The
USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response,the
United States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within
theDepartment of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology
applicable to the military
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None - Hosts: None
RAND
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."
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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
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET - Hosts: 4
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.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET - Hosts: 23
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.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET - Hosts: 23+
1974
First Use of
term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in paper on Transmission Control
Protocol.
Backbones: 50Kbps ARPANET -
Hosts: 23+
Dr. Robert M.
Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which allowed coaxial cable to move data extremely
fast. This was a crucial component to the development of LANs.
The packet satellite project went into practical use. SATNET, Atlantic packet
Satellite network, was born. This network linked the United States with
Europe.Surprisingly, it used INTELSAT satellites that were owned by a
consortium of countries and not exclusively the United States government.
UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with
UNIX one year later.
The Department of Defense began to experiment with the TCP/IP protocol and soon
decided to require it for use on ARPANET.
Backbones: 50Kbps ARPANET, plus
satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 111+
USENET (the decentralized
news group network) was created by Steve Bellovin, a graduate student at
University of North Carolina, and programmers Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. It
was based on UUCP.
The Creation of BITNET, by IBM, "Because its Time Network",
introduced the "store and forward" network. It was used for email and
listservs.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, plus satellite and radio connections -
Hosts:
111+
National
Science Foundation created backbone called CSNET 56 Kbps network for
institutions without access to ARPANET. Vinton Cerf proposed a plan for an
inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 213
Internet
Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983.
On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP
became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely.
The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed
packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the
server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for
people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 562
The ARPANET was
divided into two networks: MILNET and ARPANET. MILNET was to serve the needs of
the military and ARPANET to support the advanced research component, Department
of Defense continued to support both networks.
Upgrade to CSNET was contracted to MCI. New circuits would be T1 lines,1.5 Mbps
which is twenty-five times faster than the old 56 Kbps lines. IBM would provide
advanced routers and Merit would manage the network. New network was to be
called NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network), and old lines were to
remain called CSNET.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts:
1024
The National
Science Foundation began deploying its new T1 lines, which would be finished by
1988.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, 1.544Mbps (T1) NSFNET, plus satellite and radio
connections - Hosts: 1961
The Internet
Engineering Task Force or IETF was created to serve as a forum for technical
coordination by contractors for DARPA working on ARPANET, US Defense Data
Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, 1.544Mbps (T1) NSFNET, plus satellite and radio
connections - Hosts: 2308
BITNET and
CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking
(CREN), another work of the National Science Foundation.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, 1.544Mbps (T1) NSFNET, plus satellite and radio
connections - Hosts: 28,174
Soon after the
completion of the T1 NSFNET backbone, traffic increased so quickly that plans
immediately began on upgrading the network again.
Backbones:
50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, 1.544Mbps (T1) NSFNET, plus satellite and radio
connections - Hosts: 56,000
Merit, IBM and MCI formed a not for
profit corporation called ANS, Advanced Network & Services, which was to
conduct research into high speed networking. It soon came up with the concept
of the T3, a 45 Mbps line. NSF quickly adopted the new network and by the end
of 1991 all of its sites were connected by this new backbone.
While the T3 lines were being constructed, the Department of Defense disbanded
the ARPANET and it was replaced by the NSFNET backbone. The original 50Kbs
lines of ARPANET were taken out of service.
Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implements a hypertext system to provide
efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy
physics community.
Backbones:
56Kbps CSNET, 1.544Mbps (T1) NSFNET, plus satellite and radio connections -
Hosts: 313,000