domain addressing system.

The number of computers connected via these hosts is much larger, and the growth is accelerating with the commercialization of Ethernet.

Having incorporated TCP/IP into Berkeley Unix, Bill Joy is key to the formation of Sun Microsystems. Sun develops workstations that ship with Berkeley Unix and feature built-in networking. At the same time, the Apollo workstations ship with a special version of a token ring network.

In July 1983, an NSF working group, chaired by Kent Curtis, issues a plan for ‘A National Computing Environment for Academic Research’ to remedy the problems noted in the Lax report. Congressional hearings result in advice to NSF to undertake an even more ambitious plan to make supercomputers available to US scientists.

1982

1982


Cover from the manual for Snipes

Time magazine names ‘the computer’ its ‘Man of the Year.’ Cray Research announces plans to market the Cray X-MP system in place of the Cray-1. At the other end of the scale, the IBM PC ‘clones’ begin appearing.

An NSF panel chaired by the Courant Institute’s Peter Lax reports that U.S. scientists lack access to supercomputers. It contains the testimony of University of Illinois astrophysicist Larry Smarr that members of his discipline have been forced to travel to Germany to use American-made supercomputers.

The period during which ad hoc networking systems have flourished has left TCP/IP as only one contender for the title of ‘standard.’ Indeed, the International Organization for Standards (ISO) has written and is pushing ahead with a ‘reference’ model of an interconnection standard called Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) — already adopted in preliminary form for interconnecting DEC equipment. But while OSI is a standard existing for the most part on paper, the combination of TCP/IP and the local area networks created with Ethernet technology are driving the expansion of the living Internet.

Drew Major and Kyle Powell write Snipes, an action game to be played on PC’s over the network. They package the game as a ‘demo’ for a PC software product from SuperSet Software, Inc. This is the beginning of Novell.

Digital Communications Associates introduces the first coaxial cable interface for micro-to-mainframe communications.

1981

1981


Osborne


IBM PC

By the beginning of the year, more than 200 computers in dozens of institutions have been connected in CSNET. BITNET, another startup network, is based on protocols that include file transfer via e-mail rather than by the FTP procedure of the ARPA protocols.

The Internet Working Group of DARPA publishes a plan for the transition of the entire network from the Network Control Protocol to the TCP/IP protocols developed since 1974 and already in wide use (RFC 801).

At Berkeley, Bill Joy incorporates the new TCP/IP suite into the next release of the Unix operating system. The first ‘portable’ computer is launched in the form of the Osborne, a 24-pound suitcase-sized device.

The IBM PC is launched in August 1981.

Meanwhile, Japan mounts a successful challenge to US chip makers by producing 64-kbit chips so inexpensively that U.S. competitors charge the chips are being ‘dumped’ on the U.S. market.

1980

1980


Internet

Landweber’s proposal has many enthusiastic reviewers. At an NSF-sponsored workshop, the idea is revised in a way that both wins approval and opens up a new epoch for NSF itself. The revised proposal includes many more universities. It proposes a three-tiered structure involving ARPANET, a TELENET-based system, and an e-mail only service called PhoneNet. Gateways connect the tiers into a seamless whole. This brings the cost of a site within the reach of the smallest universities. Moreover, NSF agrees to manage CSNET for two years, after which it will turn it over to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which is made up of more than 50 academic institutions.

The National Science Board approves the new plan and funds it for five years at a cost of $5 million. Since the protocols for interconnecting the subnets of CSNET include TCP/IP, NSF becomes an early supporter of the Internet.

NASA has ARPANET nodes, as do many Department of Energy (DOE) sites. Now several Federal agencies support the Internet, and the number is growing.

Research by David Patterson at Berkeley and John Hennessy at Stanford promotes ‘reduced instruction set’ computing. IBM selects the disk operating system DOS, developed by Microsoft, to operate its planned PC.

1979

1979


Cover of COMPUTER Magazine from September 1979

Larry Landweber at Wisconsin holds a meeting with six other universities to discuss the possibility of building a Computer Science Research Network to be called CSNET. Bob Kahn attends as an advisor from DARPA, and Kent Curtis attends from NSF’s computer research programs. The idea evolves over the summer between Landweber, Peter Denning (Purdue), Dave Farber (Delaware), and Tony Hearn (Utah).

In November, the group submits a proposal to NSF to fund a consortium of eleven universities at an estimated cost of $3 million over five years. This is viewed as too costly by the NSF.

USENET starts a series of shell scripts written by Steve Bellovin at UNC to help communicate with Duke. Newsgroups start with a name that gives an idea of its content. USENET is an early example of a client server where users dial in to a server with requests to forward certain newsgroup postings. The server then ‘serves’ the request.

1978

1978


David Clark

“This ARPA program has created no less than a revolution in computer technology and has been one of the most successful projects ever undertaken by ARPA.
The full impact of the technical changes set in motion by this project may not be understood for many years.”
-- from ARPANET Completion Report, January 3, 1978

The appearance of the first very small computers and their potential for communication via modem to dial up services starts a boom in a new set of niche industries, like software and modems.

Vint Cerf at DARPA continues the vision of the Internet, forming an International Cooperation Board chaired by Peter Kirstein of University College London, and an Internet Configuration Control Board, chaired by Dave Clark of MIT.

