Internet Timeline Project

By jrolnick

  • Kleinrock thesis describes underlying principles of packet-switching technology

    Leonard Kleinrock, a doctoral student at MIT, writes a thesis describing queuing networks and the underlying principles of what later becomes known as packet-switching technology.
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    Internet Timeline

  • On Distributed Communications Networks

    The RAND Corporation publishes a report, principally authored by Paul Baran, for the Pentagon called On Distributed Communications Networks. It describes a distributed radio communications network that could survive a nuclear first strike, in part by dividing messages into segments that would travel independently.

  • ARPANET project

    Larry Roberts of MIT’s Lincoln Lab is hired to manage the ARPANET project. He works with the research community to develop specifications for the ARPA computer network, a packet-switched network with minicomputers acting as gateways for each node using a standard interface.

  • Initial ARPANET host-to-host protocol

    In December the Network Working Group (NWG), formed at UCLA by Steve Crocker, deploys the initial ARPANET host-to-host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). The primary function of the NCP is to establish connections, break connections, switch connections, and control flow over the ARPANET, which grows at the rate of one new node per month.

  • First public demonstration of the new network technology

    Robert Kahn at BBN, who is responsible for the ARPANET’s system design, organizes the first public demonstration of the new network technology at the International Conference on Computer Communications in Washington, D.C., linking 40 machines and a Terminal Interface Processor to the ARPANET.

  • TCP/IP incorporated

    At DARPA’s request, Bill Joy incorporates TCP/IP (internet protocol) in distributions of Berkeley Unix, initiating broad diffusion in the academic scientific research community.

  • Demonstration of independent networks to communicate

    Cerf and Kahn organize a demonstration of the ability of three independent networks to communicate with each other using TCP protocol. Packets are communicated from the University of Southern California across the ARPANET, the San Francisco Bay Packet Radio Net, and Atlantic SATNET to London and back.

  • The Internet

    ARPANET, and all networks attached to it, officially adopts the TCP/IP networking protocol. From now on, all networks that use TCP/IP are collectively known as the Internet. The number of Internet sites and users grow exponentially.

  • nternat Engineering Task Force expands

    The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) expands to reflect the growing importance of operations and the development of commercial TCP/IP products. It is an open informal international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers interested in the evolution of the Internet architecture and its smooth operation.

  • World Wide Web software developed

    CERN releases the World Wide Web software developed earlier by Tim Berners-Lee. Specifications for HTML (hypertext markup language), URL (uniform resource locator), and HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) launch a new era for content distribution. At the University of Minnesota, a team of programmers led by Mark McCahill releases a point-and-click navigation tool, the "Gopher" document retrieval system, simplifying access to files over the Internet.