A Short History of the Internet

By the year 2010, it is estimated that 80% of the planet will be connected to the Internet [Slater 2002][i]. Email is expected to grow to the point where more than 75% of business to business correspondence will take place by email.

A brief history of the development of the Internet is shown below:

·                                                                   1969. A group of DoD researchers linked four computers at UCLA, SRI, University of Utah and the UCSB. They created a network to communicate with one another about government projects. The network was part of the DoD's Advanced Research Project Agency, and was dubbed ARPAnet;

·                                                                   1972. More than 50 universities and military agencies were linked together on the network. For a short period of time it was a top secret defence project, ensuring that computers could talk to each other in the event of a nuclear attack. The communication system between the sites was called email and was invented by Ray Tomlinson of Bolt, Berank and Newman;

·                                                                   1973. The links were extended to Norway and England;

·                                                                   1974. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was published and the military and educational links diverged. Organisations like NASA began to experiment with computer networks, and the networks began to interconnect and the name Internet was coined;

·                                                                   1976. The Queen sends an email from RSRE Malvern.

·                                                                   1983. TCP/IP become the protocol standard for ARPAnet. Scott Fahlman invents the smiley to convey emotions in email;

·                                                                   1984. In the US, the NSF built high speed, long distance lines that connected supercomputer sites across the USA. These eventually replaced the original ARPAnet. In time, NSFnet was joined by other networks at dozens of universities, research laboratories and high-tech companies. The system for assigning names to computers on the network was introduced - DNS. JANet was launched to connect British Universities;

·                                                                   1986. The NSF established its own faster network NSFnet and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) was introduced making on-line interactive discussion a reality. Backbone speed was 56 Kbps;

·                                                                   1987. 1000^th RFC and 10,000^th host;

·                                                                   1988. Robert Tappan Morris releases the first Internet Worm and CERT was set up in response to this. Backbone speed upgraded to 1.544Mbps. IRC developed;

·                                                                   1989. 100,000^th host. Cuckoo's Egg released by Cliff Stoll telling true story of East German cracker accessing US installations;

·                                                                   1990. ARPAnet ceased to exist and the Internet effectively took its role;

·                                                                   1991. Gopher, a software program for retrieving information from servers on the Internet was made available by the University o f Minnesota. The US Government announced that it no longer intended to restrict activity on the Internet to research. This policy shift was sufficient for 12 companies to co-operate and produce CIX. Phil Zimmerman released PGP. Backbone speed upgraded to 44.736 Mbps;

·                                                                   1992. The World Wide Web became a possibility after CERN, in Switzerland, released hypertext. 1,000,000^th Host. The author gets his first dialup email account with Demon Internet (November 1992);

·                                                                   1993. Mosaic, a software program to browse Web sites written by Marc Andreesen, was released followed by Netscape;

·                                                                   1994. Shopping Malls arrive on the Internet. The UK Treasury goes on line and the first cyberbank opens. The first banner adverts appeared for Zima (a drink) and AT&T;

·                                                                   1995. Traditional dialup services (AOL, CompuServe etc) start to provide dialup services. The Vatican goes on line. A number of Internet companies go public. Netscape leads the field with the largest ever IPO on NASDAQ. DEC launches AltaVista, which claims to index every HTML page there is. Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com. eBay is launched;

·                                                                   1996. 9,272 organizations find themselves unlisted after the InterNIC drops their name service as a result of not having paid their domain name fee. Various ISPs suffer extended service outages, bringing into question whether they will be able to handle the growing number of users. AOL (19 hours), Netcom (13 hours), AT&T WorldNet (28 hours - email only). China requires users of the Internet to register with the Police. Saudi Arabia restricts use to Universities and Hospitals. Domain name tv.com sold to CNET for US$15,000. Backbone speed upgraded to 622 Mbps;

·                                                                   1997. 2000^th RFC. 16 Million hosts. 1,000,000^th Domain name registered (March 6^th for Bonny View Cottage Furniture Company);

·                                                                   1998. 3,000,000^th Domain name registered. US Postal authorities allow purchase of postage stamps on line for downloading and printing. Gigabit Ethernet standard ratified. Google is launched;

·                                                                   1999. First full service bank opens on the Internet (First Internet Bank of Indiana). First forged web page, looking like Bloomberg, raises the shares of a small company by 31% (7^th April). Melissa strikes. 5,000,000^th Domain name registered. First Cyberwar starts between Serbia and Kosovo. Shawn Fanning Launches Napster - record labels are furious;

·                                                                   2000. 10,000,000^th Domain name registered. French Courts require that 'hate' memorabilia for sale on Yahoo's auction site must be removed. Gnutella is launched. ICANN selects new top level domains. Backbone is upgraded to IPv6;

·                                                                   2001. Forwarding email becomes illegal in Australia (Digital Agenda Act). Napster forced to suspend service after legal action. Taliban bans the Internet in Afghanistan. Nimda released on the Internet;

·                                                                   2002. Distributed denial of Service attack hits 13 DNS root servers, causing national security concerns;

·                                                                   2003. The first official Swiss online election takes place in Anières (7 Jan), SQL Slammer (goes round the world in 10 minutes and takes out 3 of the 13 DNS Servers). Followed by SoBig.F (19 Aug) and Blaster (11 Aug);

·                                                                   2004. Lycos Europe releases a screen saver to help fight spam by keeping spam servers busy with requests (1 Dec). The service is discontinued within a few days after backbone providers block access to the download site and the service causes some servers to crash.