1957
USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the following year, within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military (:amk:)
1967
ARPANET design discussions held by Larry Roberts at ARPA IPTO PI meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan (April). ACM Symposium on Operating Principles in Gatlinburg, Tennessee (October)
First design paper on ARPANET published by Larry Roberts: "Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication. First meeting of the three independent packet network teams (RAND, NPL, ARPA)
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex, England develops NPL Data Network under Donald Watts Davies who coins the term packet. The NPL network, an experiment in packet-switching, used 768kbps lines
1968
PS-network presented to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
Request for proposals for ARPANET sent out in August; responses received in September
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded Network Measurement Center contract in October
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors (IMPs)
US Senator Edward Kennedy sends a congratulatory telegram to BBN for its million-dollar ARPA contract to build the "Interfaith" Message Processor, and thanking them for their ecumenical efforts
Network Working Group (NWG), headed by Steve Crocker, loosely organized to develop host level protocols for communication over the ARPANET. (:vgc:)
Tymnet built as part of Tymshare service (:vgc:)
1969
ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking. Nodes are stood up as BBN builds each IMP [Honeywell DDP-516 mini computer with 12K of memory]; AT&T provides 50kbps lines
Node 1: UCLA (30 August, hooked up 2 September)
Function: Network Measurement Center
System,OS: SDS SIGMA 7, SEX
Diagram of the first host to IMP connection
Node 2: Stanford Research Institute (SRI) (1 October)
Network Information Center (NIC)
SDS940/Genie
Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect"
Node 3: University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) (1 November)
Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics
IBM 360/75, OS/MVT
Node 4: University of Utah (December)
Graphics
DEC PDP-10, Tenex
Diagram of the 4-node ARPAnet
First Request for Comment (RFC): "Host Software" by Steve Crocker (7 April)
RFC 4: Network Timetable
First packets sent by Charley Kline at UCLA as he tried logging into SRI. The first attempt resulted in the system crashing as the letter G of LOGIN was entered. (October 29) [ Log entry ]
Univ of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State Univ establish X.25-based Merit network for students, faculty, alumni (:sw1:)
1970
First publication of the original ARPANET Host-Host protocol: C.S. Carr, S. Crocker, V.G. Cerf, "HOST-HOST Communication Protocol in the ARPA Network," in AFIPS Proceedings of SJCC (:vgc:)
First report on ARPANET at AFIPS: "Computer Network Development to Achieve Resource Sharing" (March)
ALOHAnet, the first packet radio network, developed by Norman Abramson, Univ of Hawaii, becomes operational (July) (:sk2:)
connected to the ARPANET in 1972
ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), first host-to-host protocol
First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps. This line is later replaced by another between BBN and RAND. A second line is added between MIT and Utah
1972
Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it
becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March)
Larry Roberts writes first email management program (RD) to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages (July)
International Conference on Computer Communications (ICCC) at the Washington D.C. Hilton with demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines and the Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn. (October)
First computer-to-computer chat takes place at UCLA, and is repeated during ICCC, as psychotic PARRY (at Stanford) discusses its problems with the Doctor (at BBN).
International Network Working Group (INWG) formed in October as a result of a meeting at ICCC identifying the need for a combined effort in advancing networking technologies. Vint Cerf appointed first Chair. By1974, INWG became IFIP WG 6.1 (:vgc:)
Louis Pouzin leads the French effort to build its own ARPANET - CYCLADES
RFC 318: Telnet specification
1973
First international connections to the ARPANET: University College of London (England) and NORSAR (Norway)
Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for Ethernet. The concept was tested on Xerox PARC's Alto computers, and the first Ethernet network called the Alto Aloha System (May) (:amk:)
Bob Kahn poses Internet problem, starts internetting research program at ARPA. Vinton Cerf sketches gateway architecture in March on back of envelope in a San Francisco hotel lobby (:vgc:)
Cerf and Kahn present basic Internet ideas at INWG in September at Univ of Sussex, Brighton, UK (:vgc:)
RFC 454: File Transfer specification
Network Voice Protocol (NVP) specification (RFC 741) and implementation enabling conference calls over ARPAnet. (:bb1:)
SRI (NIC) begins publishing ARPANET News in March; number of ARPANET users estimated at 2,000 ARPA study shows email composing 75% of all ARPANET traffic
Christmas Day Lockup - Harvard IMP hardware problem leads it to broadcast zero-length hops to any ARPANET destination, causing all other IMPs to send their traffic to Harvard (25 December)
RFC 527: ARPAWOCKY
RFC 602: The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care
1979
Meeting between Univ of Wisconsin, DARPA, National Science Foundation (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.
