RFC2235 - Hobbes Internet Timeline

Network Working Group R. Zakon

Request for Comments: 2235 MITRE

FYI: 32 November 1997

Category: Informational

Hobbes' Internet Timeline

Status of this Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does

not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this

memo is unlimited.

1. IntrodUCtion

This document presents a history of the Internet in timeline fashion,

highlighting some of the key events and technologies which helped

shape the Internet as we know it today. A growth summary of the

Internet and some associated technologies is also included.

2. Hobbes' Internet Timeline

Excerpted from the author's copyrighted work of the same name. The

most current version of Hobbes' Internet Timeline is available at

http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.Html

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1950s

1957

USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In

response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)

within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in

science and technology applicable to the military (:amk:)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

1960s

1962

Paul Baran, RAND: "On Distributed Communications Networks"

- Packet-switching (PS) networks; no single outage point

1965

ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing

computers"

- TX-2 at MIT Lincoln Lab and Q-32 at System Development

Corporation (Santa Monica, CA) are directly linked (without

packet switches)

1967

ACM Symposium on Operating Principles

- Plan presented for a packet-switching network

- First design paper on ARPANET published by Lawrence G. Roberts

National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex, England develops

NPL Data Network under D. W. Davies

1968

PS-network presented to the Advanced Research Projects Agency

(ARPA)

1969

ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking

- First node at UCLA, Network Measurements Center

[SDS SIGMA 7, SEX] and soon after at:

- Stanford Research Institute (SRI), NIC [SDS940/Genie]

- UCSB, Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics

[IBM 360/75, OS/MVT]

- Univ of Utah, Graphics [DEC PDP-10, Tenex]

- use of Information Message Processors (IMP) [Honeywell 516

mini computer with 12K of memory developed by Bolt Beranek

and Newman, Inc. (BBN)

First Request for Comment (RFC): "Host Software" by Steve Crocker

Univ of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State Univ establish

X.25-based Merit network for students, faculty, alumni (:sw1:)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

1970s

Store-and-forward networks

- Used electronic mail technology and extended it to

conferencing

1970

ALOHAnet developed by Norman Abrahamson, Univ of Hawaii (:sk2:)

- connected to the ARPANET in 1972

ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP).

1971

15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND,

SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames

Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across

a distributed network. The original program was derived from two

others: an intra-machine email program (SNDMSG) and an eXPerimental

file transfer program (CPYNET) (:amk:irh:)

1972

International Conference on Computer Communications with

demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines and the Terminal

Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn.

InterNetworking Working Group (INWG) created to address need for

establishing agreed upon protocols. Chairman: Vinton Cerf.

Telnet specification (RFC318)

1973

First international connections to the ARPANET: University College

of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway)

Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for Ethernet

(:amk:)

Bob Kahn poses Internet problem, starts internetting research

program at ARPA. Vinton Cerf sketches gateway architecture in March

on back of envelope in hotel lobby in San Francisco (:vgc:)

Cerf and Kahn present basic Internet ideas at INWG in September at

Univ of Sussex, Brighton, UK (:vgc:)

File Transfer specification (RFC454)

1974

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish "A Protocol for Packet Network

Intercommunication" which specified in detail the design of a

Transmission Control Program (TCP). [IEEE Trans Comm] (:amk:)

BBN opens Telenet, the first public packet data service (a

commercial version of ARPANET) (:sk2:)

1975

Operational management of Internet transferred to DCA (now DISA)

"Jargon File", by Raphael Finkel at SAIL, first released (:esr:)

Shockwave Rider written by John Brunner (:pds:)

1976

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom sends out an e-mail

(various Net folks have e-mailed dates ranging from 1971 to 1978;

1976 was the most submitted and the only found in print)

UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and

distributed with UNIX one year later.

1977

THEORYNET created by Larry Landweber at Univ of Wisconsin providing

electronic mail to over 100 researchers in computer science (using

a locally developed email system and TELENET for Access to server).

Mail specification (RFC733)

Tymshare launches Tymnet

First demonstration of ARPANET/Packet Radio Net/SATNET operation of

Internet protocols with BBN-supplied gateways in July (:vgc:)

1979

Meeting between Univ of Wisconsin, DARPA, NSF, and computer

scientists from many universities to establish a Computer Science

Department research computer network (organized by Larry Landweber)

USENET established using UUCP between Duke and UNC by Tom Truscott,

Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. All original groups were under net.*

hierarchy.

