RFC 2235
Hobbes' Internet Timeline
RFC 2235: Hobbes' Internet Timeline ✨🎀
Okay bestie, let's start with the basics 🧚
- Series: Network Working Group
- RFC number: 2235
- FYI number: 32
- Author: R. Zakon, MITRE
- Date: November 1997
- Category: Informational
- Obsoletes: none listed
- Updates: none listed
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.
Copyright Notice ©️
Copyright (C) Robert H. Zakon and The Internet Society (1997). All Rights Reserved.
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 ⏳
So this section is excerpted from the author's copyrighted work of the same name, and the most current version lives at http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html 🔗
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 (RFC 318)
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 (RFC 454)
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 (RFC 733)
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.
1987 ✨
okay so NSF signs a cooperative agreement to manage the NSFNET backbone with Merit Network, Inc. 🦋 IBM and MCI were involved through an agreement with Merit, and then Merit, IBM, and MCI later founded ANS. the whole squad 🫶
UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access. it started as an experiment by Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell and look at it now 💅
an email link gets set up between Germany and China using CSNET protocols, and the first message from China goes out on 20 September 🌏 (:wz1:)
the 1000th RFC drops: "Request For Comments reference guide" 📚 bestie that's a milestone 😭
the number of hosts breaks 10,000 🔥 and the number of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000 🎀
1988
2 November is the day the Internet worm burrows through the Net 💀 it affects ~6,000 of the 60,000 hosts on the Internet (:ph1:) that's giving chaos energy
CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) gets formed by DARPA in response to the needs exposed 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. the US Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) defines the set of protocols to be supported by Government purchased products (:gck:) very official, very serious 💼
Los Nettos network is created with no federal funding, and it's instead supported by regional members. the founding crew is Caltech, TIS, UCLA, USC, and ISI 🌸
NSFNET backbone gets upgraded to T1 (1.544Mbps) ⭐
CERFnet (California Education and Research Federation network) is founded by Susan Estrada 👑
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is developed by Jarkko Oikarinen (:zby:) the group chats we love were born here 💜
the first Canadian regionals join NSFNET: ONet via Cornell, RISQ via Princeton, and BCnet via Univ of Washington (:ec1:) canada really said "we're in" 🍁
FidoNet gets connected to the Net, which enables the exchange of e-mail and news (:tp1:) ngl the BBS crossover arc is so good ✨
countries connecting to NSFNET: Canada (CA), Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), France (FR), Iceland (IS), Norway (NO), and Sweden (SE) 🧚
1989
number of hosts breaks 100,000 🎉 we're literally in the big leagues now
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) is formed by European service providers to make sure the necessary administrative and technical coordination happens, so the pan-European IP Network can operate. (:glg:) european internet girlies assemble 🇪🇺
first relays happen between a commercial electronic mail carrier and the Internet: MCI Mail goes through the Corporation for the National Research Initiative (CNRI), and Compuserve goes through Ohio State Univ (:jg1,ph1:) the mail crossover era is here 💌
the Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN) is formed by merging CSNET into BITNET 🫶
AARNET (Australian Academic Research Network) gets set up by AVCC and CSIRO, and it's introduced into service the following year (:gmc:) aussie internet rep 🦘
Cuckoo's Egg, written by Clifford Stoll, tells the real-life tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities 🕵️♀️ this is a whole thriller and I'm obsessed
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), and United Kingdom (UK) the world is literally logging on 🌈
1990s 🌈
1990
ARPANET ceases to exist 🫡 the OG era has ended, and it's a whole vibe
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is founded by Mitch Kapor ⚖️ internet rights era unlocked
Archie is released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill 🔍 the first search engine energy is so real
Hytelnet is 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 📞 dial-up bestie era
ISO Development Environment (ISODE) is developed to provide an approach for OSI migration for the DoD. ISODE software allows OSI applications to operate over TCP/IP (:gck:) it's giving "let's make everyone work together" 🤝
CA*net is formed by 10 regional networks as a national Canadian backbone, with a direct connection to NSFNET (:ec1:) canada is really building its own lane 🍁