On April 12, Kevin MacKenzie emails the MsgGroup a suggestion of adding some emotion back into the dry text medium of email, such as -) for indicating a sentence was tongue-in-cheek. Though flamed by many at the time, emoticons became widely used
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:)
C/30 IMPs predominate the network; first C/30 TIP at SAC
Minitel (Teletel) is deployed across France by France Telecom.
True Names by Vernor Vinge (:pds:)
RFC 801: NCP/TCP Transition Plan
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)
No more Honeywell or Pluribus IMPs; TIPs replaced by TACs (terminal access controller)
Stuttgart and Korea get connected
Movement Information Net (MINET) started early in the year in Europe, connected to Internet in Sept
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. 68 of the 113 existing nodes went to MILNET
Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX (4.2 BSD) which includes IP networking software (:mpc:)
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
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
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.
New England gets cut off from the Net as AT&T suffers a fiber optics cable break between Newark/NJ and White Plains/NY. Yes, all seven New England ARPANET trunk lines were in the one severed cable. Outage took place between 1:11 and 12:11 EST on 12 December
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 Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established in December with Jon Postel as its Director. Postel was also the RFC Editor and US Domain registrar for many years.
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 email and news (:tp1:)
The first multicast tunnel is established between Stanford and BBN in the Summer of 1988.
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 (August)
AARNET - Australian Academic Research Network - set up by AVCC and CSIRO; introduced into service the following year (:gmc:)
First link between Australia and NSFNET via Hawaii on 23 June
Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities
UCLA sponsors the Act One symposium to celebrate ARPANET's 20th anniversary and its decomissioning (August)
RFC 1121: Act One - The Poems
RFC 1097: TELNET SUBLIMINAL-MESSAGE Option
Countries connecting to NSFNET: Australia (AU), Germany (DE), Israel (IL), Italy (IT), apan (JP), Mexico (MX), Netherlands (NL), New Zealand (NZ), Puerto Rico (PR), United Kingdom (UK)
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 by John Romkey, (controlled via SNMP) makes its debut at Interop. Pictures: Internode, Invisible
RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
RFC 1178: Choosing a Name for Your Computer
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
First connection takes place between Brazil, by Fapesp, and the Internet at 9600 baud.
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 (March) (: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 Minnesota
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 'tunneled' within X.25. (:gst:)
RFC 1216: Gigabit Network Economics and Paradigm Shifts
RFC 1217: Memo from the Consortium for Slow Commotion Research (CSCR)
Countries connecting to NSFNET: Croatia (HR), Czech Republic (CZ), Hong Kong (HK), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Singapore (SG), South Africa (ZA), Taiwan (TW), Tunisia (TN)
1994
ARPANET/Internet celebrates 25th anniversary
Communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet (Lexington and Cambridge, Mass., 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 (http://www.kantei.go.jp/)
UK's HM Treasury on-line (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/)
New Zealand's Info Tech Prime Minister on-line (http://www.govt.nz/)
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, KJHK 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. TERENA'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" (October)
After noticing that many network software vendors used domain.com in their documentation examples, Bill Woodcock and Jon Postel register the domain. Sure enough, after looking at the domain access logs, it was evident that many users were using the example domain in configuring their applications.