First MUD, MUD1, by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw at U of Essex

ARPA establishes the Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB)

Packet Radio Network (PRNET) experiment starts with DARPA funding.

Most communications take place between mobile vans. ARPANET

connection via SRI.

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1980s

1981

BITNET, the "Because It's Time NETwork"

- Started as a cooperative network at the City University of New

York, with the first connection to Yale (:feg:)

- Original acronym stood for 'There' instead of 'Time' in

reference to the free NJE protocols provided with the IBM

systems

- Provides electronic mail and listserv servers to distribute

information, as well as file transfers

CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) built by a collaboration of

computer scientists and Univ of Delaware, Purdue Univ, Univ of

Wisconsin, RAND Corporation and BBN through seed money granted by

NSF to provide networking services (especially email) to university

scientists with no access to ARPANET. CSNET later becomes known as

the Computer and Science Network. (:amk,lhl:)

Minitel (Teletel) is deployed across France by France Telecom.

True Names written by Vernor Vinge (:pds:)

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. (:vgc:)

- This leads to one of the first definitions of an "internet" as

a connected set of networks, specifically those using TCP/IP,

and "Internet" as connected TCP/IP internets.

- DoD declares TCP/IP suite to be standard for DoD (:vgc:)

EUnet (European UNIX Network) is created by EUUG to provide email

and USENET services. (:glg:)

- original connections between the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden,

and UK

External Gateway Protocol (RFC827) specification. EGP is used for

gateways between networks.

1983

Name server developed at Univ of Wisconsin, no longer requiring

users to know the exact path to other systems.

Cutover from NCP to TCP/IP (1 January)

CSNET / ARPANET gateway put in place

ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET; the latter became integrated

with the Defense Data Network created the previous year.

Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX which

includes IP networking software.

Networking needs switch from having a single, large time sharing

computer connected to the Internet at each site, to instead

connecting entire local networks.

Internet Activities Board (IAB) established, replacing ICCB

Berkeley releases 4.2BSD incorporating TCP/IP (:mpc:)

EARN (European Academic and Research Network) established. Very

similar to the way BITNET works with a gateway funded by IBM.

FidoNet developed by Tom Jennings.

1984

Domain Name System (DNS) introduced.

Number of hosts breaks 1,000

JUNET (Japan Unix Network) established using UUCP.

JANET (Joint Academic Network) established in the UK using the

Coloured Book protocols; previously SERCnet.

Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET (mod.*)

Neuromancer written by William Gibson

1985

Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) started

Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC is given responsibility

for DNS root management by DCA, and SRI for DNS NIC registrations

Symbolics.com is assigned on 15 March to become the first registered

domain. Other firsts: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, ucla.edu

(April); Css.gov (June); mitre.org, .uk (July)

100 years to the day of the last spike being driven on the cross-

Canada railroad, the last Canadian university is connected to BITNET

in a one year effort to have coast-to-coast connectivity. (:kf1:)

1986

NSFNET created (backbone speed of 56Kbps)

- NSF establishes 5 super-computing centers to provide

high-computing power for all (JVNC@Princeton, PSC@Pittsburgh,

SDSC@UCSD, NCSA@UIUC, Theory Center@Cornell).

- This allows an explosion of connections, especially from

universities.

NSF-funded SDSCNET, JVNCNET, SURANET, and NYSERNET operational

(:sw1:)

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task

Force (IRTF) comes into existence under the IAB. First IETF meeting

held in January at Linkabit in San Diego

The first Freenet (Cleveland) comes on-line 16 July under the

auspices of the Society for Public Access Computing (SoPAC). Later

Freenet program management assumed by the National Public

Telecomputing Network (NPTN) in 1989 (:sk2,rab:)

Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) designed to enhance Usenet

news performance over TCP/IP.

Mail Exchanger (MX) records developed by Craig Partridge allow

non-IP network hosts to have domain addresses.

The great USENET name change; moderated newsgroups changed in 1987.

BARRNET (Bay Area Regional Research Network) established using high

speed links. Operational in 1987.

1987

NSF signs a cooperative agreement to manage the NSFNET backbone

with Merit Network, Inc. (IBM and MCI involvement was through an

agreement with Merit). Merit, IBM, and MCI later founded ANS.

UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and

Usenet access. Originally an experiment by Rick Adams and Mike

O'Dell

Email link established between Germany and China using CSNET

protocols, with the first message from China sent on 20 September.

(:wz1:)

1000th RFC: "Request For Comments reference guide"

Number of hosts breaks 10,000

Number of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000

1988

2 November - Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting

~6,000 of the 60,000 hosts on the Internet (:ph1:)

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. US

Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) defines the set of protocols to be

supported by Government purchased products (:gck:)

Los Nettos network created with no federal funding, instead

supported by regional members (founding: Caltech, TIS, UCLA, USC,

ISI).

NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1 (1.544Mbps)

CERFnet (California Education and Research Federation network)

founded by Susan Estrada.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed by Jarkko Oikarinen (:zby:)

First Canadian regionals join NSFNET: ONet via Cornell, RISQ via

Princeton, BCnet via Univ of Washington (:ec1:)

FidoNet gets connected to the Net, enabling the exchange of e-mail

and news (:tp1:)

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Canada (CA), Denmark (DK), Finland

(FI), France (FR), Iceland (IS), Norway (NO), Sweden (SE)

1989

Number of hosts breaks 100,000

RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) formed (by European service providers)

to ensure the necessary administrative and technical coordination

to allow the operation of the pan-European IP Network. (:glg:)

First relays between a commercial electronic mail carrier and the

Internet: MCI Mail through the Corporation for the National

Research Initiative (CNRI), and Compuserve through Ohio State Univ

(:jg1,ph1:)

Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN) is formed

by merging CSNET into BITNET

AARNET - Australian Academic Research Network - set up by AVCC and

CSIRO; introduced into service the following year (:gmc:)

Cuckoo's Egg written by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life tale of

a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities

CERT advisories: 7

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Australia (AU), Germany (DE),

Israel (IL), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Mexico (MX), Netherlands (NL),

New Zealand (NZ), Puerto Rico (PR), United Kingdom (UK)

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1990s

1990

ARPANET ceases to exist

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is founded by Mitch Kapor

Archie released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at

McGill

Hytelnet released by Peter Scott (Univ of Saskatchewan)

The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first

commercial provider of Internet dial-up access

ISO Development Environment (ISODE) developed to provide an

approach for OSI migration for the DoD. ISODE software allows OSI

application to operate over TCP/IP (:gck:)

CA*net formed by 10 regional networks as national Canadian backbone

with direct connection to NSFNET (:ec1:)

The first remotely operated machine to be hooked up to the

Internet, the Internet Toaster, (controlled via SNMP) makes its

debut at Interop.

CERT advisories: 12, reports: 130

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Argentina (AR), Austria (AT),

Belgium (BE), Brazil (BR), Chile (CL), Greece (GR), India (IN),

Ireland (IE), Korea (KR), Spain (ES), Switzerland (CH)

1991

Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Association, Inc. formed by

General Atomics (CERFnet), Performance Systems International, Inc.

(PSInet), and UUNET Technologies, Inc. (AlterNet), after NSF lifts

restrictions on the commercial use of the Net (:glg:)

Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle,

released by Thinking Machines Corporation

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

(:pb1:)

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman (:ad1:)

US High Performance Computing Act (Gore 1) establishes the National

Research and Education Network (NREN)

NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps)

NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion

packets/month

Defense Data Network NIC contract awarded by DISA to Government

Systems Inc. who takes over from SRI in May

Start of JANET IP Service (JIPS) which signalled the changeover

from Coloured Book software to TCP/IP within the UK academic

network. IP was initially 'tunnelled' within X.25. (:gst:)

CERT advisories: 23

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Croatia (HR), Czech Repulic (CZ),

Hong Kong (HK), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Singapore

(SG), South Africa (ZA), Taiwan (TW), Tunisia (TN)

1992

Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered

Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000

First MBONE audio multicast (March) and video multicast (November)

RIPE Network Coordination Center (NCC) created in April to provide

address registration and coordination services to the European

Internet community (:dk1:)

IAB reconstituted as the Internet Architecture Board and becomes

part of the Internet Society

Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by Univ of Nevada

World Bank comes on-line

Japan's first ISP, Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), is formed by

Koichi Suzuki

The term "Surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly

(:jap:)

Internet Hunt started by Rick Gates

CERT advisories: 21, reports: 800

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Antarctica (AQ), Cameroon (CM),

Cyprus (CY), Ecuador (EC), Estonia (EE), Kuwait (KW), Latvia (LV),

Luxembourg (LU), Malaysia (MY), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI),

Thailand (TH), Venezuela (VE)

1993

InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services:

(:sc1:)

- Directory and database services (AT&T)

- registration services (Network Solutions Inc.)