The first remotely operated machine to be hooked up to the Internet, the Internet Toaster (controlled via SNMP), makes its debut at Interop. 🍞 an internet toaster?? iconic, and I'm not even mad
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), and Switzerland (CH) 🌍 the map is getting so colourful
1991
Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Association, Inc. is 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:) the business era has officially started 💼✨
Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle, is released by Thinking Machines Corporation 🧠
Gopher is released by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the Univ of Minnessota 🐿️
World-Wide Web (WWW) is released by CERN, with Tim Berners-Lee as the developer (:pb1:) this is the one that changes everything 🌐💖
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is released by Philip Zimmerman (:ad1:) privacy is the new main character 🔐
the US High Performance Computing Act (Gore 1) establishes the National Research and Education Network (NREN) 🏛️
NSFNET backbone gets upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps) 🚀
NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion packets/month 💥 the numbers are unhinged in the best way
Defense Data Network NIC contract is awarded by DISA to Government Systems Inc., who takes over from SRI in May 📝
the start of JANET IP Service (JIPS) signals the changeover from Coloured Book software to TCP/IP within the UK academic network. IP was initially 'tunnelled' within X.25. (:gst:) the UK really glowed up 🇬🇧
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), and Tunisia (TN) 🌏 the world is so connected rn
1992
Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered 🎀 the community gets its own home base
the number of hosts breaks 1,000,000 🎉 a million!! ngl I'm screaming
first MBONE audio multicast (March) and video multicast (November) 🎶 the multicast era is giving main character
RIPE Network Coordination Center (NCC) is created in April to provide address registration and coordination services to the European Internet community (:dk1:) europe keeping everything organised 📇
IAB is 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 first of its kind, iconic
the term "Surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly (:jap:) the vocab is so good 🏄♀️
Internet Hunt is 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), and Venezuela (VE) 🧭 literally everywhere now
1993
InterNIC is 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)
the US White House comes on-line (http://www.whitehouse.gov/), and yes, the emails are real: President Bill Clinton: president@whitehouse.gov and Vice-President Al Gore: vice-president@whitehouse.gov 🇺🇸 the government is literally in our feed now
WWW Worms (W4) show up, a new kind of worm on the Net, joined by Spiders, Wanderers, Crawlers, and Snakes ... 🐍 the creepy-crawly era is real
Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting (:sk2:) podcasts before podcasts 🎙️
the United Nations (UN) comes on-line (:vgc:) the global main character moment 🌍
the US National Information Infrastructure Act 📜
businesses and media really take notice of the Internet 👀 the glow-up is undeniable
Mosaic takes the Internet by storm, and WWW proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997%. 🔥 the growth numbers are absolutely unhinged
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), and US Virgin Islands (VI) 🌺 the list keeps going and I'm here for it
1994
ARPANET/Internet celebrates its 25th anniversary 🎂 a quarter century of slaying
communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet (Lexington and Cambridge, MA, USA) 🏘️ the neighbourhood group chat era begins
US Senate and House provide information servers 🏛️
shopping malls arrive on the Internet 🛍️ retail therapy, online edition
the 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:) even the standards people came around 🙌
Arizona law firm of Canter & Siegel "spams" the Internet with email advertising green card lottery services, and Net citizens flame back 🔥 the first big spam drama, and everyone was so loud about it
NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes/month 💥
yes, it's true, you can now order pizza from the Hut online 🍕 the internet ate the whole thing
WWW edges out telnet to become the 2nd most popular service on the Net (behind ftp-data), based on % of packets and bytes traffic distribution on NSFNET 🕸️ the web is climbing the charts
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, opens up for business 🏦 digital money, bestie
radio stations start rockin' (rebroadcasting) round the clock on the Net: WXYC at Univ of NC, WJHK at Univ of KS-Lawrence, and KUGS at Western WA Univ 🎧 the playlists never stop
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" 🎓 such a dedicated mission, I love that for them
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), and Uzbekistan (UZ) 🌏💜
1995 🎀
- NSFNET goes back to being a research network 🔬 Its main US backbone traffic now runs through interconnected network providers.