RFC 1605: SONET to Sonnet Translation
RFC 1606: A Historical Perspective On The Usage Of IP Version 9
RFC 1607: A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY
Countries connecting to NSFNET: Algeria (DZ), Armenia (AM), Bermuda (BM), Burkina Faso (BF), China (CN), Colombia (CO), Jamaica (JM), Jordan (JO), Lebanon (LB), Lithuania (LT), Macao (MO), Morocco (MA), New Caledonia (NC), Nicaragua (NI), Niger (NE), Panama (PA), Philippines (PH), Senegal (SN), Sri Lanka (LK), Swaziland (SZ), Uruguay (UY), Uzbekistan (UZ)
Top 10 Domains by Host #: com, edu, uk, gov, de, ca, mil, au, org, net
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:)
Sun launches JAVA on May 23
RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time
Radio HK, the first commercial 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
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)
A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value (9 August)
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 (http://www.vatican.va/)
The Canadian Government comes on-line (http://canada.gc.ca/)
The first official Internet wiretap was successful in helping 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 to be declared a munition, under the USA's arms export control laws, because of an RSA file security encryption program tattooed on his arm (:wired496:)
RFC 1882: The 12-Days of Technology Before Christmas
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)
Top 10 Domains by Host #: com, edu, net, gov, mil, org, de, uk, ca, au
Technologies of the Year: WWW, Search engines
Emerging Technologies: Mobile code (JAVA, JAVAscript), Virtual environments (VRML), Collaborative tools
Hacks of the Year: The Spot (Jun 12), Hackers Movie Page (12 Aug)
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 March1998.
CA*net II launched in June to provide Canada's next generation Internet using ATM/SONET
In protest of the DNS monopoly, AlterNIC's owner, Eugene Kashpureff, hacks DNS so users going to www.internic.net end up at www.alternic.net
Domain name business.com sold for US$150,000
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
RFC 2100: The Naming of Hosts
Country domains registered: Falkland Islands (FK), East Timor (TP), R of Congo (CG), Christmas Island (CX), Gambia (GM), Guinea-Bissau (GW), Haiti (HT), Iraq (IQ), Libya (LY), Malawi (MW), Martinique (MQ), Montserrat (MS), Myanmar (MM), French Reunion Island (RE), Seychelles (SC), Sierra Leone (SL), Somalia (SO), Sudan (SD), Tajikistan (TJ), Turkmenistan (TM), Turks and Caicos Islands (TC), British Virgin Islands (VG), Heard and McDonald Islands (HM), French Southern Territories (TF), British Indian Ocean Territory (IO), Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands (SJ), St Pierre and Miquelon (PM), St Helena (SH), South Georgia/Sandwich Islands (GS), Sao Tome and Principe (ST), Ascension Island (AC), US Minor Outlying Islands (UM), Mayotte (YT), Wallis and Futuna Islands (WF), Tokelau Islands (TK), Chad Republic (TD), Afghanistan (AF), Cocos Island (CC), Bouvet Island (BV), Liberia (LR), American Samoa (AS), Niue (NU), Equatorial New Guinea (GQ), Bhutan (BT), Pitcairn Island (PN), Palau (PW), DR of Congo (CD)
Top 10 Domains by Host #: com, edu, net, jp, uk, de, us, au, ca, mil
Hacks of the Year: Indonesian Govt (19 Jan, 10 Feb, 24 Apr, 30 Jun, 22 Nov), NASA (5 Mar), UK Conservative Party (27 Apr), Spice Girls (14 Nov)
Technologies of the Year: Push, Multicasting
Emerging Technologies: Push, Streaming Media [:twc:]
1998
Hobbes' Internet Timeline is released as RFC 2235 & FYI 32
US Depart of Commerce (DoC) releases the Green Paper outlining its plan to privatize DNS on 30 January.
This is followed up by a White Paper on June 5
La F�te de l'Internet, a country-wide Internet fest, is held in France 20-21 March
Web size estimates range between 275 (Digital) and 320 (NEC) million pages for 1Q
Companies flock to the Turkmenistan NIC in order to register their name under the .tm domain, the English abbreviation for trademark
Internet users get to be judges in a performance by 12 world champion ice skaters on 27 March, marking the first time a television sport show's outcome is determined by its viewers.