- information services (General Atomics/CERFnet)

US White House comes on-line (http://www.whitehouse.gov/):

- President Bill Clinton: president@whitehouse.gov

- Vice-President Al Gore: vice-president@whitehouse.gov

Worms of a new kind find their way around the Net - WWW Worms (W4),

joined by Spiders, Wanderers, Crawlers, and Snakes ...

Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting (:sk2:)

United Nations (UN) comes on-line (:vgc:)

US National Information Infrastructure Act

Businesses and media really take notice of the Internet

Mosaic takes the Internet by storm; WWW proliferates at a 341,634%

annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997%.

CERT advisories: 18, reports: 1300

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Bulgaria (BG), Costa Rica (CR),

Egypt (EG), Fiji (FJ), Ghana (GH), Guam (GU), Indonesia (ID),

Kazakhstan (KZ), Kenya (KE), Liechtenstein (LI), Peru (PE), Romania

(RO), Russian Federation (RU), Turkey (TR), Ukraine (UA), UAE (AE),

US Virgin Islands (VI)

1994

ARPANET/Internet celebrates 25th anniversary

Communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet

(Lexington and Cambridge, MA, USA)

US Senate and House provide information servers

Shopping malls arrive on the Internet

First cyberstation, RT-FM, broadcasts from Interop in Las Vegas

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests

that GOSIP should incorporate TCP/IP and drop the "OSI-only"

requirement (:gck:)

Arizona law firm of Canter & Siegel "spams" the Internet with email

advertising green card lottery services; Net citizens flame back

NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes/month

Yes, it's true - you can now order pizza from the Hut online

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

Japanese Prime Minister on-line

UK's HM Treasury on-line

New Zealand's Info Tech Prime Minister on-line

First Virtual, the first cyberbank, open up for business

Radio stations start rockin' (rebroadcasting) round the clock on

the Net: WXYC at Univ of NC, WJHK at Univ of KS-Lawrence, KUGS at

Western WA Univ

Trans-European Research and Education Network Association (TERENA)

is formed by the merger of RARE and EARN, with representatives from

38 countries as well as CERN and ECMWF. TERERNA's aim is to

"promote and participate in the development of a high quality

international information and telecommunications infrastructure for

the benefit of research and education"

CERT advisories: 15, reports: 2300

Countries connecting to NSFNET: Algeria (DZ), Armenia (AM), Bermuda

(BM), Burkina Faso (BF), China (CN), Colombia (CO), Jamaica (JM),

Lebanon (LB), Lithuania (LT), Macau (MO), Morocco (MA), New

Caledonia, Nicaragua (NI), Niger (NE), Panama (PA), Philippines

(PH), Senegal (SN), Sri Lanka (LK), Swaziland (SZ), Uruguay (UY),

Uzbekistan (UZ)

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

Hong Kong police disconnect all but 1 of the colony's Internet

providers in search of a hacker. 10,000 people are left without Net

access. (:api:)

RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near

real-time

Radio HK, the first 24 hr., Internet-only radio station starts

broadcasting

WWW surpasses ftp-data in March as the service with greatest

traffic on NSFNet based on packet count, and in April based on byte

count

Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online,

Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access

A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading

the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value (9

August)

Thousands in Minneapolis-St. Paul (USA) lose Net access after

transients start a bonfire under a bridge at the Univ of MN causing

fiber-optic cables to melt (30 July)

Registration of domain names is no longer free. Beginning 14

September, a $50 annual fee has been imposed, which up until now

was subsidized by NSF. NSF continues to pay for .edu registration,

and on an interim basis for .gov

The Vatican comes on-line

The Canadian Government comes on-line

The first official Internet wiretap was successful in helping the

Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) aprehend three

individuals who were illegally manufacturing and selling cell phone

cloning equipment and electronic devices

Operation Home Front connects, for the first time, soldiers in the

field with their families back home via the Internet.

Richard White becomes the first person to be declared a munition,

under the USA's arms export control laws, because of an RSA file

security encryption program emblazoned on his arm (:wired496:)

CERT advisories: 18, reports: 2412

Country domains registered: Ethiopia (ET), Cote d'Ivoire (CI), Cook

Islands (CK) Cayman Islands (KY), Anguilla (AI), Gibraltar (GI),

Vatican (VA), Kiribati (KI), Kyrgyzstan (KG), Madagascar (MG),

Mauritius (MU), Micronesia (FM), Monaco (MC), Mongolia (MN), Nepal

(NP), Nigeria (NG), Western Samoa (WS), San Marino (SM), Tanzania

(TZ), Tonga (TO), Uganda (UG), Vanuatu (VU)

Technologies of the Year: WWW, Search engines Emerging

Technologies: Mobile code (Java, javascript), Virtual environments

(VRML), Collaborative tools

1996

Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication

companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology (which has

been around for years)

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.

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)

New Yorks' Public Access Networks Corp (PANIX) is shut down after

repeated SYN attacks by a cracker using methods outlined in a

hacker magazine (2600)

Various US Government sites are hacked into and their content

changed, including CIA, Department of Justice, Air Force

MCI upgrades Internet backbone adding ~13,000 ports, bringing the

effective speed from 155Mbps to 622Mbps.

The Internet Ad Hoc Committee announces plans to add 7 new generic

Top Level Domains (gTLD): .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info,

registrars worldwide.

A malicious cancelbot is released on USENET wiping out more than

25,000 messages.

The WWW browser war, fought primarily between Netscape and

Microsoft, has rushed in a new age in software development, whereby

new releases are made quarterly with the help of Internet users

eager to test upcoming (beta) versions.

Restrictions on Internet use around the world:

- China: requires users and ISPs to register with the police

- Germany: cuts off access to some newsgroups carried on

Compuserve

- Saudi Arabia: confines Internet access to universities and

hospitals

- Singapore: requires political and religious content providers

to register with the state

- New Zealand: classifies computer disks as "publications" that

can be censored and seized

- source: Human Rights Watch

vBNS additions: Baylor College of Medicine, Georgia Tech, Iowa

State Univ, Ohio State Univ, Old Dominion Univ, Univ of CA, Univ of

CO, Univ of Chicago, Univ of IL, Univ of MN, Univ of PA, Univ of

TX, Rice Univ

CERT advisories: 27, reports: 2573

Country domains registered: Qatar (QA), Vientiane (LA), Djibouti

(DJ), Niger (NE), Central African Republic (CF), Mauretania (MF),

Oman (OM), Norfolk Island (NF), Tuvalu (TV), French Polynesia (PF),

Syria (SY), Aruba (AW), Cambodia (KH), French Guiana (GF), Eritrea

(ER), Cape Verde (CV), Burundi (BI), Benin (BJ) Bosnia-Hercegovina

(BA), Andorra (AD), Guadeloupe (GP), Guernsey (GG), Isle of Man

(IM), Jersey (JE), Lao (LA), Maldives (MV), Marshall Islands (MH),

Mauritania (MR), Northern Mariana Islands (MP), Rwanda (RW), Togo

(TG), Yemen (YE), Zaire (ZR)

Technologies of the Year: Search engines, JAVA, Internet Phone

Emerging Technologies: Virtual environments (VRML), Collaborative

tools, Internet appliance (Network Computer)

1997

2000th RFC: "Internet Official Protocol Standards"

71,618 mailing lists registered at Liszt, a mailing list directory

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is established to

handle administration and registration of IP numbers to the

geographical areas currently handled by Network Solutions

(InterNIC), starting March 1998.

Early in the morning of 17 July, human error at Network Solutions

causes the DNS table for .com and .net domains to become corrupted,

making millions of systems unreachable.