- The new NSFNET is born 🌟 when NSF sets up the very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), linking the super-computing centers NCAR, NCSA, SDSC, CTC, and PSC.
- Hong Kong police disconnect all but 1 of the colony's Internet providers while hunting for a hacker 😱 About 10,000 people lose Net access (:api:).
- RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time 🎧
- Radio HK starts broadcasting as the first 24 hr., Internet-only radio station 📻
- WWW passes ftp-data in March as the service with the greatest traffic on NSFNet by packet count, and in April by byte count 👑
- Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy) start offering Internet access 💻
- A bunch of Net-related companies go public, with Netscape leading the pack with the 3rd largest NASDAQ IPO share value ever (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) 🔥💀
- Domain name registration is no longer free 💸 Beginning 14 September, a $50 annual fee is imposed, which until now was subsidized by NSF. NSF keeps paying 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 successfully helps the Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) apprehend 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 declared a munition under the USA's arms export control laws, because of an RSA file security encryption program emblazoned on his arm (:wired496:) 💅 Iconic, but also wild.
- 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 eye of US telecom companies, who ask the US Congress to ban the tech 🙄 (even though it's been around for years)
- The controversial US Communications Decency Act (CDA) becomes law in the US to stop the distribution of indecent materials over the Net. A few months later, a three-judge panel slaps an injunction on its enforcement. The Supreme Court unanimously rules most of it unconstitutional in 1997 ⚖️
- 9,272 organizations end up unlisted after InterNIC drops their name service for not paying their domain name fee 😬
- Various ISPs suffer extended outages, which raises the question of whether they can handle the growing number of users. AOL (19 hours), Netcom (13 hours), AT&T WorldNet (28 hours - email only) 📉
- New York's 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 get hacked and their content changed, including CIA, Department of Justice, and Air Force 🕶️
- MCI upgrades the Internet backbone by adding ~13,000 ports, taking 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 gets released on USENET, wiping out more than 25,000 messages 🗑️
- The WWW browser war, fought mainly between Netscape and Microsoft, kicks off a whole new era of software development 🥊 New releases now come out quarterly, with help from 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" 🎉 A whole milestone, bestie!
- 71,618 mailing lists are registered at Liszt, a mailing list directory 📬
- The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is established to handle administration and registration of IP numbers for the geographical areas currently handled by Network Solutions (InterNIC), starting March 1998 🌐
- Early in the morning of 17 July, human error at Network Solutions corrupts the DNS table for .com and .net domains, making millions of systems unreachable 😭 Total chaos.
- Longest hostname registered with InterNIC: CHALLENGER.MED.SYNAPSE.UAH.UALBERTA.CA 🤯
- 101,803 Name Servers in the 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:] 📺
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 1,301,000Worldwide Networks Growth 🌍
Here's the (I)nternet, (B)ITNET, (U)UCP, (F)IDONET, and (O)SI breakdown, counted by countries 🧮
____# 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 31WWW 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 📚✨
okay bestie, this is the receipts section 🧾💅 Hobbes' Internet Timeline was pieced together from a bunch of sources, and these are the standouts:
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 al4. Acknowledgements 🫶🌸
Big shoutout to everyone who contributed! Contributors to Hobbes' Internet Timeline have their initials next to the items they added, written as (:zzz:). Here's the whole glam squad 💖
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 🔐💀
okay, the tea here is that security isn't discussed in this document at all 🙈 Nothing about it is covered in these pages. That said, the document does mention some security events that have actually happened, so the topic is definitely lurking in the background ✨ Stay alert, bestie.
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.org7. Disclaimer 🙅♀️
Quick but important: the opinions in this document belong to the author, Robert. They are NOT The MITRE Corporation's opinions, and MITRE isn't speaking for them on this topic at all 💅
8. Full Copyright Statement ⚖️🌈
The legal text is kept exactly as written, because it's a legal notice and it needs to stay word-for-word ✨
Copyright (C) Robert H. Zakon and The Internet Society (1997).
All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implmentation may be prepared, copied, published and
distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.And that's the whole timeline, bestie! 🌈🦋👑
📦 where this page comes from
- ietf: rfc2235 1997-11
- 💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms