Overview of Internet Technology - Internet Ti...

Internet Timeline
Some important dates and events in the development of the Internet
1835
Samuel Morse demonstrated first device to send signals over wires.
1858/1866
First transatlantic cable laid in 1858 but only lasted a few days. Subsequent cables laid in 1866 were successful and remained in use for almost 100 years.
(As of 1997 - Number of miles of undersea telephone cables: 186,000 - Source: WinTreese)
1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives the patent for his "electrical speech machine."
First intelligible words heard over the telephone were to his assistant "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
The first commercial telephone used by Bell was based on his patent.
1945
Vannevar Bush publishes his paper"As We May Think" on the memex. This machine would index everything with associative links and pieces of information that could be retrieved through paths of logical connections.
1957
Sputnik launched by USSR - space race begins!
For more information on the effect of Sputnik check out The New York Times site developed for the 40th anniversary of the launch.
http://www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/special/sputnik/

Image of Sputnik satellite. Courtesy of NASA/JPL
click on photo to listen to Sputnik
1958
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created by Department of Defense (DoD).
ARPA‘s mission was as vague as its title: to foster advanced research on emerging technologies, especially those technologies that might impact national security. In particular, ARPA was assigned the task of researching the ways that computer technology might be applied to military Command and Control.
1961-68
Packet switching networks developed
Pioneers of the Net
1961- Leonard Kleinrock, MIT: "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" First paper on packet-switching (PS) theory
1962 -Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head ARPA‘s research.
1964 - Paul Baran, Rand Corporation: "OnDistributed Communications: I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Network"
1966 - Lawrence G. Roberts, MIT: "Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers" First ARPANET plan
1968 - PS-network presented to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), RFP‘s for ARPANET sent out in August; responses received in September University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded Network Measurement Center contract in October Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors (IMPs)
1969
ARPANET
Four nodes are set up at UCLA, Stanford, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.
To test the idea, they set up anIMP at each location and had the IMP at UCLA call the IMP at Stanford. Once the connection was established, researchers made a phone call to the people at UCLA and began to send a simple text string to the Stanford IMP. For lack of a better term, everyone agreed they would type in "LOGIN" and see if the computer at Stanford would display the information properly.

Charlie Klein, an undergraduate at UCLA and an assistant on the project, took the phone and typed the letter L on his terminal.
"Did you get the L?" he asked.
"Yes," came the reply from Stanford. Klein typed the O.
"Do you see the O?" he asked.
"Yes, we see the O," replied the Stanford team.
Klein typed in the G, and the system crashed. The researchers for a brief moment had a glimpse of our Internet future--logins, crashes, and all.
1970
ARPAnet began using the precursor of our current Internet protocol system, NCP (Network Control Protocol).
1971
Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network. (1973-The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson‘s Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning.)

The number of nodes was extended from 4 to 15 including nodes at UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, University of Utah, MIT, Harvard, CMU, BBN, Rand and NASA.
Source: "Casting the Net", page 64; CCR, page 93
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/historical.html
1972
First public demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines.
Internetworking Working Group (INWG) created to address need for establishing agreed upon protocols.Vinton Cerf is elected the first chairman and later becomes known as a "Father of the Internet."
1973
The first international ARPAnet locations were set at London‘s University College and Norway‘s Royal Radar Establishment.
"The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care" is anRFC that demonstrates early concerns about security.
File Transfer protocol specified -- how computers send and receive data.
1974
Transmission Control Program (TCP) specified. Packet network Intercommunication -- the basis of Internet Communication.
Telenet, a commercial version of ARPANET, opened -- the first public packet data service.
1976
Queen Elizabeth sends an e-mail!
1977
The first e-mail specifications were established. (RFC 733)
1981
BITNET, the "Because its Time Network," was started in 1981 with a link between Yale University and the City University of New York. While BITNET users can send and receive Internet mail, it is not part of the Internet itself (although many BITNET sites are on both networks). Internet users are probably most familiar with BITNET through LISTSERV, the mailing list server that originated in BITNET and is now used widely on the Internet.
1982
DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET.
1983
The first domain name servers (DNS) were built to store the locations of other computers on the network. Users no longer have to know the entire path names from one computer to another. The modern Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) replaces NCP.
1984
The number of nodes breaks the 1,000 mark.
1985
Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL), started by Stewart Brand, founder of the The Whole Earth Catalog, on his houseboat in Sausalito.
‘Twas the Night Before Start-up -RFC 968
1986
NSFNET created (backbone speed of 56Kbps). This allows an explosion of connections, especially from universities.
1987
The number of Interent hosts exceeds 10,000.
1988
Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting ~6,000 of the 60,000 hosts on the Internet
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.
DoD chooses to adopt OSI and sees use of TCP/IP as an interim.
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1 (1.544Mbps)
1989
Number of hosts breaks 100,000
Cuckoo‘s Egg by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities
1990
ARPANET ceases to exist
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is founded by Mitch Kapor and Stewart Brand.
1991
Gopher released by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the Univ of Minnessota World-Wide Web (WWW) released by CERN; Tim Berners-Lee developer
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps)
NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion packets/month
1992
Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000 Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by Univ of Nevada The term "Surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly
1993
InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services:
directory and database services (AT&T)
registration services (Network Solutions Inc.)
information services (General Atomics/CERFnet)
US National Information Infrastructure Act
Statements of Boredom (SOBs) RFC 1438
Mosaic takes the Internet by storm; Meet Marc Andreessen
WWW proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic.
Gopher‘s growth is 997%.
1994
ARPANET/Internet celebrates 25th anniversary
NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes/month
WWW edges out telnet to become 2nd most popular service on the Net (behind ftp-data) based on % of packets and bytes traffic distribution on NSFNET
1995
NSFNET reverts back to a research network. Main US backbone traffic now routed through interconnected network providers The new NSFNET is born as NSF establishes the very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) linking super-computing centers: NCAR, NCSA, SDSC, CTC, PSC
RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time
Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access
1996
The controversial US Communications Decency Act (CDA) becomes law in the US in order to prohibit distribution of indecent materials over the Net. A few months later a three-judge panel imposes an injunction against its enforcement. Supreme Court unanimously rules most of it unconstitutional in 1997.
Emerging Technologies: Virtual environments (VRML), Collaborative tools, Internet appliance (Network Computer)
TheInternet 2 (Abilene) Project is announced
The Twelve Networking TruthsRFC1925
1997
71,618 mailing lists registered atTopica, a mailing list directory (It‘s now a commercial site.)
Domain name business.com sold for US$150,000
1998
Netscape releases the source code for its Netscape Navigator browswer to the public domain.
Microsoft releases Windows 98. Months later the government orders Microsoft to change its Java virtual machine to pass Sun‘s Java compatibility test.
Microsoft is taken to court for allegations of anti-trust violations.
1999
The Internet celebrates it‘s 30th birthday!
Kleinrock stressed that he and his colleagues looked at creating the ARPAnet as a technological challenge, not an ethical one. "Were we thinking about the impact and the ethics? No. Did we try to lay down some codification of how this thing should be used? No. Did we abrogate our responsibility to think about that? Yes. "We did not think about the potential dangers," he said. "We talked about bits and bytes and routers and switches. We did not talk about, ‘Will little Charlie do his homework on it or will he look at pornography?‘" But Kleinrock has no regrets. "Would I do it again? You bet."
2001
Last look atMir - a bookend for Sputnik. Russia’s Mir space station re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on March 23, 2001.
Sources:
Hobbes Internet Timeline
Roads and Crossroads of Internet History
PBS‘s Nerds 2.0.1
Internet Society‘s List of Internet Histories