Longest hostname registered with InterNIC:

CHALLENGER.MED.SYNAPSE.UAH.UALBERTA.CA

101,803 Name Servers in whois database

CERT advisories thus far: 23

Country domains registered: Falkland Islands (FK), East Timor (TP),

Congo (CG), Christmas Island (CX), Gambia (GM), Guinea-Bissau (GW),

Haiti (HT), Iraq (IQ), Lybia (LY), Malawi (MW), Martinique (MQ),

Montserrat (MS), Myanmar (MM), French Reunion Island (RE),

Seychelles (SC), Sierra Leone (SL), Sudan (SD), Turkmenistan (TM),

Turks and Caicos Islands (TC), British Virgin Islands (VG)

Technologies of the Year: Push, Multicasting Emerging Technologies:

Push, Streaming Media [:twc:]

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Growth

Internet growth:

Date Hosts Date Hosts Networks Domains

----- --------- + ----- --------- -------- ---------

1969 4 07/89 130,000 650 3,900

04/71 23 10/89 159,000 837

06/74 62 10/90 313,000 2,063 9,300

03/77 111 01/91 376,000 2,338

08/81 213 07/91 535,000 3,086 16,000

05/82 235 10/91 617,000 3,556 18,000

08/83 562 01/92 727,000 4,526

10/84 1,024 04/92 890,000 5,291 20,000

10/85 1,961 07/92 992,000 6,569 16,300

02/86 2,308 10/92 1,136,000 7,505 18,100

11/86 5,089 01/93 1,313,000 8,258 21,000

12/87 28,174 04/93 1,486,000 9,722 22,000

07/88 33,000 07/93 1,776,000 13,767 26,000

10/88 56,000 10/93 2,056,000 16,533 28,000

01/89 80,000 01/94 2,217,000 20,539 30,000

07/94 3,212,000 25,210 46,000

10/94 3,864,000 37,022 56,000

01/95 4,852,000 39,410 71,000

07/95 6,642,000 61,538 120,000

01/96 9,472,000 93,671 240,000

07/96 12,881,000 134,365 488,000

01/97 16,146,000 828,000

07/97 19,540,000 1,301,000

Worldwide Networks Growth: (I)nternet (B)ITNET (U)UCP (F)IDONET (O)SI

____# Countries____ ____# Countries____

Date I B U F O Date I B U F O

----- --- --- --- --- --- ----- --- --- --- --- ---

09/91 31 47 79 49 02/94 62 51 125 88 31

12/91 33 46 78 53 07/94 75 52 129 89 31

02/92 38 46 92 63 11/94 81 51 133 95 --

04/92 40 47 90 66 25 02/95 86 48 141 98 --

08/92 49 46 89 67 26 06/95 96 47 144 99 --

01/93 50 50 101 72 31 06/96 134 -- 146 108 --

04/93 56 51 107 79 31 07/97 171 -- 147 108 --

08/93 59 51 117 84 31

WWW Growth:

Date Sites Date Sites Date Sites

----- ---------- + ----- ---------- + ----- ----------

06/93 130 08/96 342,081 04/97 1,002,612

12/93 623 09/96 397,281 05/97 1,044,163

06/94 2,738 10/96 462,047 06/97 1,117,255

12/94 10,022 11/96 525,906 07/97 1,203,096

06/95 23,500 12/96 603,367 08/97 1,269,800

01/96 100,000 01/97 646,162 09/97 1,364,714

06/96 252,000 02/97 739,688

07/96 299,403 03/97 883,149

USENET Growth:

Date Sites ~MB ~Posts Groups Date Sites ~MB ~Posts Groups

---- ----- --- ------ ------ + ---- ------- --- ------ ------

1979 3 2 3 1987 5,200 2 957 259

1980 15 10 1988 7,800 4 1933 381

1981 150 0.05 20 1990 33,000 10 4,500 1,300

1982 400 35 1991 40,000 25 10,000 1,851

1983 600 120 1992 63,000 42 17,556 4,302

1984 900 225 1993 110,000 70 32,325 8,279

1985 1,300 1.0 375 1994 180,000 157 72,755 10,696

1986 2,200 2.0 946 241 1995 330,000 586 131,614

~ approximate: MB - megabytes per day, Posts - articles per day

---------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Sources

Hobbes' Internet Timeline was compiled from a number of sources,

with some of the stand-outs being:

Cerf, Vinton (as told to Bernard Aboba). "How the Internet Came to

Be." This article appears in "The Online User's Encyclopedia," by

Bernard Aboba. Addison-Wesley, 1993.

