Internet : timeline The Internet is not owned or funded by any one institution, organization, or government. It has no CEO and is not a commercial service. Its development is guided by the Internet Society (ISOC), composed of volunteers. The ISOC appoints the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which oversees issues of standards, network resources, etc. Major historical highlights 1969: ARPANET, an experimental 4-computer network, was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Defense Department 2 years later, ARPANET linked about 2 dozen computers (“hosts”) at 15 sites, including MIT and Harvard. 1978: The 1st spam, or junk e-mail, message was sent over ARPANET. 1983: The protocol, or set of communications rules, known as TCP/IP, became the main networking protocol of ARPANET. TCP/IP facilitates connection between networks, and its adoption was tantamount to the birth of the Internet. 1983: The military portion of ARPANET was moved onto the MILNET. 1986: The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) launched NSFNET, the 1st largescale network using Internet technology. 1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was developed by Finnish student Jarkko Oikarinen, enabling people to communicate via the Internet in “real time.” 1988: A “worm” crafted by Cornell University graduate student Robert Morris, Jr., infected thousands of computers, shutting many down and causing millions of dollars of damage—the 1st known case of large-scale damage caused by a computer virus spread via the Internet. 1989: The World—the 1st commercial Internet service provider supplying dial-up access—appeared. 1989-90: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Begun as an environment in which scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research in Switzerland could share information, it gradually evolved into a medium with text, graphics, audio, animation, and video. 1990: ARPANET was disbanded. 1991: The NSFNET was opened to commercial traffic. 1991: Berners-Lee introduced the 1st browser, or software for accessing the Web. 1993: The U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications released versions of Mosaic, the 1st Web browser able to present both text and images in a single page, for Microsoft Windows, Unix systems running the X Window GUI, and the Apple Macintosh. 1994: Netscape Communications released the Netscape Navigator browser. 1995: Microsoft released its Internet Explorer browser but initially failed to make a dent in Netscape’s dominance of the browser market. By 1998, Netscape’s market share had fallen below 50%, while Internet Explorer’s exceeded 25% and was growing rapidly. 1996: A group of universities launched Internet2, an advanced, high-performance network for the research community and a test bed for development of new capabilities that might find use in the commercial Internet. 2003: Niue, a self-governing Pacific island associated with New Zealand, became the 1st “country” to offer free nationwide wireless access to the Internet (using Wi-Fi technology).
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 05:02:11 +0000
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