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United States create the ARPA
USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA or DARPA) in February 1958 to regain a technological lead, and interconnect their computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and SAC HQ source -
Early ARPANET runs on NCP
early ARPANET ran on the Network Control Program (NCP), a standard designed and first implemented in December 1970 by a team called the Network Working Group (NWG) led by Steve Crocker source -
Birth of TCP/IP
Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the now widely used TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in May 1974. source -
Period: to
X.25-based networks grow
Following the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. source -
ARPANET switches to TCP/IP
The first TCP/IP-based wide-area network was operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols. source -
NSFNET - 56 kilobit/second network backbone created
1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of the NSFNET, a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone. source -
NSFNET upgrade to 1.5megabit/second
NSF sponsored the conversion to a higher-speed 1.5 megabit/second network. source -
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World Wide Web project publicized
On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. source -
Estimated internet user population estimated to be 1.67 billion
The estimated population of Internet users is 1.67 billion as of June 30, 2009. source