Hardy, Henry. "The History of the Net." Master's Thesis, School of

Communications, Grand Valley State University.

http://www.ocean.ic.net/ftp/doc/nethist.html

Hardy, Ian. "The Evolution of ARPANET email." History Thesis, UC

Berkeley.

http://server.berkeley.edu/virtual-berkeley/email_history

Hauben, Ronda and Michael. "The Netizens and the Wonderful World of

the Net."

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

Kulikowski, Stan II. "A Timeline of Network History." (author's

email below)

Quarterman, John. "The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing

Systems Worldwide." Bedford, MA: Digital Press. 1990

"ARPANET, the Defense Data Network, and Internet". Encyclopedia of

Communications, Volume 1. Editors: Fritz Froehlich, Allen Kent.

New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc. 1991

Internet growth summary compiled from:

- zone program reports maintained by Mark Lottor at:

ftp://ftp.nw.com/pub/zone/

- connectivity table maintained by Larry Landweber at:

ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/connectivity_table/

WWW growth summary compiled from:

- Web growth summary page by Matthew Gray of MIT:

http://www.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html

- Netcraft at http://www.netcraft.com/survey/

USENET growth summary compiled from Quarterman and Hauben sources

above, and news.lists postings. Lots of historical USENET postings

also provided by Tom Fitzgerald (fitz@wang.com).

Related Timelines:

- DNS: http://www.wia.org/dns-law/pub/timeline.html"

- JAVA: http://java.sun.com/events/jibe/timeline.html

- BBN: http://www.bbn.com/timeline/

Additional books of interest:

- "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet"

Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon

- "Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days That Built the Future of

Business", Robert H. Reid

- "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet", Michael Hauben et al

4. Acknowledgements

Contributors to Hobbes' Internet Timeline have their initials next

to the contributed items in the form (:zzz:) and are:

ad1 - Arnaud Dufour (arnaud.dufour@hec.unil.ch)

amk - Alex McKenzie (mckenzie@bbn.com)

dk1 - Daniel Karrenberg (Daniel.Karrenberg@ripe.net)

ec1 - Eric Carroll (eric@enfm.utcc.utoronto.ca)

esr - Eric S. Raymond (esr@locke.ccil.org)

feg - Farrell E. Gerbode (farrell@is.rice.edu)

gck - Gary C. Kessler (kumquat@hill.com)

glg - Gail L. Grant (grant@glgc.com)

gmc - Grant McCall (g.mccall@unsw.edu.au)

gst - Graham Thomas (G.S.Thomas@uel.ac.uk)

irh - Ian R Hardy (hardy@uclink2.berkeley.edu)

jap - Jean Armour Polly (mom@netmom.com)

jg1 - Jim Gaynor (gaynor@agvax.ag.ohio.state.edu)

kf1 - Ken Fockler (fockler@hq.canet.ca)

lhl - Larry H. Landweber (lhl@cs.wisc.edu)

mpc - Mellisa P. Chase (pc@mitre.org)

pb1 - Paul Burchard (burchard@cs.princeton.edu)

pds - Peter da Silva (peter@baileynm.com)

ph1 - Peter Hoffman (hoffman@ece.nps.navy.mil)

rab - Roger A. Bielefeld (rab@hal.cwru.edu)

sc1 - Susan Calcari (susanc@is.internic.net)

sk2 - Stan Kulikowski (stankuli@uwf.bitnet) - see sources section

sw1 - Stephen Wolff (swolff@cisco.com)

tp1 - Tim Pozar (pozar@kumr.lns.com)

twc - Thomas W. Creedon - K'o Wei Li (tcreedon@mitre.org)

vgc - Vinton Cerf (vcerf@isoc.org) - see sources section

wz1 - W. Zorn (zorn@ira.uka.de)

zby - Zenel Batagelj (zenel.batagelj@uni-lj.si)

5. Security Considerations

Security issues are not discussed in this document, though

references are made to security events which have taken place.

6. Author's Address

Robert H. Zakon

Internet Evangelist

The MITRE Corporation

1820 Dolley Madison Blvd

McLean, Virginia, USA 22102

Phone: (703) 883-7790

EMail: zakon@info.isoc.org

7. Disclaimer

The views expressed in this document are the author's and are not

intended to represent in any way The MITRE Corporation or its

opinions on this subject matter.

8. Full Copyright Statement

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distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,

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