The ARPANET experiment formally is complete. This leaves an array of boards and task forces over the next few years trying to sustain the vision of a free and open Internet that can keep up with the growth of computing.

1977

1977


Diagram of the Multinetwork Demonstration

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs announce the Apple II computer. Also introduced are the Tandy TRS-80 and the Commodore Pet. These three off-the-shelf machines create the consumer and small business markets for computers.

Cerf and Kahn mount a major demonstration, ‘internetting’ among the Packet Radio net, SATNET, and the ARPANET. Messages go from a van in the Bay Area across the US on ARPANET, then to University College London and back via satellite to Virginia, and back through the ARPANET to the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. This shows its applicability to international deployment.

Larry Landweber of the University of Wisconsin creates THEORYNET providing email between over 100 researchers and linking elements of the University of Wisconsin in different cities via a commercial packet service like Telenet.

1976

1976


A self-portrait drawn by the Cray-1

DARPA supports computer scientists at UC Berkeley who are revising a Unix system to incorporate TCP/IP protocols. Berkeley Unix also incorporates a second set of Bell Labs protocols, called UUCP, for systems to use dial-up connections.

Seymour Cray demonstrates the first vector-processor supercomputer, the CRAY-1. The first customers include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and NCAR. The CRAY-1 hardware is more compact and faster than previous supercomputers. No wire is more than 4 feet long, and the clock period is 12.5 nanoseconds (billionths of a second). The machine is cooled by freon circulated through stainless steel tubing bonded within vertical wedges of aluminum between the stacks of circuit boards (Cray patents the bonding process). The CRAY-1’s speed and power attract researchers, who want access to it over networks.

Vint Cerf moves from Stanford to DARPA to work with Bob Kahn on networking and the TCP/IP protocols.

1975

1975


ARPANET Map, 1975

The ARPANET geographical map now shows 61 nodes. Licklider arranges its administration to be turned over to the Defense Communications Agency (DCA). BBN remains the contractor responsible for network operations. BBN agrees to release the source code for IMPs and TIPs.

The Network Working Group maintains its open system of discussion via RFCs and e-mail lists. Discomfort grows with the bureaucratic style of DCA.

The Department of Energy creates its own net to support its own research. This net operates over dedicated lines connecting each site to the computer centers at the National Laboratories.

NASA begins planning its own space physics network, SPAN. These networks have connections to the ARPANET so the newly developed TCP protocol begins to get a workout. Internally, however, the new networks use such a variety of protocols that true interoperability is still an issue.

1974

1974


Xerox PARC Alto


J.C.R. Licklider

Ethernet is demonstrated by networking Xerox PARC’s new Alto computers.

BBN recruits Larry Roberts to direct a new venture, called Telenet, which is the first public packet-switched service. Roberts’ departure creates a crisis in the DARPA IPTO office.

DARPA has fulfilled its initial mission. Discussions about divesting DARPA of operational responsibility for the network are held. Because it is DARPA-funded, BBN has no exclusive right to the source code for the IMPs. Telenet and other new networking enterprises want BBN to release the source code. BBN argues that it is always changing the code and that it has recently undergone a complete rewrite at the hands of John McQuillan. Their approach makes Roberts’ task of finding a new director for IPTO difficult. J.C.R. Licklider agrees to return to IPTO from MIT on a temporary basis.

In addition to DARPA, The National Science Foundation (NSF) is actively supporting computing and networking at almost 120 universities. The largest NSF installation is at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. There, scientists use a home-built ‘remote job entry’ system to connect to NCAR’s CDC 7600 from major universities.

Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf publish "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection"" in the May 1974 issue of IEEE Transactions on Communications Technology. Shortly thereafter, DARPA funds three contracts to develop and implement the Kahn-Cerf TCP protocol described in their paper, one at Stanford (Cerf and his students), one at BBN (Ray Tomlinson), and one at University College London (directed by Peter Kirstein and his students).

Daily traffic on the ARPANET exceeds 3 million packets.

1973

1973


ARPANET Map, 1973



Bob Kahn


Vint Cerf

Thirty institutions are connected to the ARPANET. The network users range from industrial installations and consulting firms like BBN, Xerox PARC and the MITRE Corporation, to government sites like NASA’s Ames Research Laboratories, the National Bureau of Standards, and Air Force research facilities.

The ICCC demonstrations prove packet-switching a viable technology, and ARPA (now DARPA, where the ‘D’ stands for ‘Defense’) looks for ways to extend its reach. Two new programs begin: Packet Radio sites are modeled on the ALOHA experiment at the University of Hawaii designed by Norm Abramson, connecting seven computers on four islands; and a satellite connection enables linking to two foreign sites in Norway and the UK.

Bob Kahn moves from BBN to DARPA to work for Larry Roberts, and his first self-assigned task is the interconnection of the ARPANET with other networks. He enlists Vint Cerf, who has been teaching at Stanford. The problem is that ARPANET, radio-based PRnet, and SATNET all have different interfaces, packet sizes, labeling, conventions and transmission rates. Linking them together is very difficult.

Kahn and Cerf set about designing a net-to-net connection protocol. Cerf leads the newly formed International Network Working Group. In September 1973, the two give their first paper on the new Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) at an INWG meeting at the University of Sussex in England.

Meanwhile, at Xerox PARC, Bob Metcalfe is working on a wire-based system modeled on ALOHA protocols for Local Area Networks (LANs). It will become Ethernet.