History of the Internet and World Wide Web
The History of the Internet and World Wide Web
Some Links
In Brief *
- Before the 1980s, the "internet" consisted of a few separate sub-nets (ARPAnet, ALOHAnet, THEORYNET, TELENET, USENET). These nets were primarily created and maintained by academic institutions.
- In 1981, BITNET (the "Because It's Time NETwork") was started by the City University of New York with a connection to Yale University. Still in use today, it provides email and listserv servers and file transfers.
- In 1982, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) were established. The establishment of a standardized protocol led to the first definitions of "Internet," a meta-group of connected TCP/IP "internets," or a connected set of networks.
- In 1986, NSFNET was created by the NSF. It consisted of 5 super-computing centers which provided computing power for everyone. This allowed an "explosion of connections" from universities.
- In 1990, the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access - The World (world.std.com) - comes on-line.
- In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN develops the World-Wide Web (WWW).
- In 1993, Mosaic is released, and the WWW proliferates at a phenomenal (341,634%) annual growth rate of service traffic. Business and media begin to take real notice of the Internet.
- In 1994, ARPANET/Internet celebrates its 25th anniversary. Communities, businesses, the US Senate and House of Representatives, radio stations, foreign officials and departments, all establish a presence on-line.
- In 1995, the WWW surpases ftp-data as the service with the greatest traffic and byte count on NSFNet. Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access. A $50 annual fee is instituted for all domain names which do not end in .edu or .gov.
- As of 1995, emerging technologies include: mobile code (JAVA, JAVAscript), virtual environments (VRML), and collaborative tools.
* this information taken from the
Hobbes' Internet Timeline.
