1964- The internet (known as only a theory of a fool proof military communications network) is first thought up.

1968- ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.

1969- The first computer hooked up to the network is installed at UCLA. ARPANET is born.

1972- The first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.

1977- TCP/IP was being used by other networks to link to ARPANET.

1981- National Science Foundation created backbone called CSNET 56 Kbps network for institutions without access to ARPANET. Vinton Cerf proposed a plan for an inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET.

1983- Internet Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983. On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely. The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers.

1984- The ARPANET was divided into two networks: MILNET and ARPANET. MILNET was to serve the needs of the military and ARPANET to support the advanced research component, Department of Defense continued to support both networks. Upgrade to CSNET was contracted to MCI. New circuits would be T1 lines, 1.5 Mbps which is twenty-five times faster than the old 56 Kbps lines. IBM would provide advanced routers and Merit would manage the network. New network was to be called NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network), and old lines were to remain called CSNET.

1988- Soon after the completion of the T1 NSFNET backbone, traffic increased so quickly that plans immediately began on upgrading the network again. Merit and its partners formed a not for profit corporation called ANS, Advanced Network Systems, which was to conduct research into high speed networking. It soon came up with the concept of the T3, a 45 Mbps line. NSF quickly adopted the new network and by the end of 1991 all of its sites were connected by this new backbone.

1989- ARPANET expires leaving a vast, quick growing network of networks behind.

1990- NSFNET is upgraded once again.

1991- NREN is approved for a 5 year 2 billion dollar project to upgrade the internet once again.

1992- Internet Society is chartered. World-Wide Web released by CERN. NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps)

1996 to DATE- Most Internet traffic is carried by backbones of independent ISPs, including MCI, AT&T, Sprint, UUnet, BBN planet, ANS, and more. Currently the Internet Society, the group that controls the INTERNET, is trying to figure out new TCP/IP to be able to have billions of addresses, rather than the limited system of today. The problem that has arisen is that it is not known how both the old and the new addressing systems will be able to work at the same time during a transition period.