Network Solutions registers its 2 millionth domain on 4 May
Electronic postal stamps become a reality, with the US Postal Service allowing stamps to be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
Canada kicks off CA*net 3, the first national optical internet
Compaq pays US$3.3million for altavista.com
CDA II and a ban on Net taxes are signed into US law (21 October)
ABCNews.com accidentally posts test US election returns one day early (2 November)
Indian ISP market is deregulated in November causing a rush for ISP operation licenses
US DoC enters into an agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers (ICANN) to establish a process for transitioning DNS from US Government management to industry (25 November)
San Francisco sites without off-city mirrors go offline as the city blacks out on 8 December
Chinese government puts Lin Hai on trial for "inciting the overthrow of state power" for providing 30,000
email addresses to a US Internet magazine (December) [ He is later sentenced to two years in jail ]
French Internet users give up their access on 13 December to boycott France Telecom's local phone charges (which are in addition to the ISP charge)
Open source software comes of age
RFC 2321: RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent
RFC 2222: Management of IP numbers by peg-dhcp
RFC 2323: IETF Identification and Security Guidelines
RFC 2324: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
Country domains registered: Nauru (NR), Comoros (KM)
Bandwidth Generators: Winter Olympics (Feb), World Cup (Jun-Jul), Starr Report (11 Sep), Glenn space launch
Top 10 Domains by Host #: com, net, edu, mil, jp, us, uk ,de, ca, au
Hacks of the Year: US Dept of Commerce (20 Feb), New York Times (13 Sep), China Society for Human Rights Studies (26 Oct), UNICEF (7 Jan)
Technologies of the Year: E-Commerce, E-Auctions, Portals
Emerging Technologies: E-Trade, XML, Intrusion Detection
1999
Internet access becomes available to the Saudi Arabian (.sa) public in January vBNS sets up an OC48 link between CalREN South and North using Juniper M40 routers
First Internet Bank of Indiana, the first full-service bank available only on the Net, opens for business on 22 February IBM becomes the first Corporate partner to be approved for Internet2 access uropean Parliament proposes banning the caching of Web pages by ISPs
The Internet Fiesta kicks off in March across Europe, building on the success of La F�te de l'Internet held in1998
US State Court rules that domain names are property that may be garnished
MCI/Worldcom, the vBNS provider for NSF, begins upgrading the US backbone to 2.5GBps
A forged Web page made to look like a Bloomberg financial news story raised shares of a small technology company by 31% on 7 April.
ICANN announces the five testbed registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System on 21 April: AOL, CORE, France Telecom/Ol�ane, Melbourne IT, Register.com. 29 additional post-testbed registrars are also selected on 21 April, followed by 8 on 25 May, 15 on 6 July, and so on for a total of 98 by year's end. The testbed, originally scheduled to last until 24 June, is extended until 10 September, and then 30 November. The first registrar to come online is Register.com on 7 June
First large-scale Cyberwar takes place simultaneously with the war in Serbia/Kosovo
Abilene, the Internet2 network, reaches across the Atlantic and connects to NORDUnet and SURFnet
The Web becomes the focal point of British politics as a list of MI6 agents is released on a UK Web site. Though forced to remove the list from the site, it was too late as the list had already been replicated across the Net. (15 May) Activists Net-wide target the world's financial centers on 18 June, timed to coincide with the G8 Summit. Little actual impact is reported. MCI/Worldcom launches vBNS+, a commercialized version of vBNS targeted at smaller educational and research institutions
Somalia gets its first ISP - Olympic Computer (Sep)
ISOC approves the formation of the Internet Societal Task Force (ISTF). Vint Cerf serves as first chair
Technologies of the Year: E-Trade, Online Banking, MP3
Emerging Technologies: Net-Cell Phones, Thin Computing, Embedded Computing
Viruses of the Year: Melissa (March), ExploreZip (June)