Internet history timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web

In the history of the Internet, the original concept that evolved into the World Wide Web is usually credited to Leonard Kleinrock. In 1961 he wrote about ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, in an essay entitled “Information Flow in Large Communication Nets”.
According to the magazine Management and business review (opens in new tab) (MBR), Kleinrock, along with other innovators such as JCR Licklider, the first director of the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), provided the backbone for the ubiquitous stream of email, media, Facebook posts and tweets, all now shared online Day.
The forerunner of Internet was started in the early days of history of computers in 1969 with the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), according to the journal American scientist (opens in new tab). ARPA-funded researchers developed many of the protocols used for Internet communications today. This timeline provides a brief history of the evolution of the Internet:
Internet Timeline: 1960s
1965: Two computers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab communicate with each other using packet switching technology.
1968: Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) announce the final version of the Interface Message Processor (IMP) specifications. BBN wins ARPANET contract.
1969: On October 29, UCLA’s Network Measurement Center, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah install nodes. The first message is “LO,” which was an attempt by student Charles Kline to “log into” the university’s SRI computer. However, the message could not be completed because the SRI system crashed.
1970-1980
1972: BBN’s Ray Tomlinson introduces network email. The Internet Working Group (INWG) is formed to meet the need for standard protocols.
1973: Global connectivity becomes a reality when the University College of London (England) and the Royal Radar Establishment (Norway) connect to ARPANET. The term Internet was born.
1974: The first Internet Service Provider (ISP) is born with the launch of a commercial version of ARPANET known as Telenet.
1974: Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn (the duo are considered by many to be the fathers of the Internet) publish “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection,” detailing the design TCP.
1976: Queen Elizabeth II hits the send button on her first email.
1979: USENET forms for hosting news and discussion groups.
1980-1990
1981: The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a grant to establish the Computer Science Network (CSNET) to provide networking services for computer scientists at universities.
1982: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) as a suite of protocols, commonly known as TCP/IP, emerge as protocols for ARPANET. Hence the recent definition of the Internet as connected TCP/IP Internets. TCP/IP remains the standard protocol for the Internet.
1983: The Domain Name System (DNS) establishes the familiar .edu, .gov, .com, .mil, .org, .net, and .int systems for naming websites. This is easier to remember than the previous designation for websites, e.g. 123.456.789.10.
1984: William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, was the first to use the term cyberspace.
1985: Symbolics.com, the website of Symbolics Computer Corp. in Massachusetts, will be the first registered domain.
1986: The National Science Foundation’s NSFNET goes online to connected supercomputing centers at 56,000 bits per second—the speed of a typical dial-up computer modem. Over time, the network will speed up and regional research and education networks, supported in part by NSF, will connect to the NSFNET backbone – effectively expanding the Internet across the United States. The NSFNET was essentially a network of networks connecting academic users together with the ARPANET.
1987: The number of hosts on the Internet exceeds 20,000. Cisco ships its first router.
1989: World.std.com becomes the first commercial provider of dial-up access to the Internet.
1990-2000
1990: Tim Berners-Lee, scientist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, develops the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This technology continues to have a major impact on how we navigate and view the Internet today.
1991: CERN introduces the World Wide Web to the public.
1992: The first audio and video files are distributed over the Internet. The expression “surfing the Internet” has become popular.
1993: The number of websites reaches 600 and the White House and the United Nations go online. Marc Andreesen develops the Mosaic web browser at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. The number of computers connected to NSFNET grew from 2,000 in 1985 to more than 2 million in 1993. The National Science Foundation is spearheading efforts to outline a new Internet architecture that would support the network’s burgeoning commercial use.
1994: Netscape Communications is born. Microsoft creates a web browser for Windows 95.
1994: Yahoo! is created by Jerry Yang and David Filo, two electricians engineering PhD students at Stanford University. The site was originally called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. The company was later incorporated in March 1995.
1995: Compuserve, America Online and Prodigy begin providing Internet access. Amazon.com, Craigslist and eBay go live. The original NSFNET backbone is being decommissioned as the Internet’s transformation into a commercial enterprise is largely complete.
1995: The first online dating site, Match.com, launches.
1996: The browser war, especially between the two big players Microsoft and Netscape, is escalating. CNET buys tv.com for $15,000.
1996: A 3D animation called “The dancing baby (opens in new tab)” becomes one of the first viral videos.
1997: Netflix is founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as a company that mails DVDs to users.
1997: A deal with the Justice Department allows PC makers to remove or hide Microsoft’s Internet software on new versions of Windows 95. Netscape announces that its browser will be free.
1998: The Google search engine is born, changing the way users interact with the internet.
1998: Internet Protocol version 6 was introduced to accommodate future Internet address growth. The currently most widely used protocol is version 4. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, allowing for 4.3 billion unique addresses; IPv6 with 128-bit addresses allows 3.4 x 1038 unique addresses, or 340 trillion trillion trillion.
1999: AOL buys Netscape. Peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a reality when Napster hits the Internet, much to the dismay of the music industry.
2000-2010
2000: The dot-com bubble bursts. Sites like Yahoo! and eBay are hit by a large-scale denial-of-service attack that highlights the vulnerability of the Internet. AOL merges with Time Warner
2001: A federal judge shuts down Napster, ruling it must find a way to stop users from sharing copyrighted material before it can go back online.
2003: The SQL Slammer worm spread worldwide in just 10 minutes. Myspace, Skype and the Safari web browser debut.
2003: The WordPress blog publishing platform is launched.
2004: Facebook goes online and the era of social networks begins. Mozilla introduces the Mozilla Firefox browser.
2005: YouTube.com launches. The social news site Reddit is also founded.
2006: AOL is changing its business model, offering most services for free and relying on advertising to generate revenue. The Internet Governance Forum meets for the first time.
2006: Twitter starts. Company founder Jack Dorsey sends out the very first tweet: “Just setup my twttr.”
2009: The Internet is celebrating its 40th birthday.
2010-2020
2010: Facebook reaches 400 million active users.
2010: The social media sites Pinterest and Instagram are launched.
2011: Twitter and Facebook play a big role in the revolts in the Middle East.
2012: President Barack Obama’s administration announces its rejection of large parts of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, which would have enacted sweeping new rules obliging internet service providers to monitor copyrighted content. The successful push to stop the law, which involved tech companies like Google and nonprofits like Wikipedia and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is seen as a victory for sites like YouTube that rely on user-generated content as well as “fair use” of the internet.
2013: Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, reveals that the NSA set up a surveillance program that was able to intercept the communications of thousands of people, including US citizens.
2013: According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 51 percent of American adults say they bank online.
2015: Instagram, the photo-sharing site, reaches 400 million users, overtaking Twitter, which would reach 316 million users by the middle of the same year.
2016: Google introduces Google Assistant, a voice-activated personal assistant program that marks the internet giant’s entry into the “smart” computer-assisted market. Google joins Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana.
2018: There is a significant increase in internet-enabled devices. An increase in the Internet of Things (IoT) envisages around seven billion devices by the end of the year.
2019: fifth generation (5G) networks are launched, allowing faster Internet connection on some wireless devices.
2020-2022
2021: As of January 2021, 4.66 billion people are connected to the internet. That’s more than half of the world’s population.
2022: Satellite internet in low earth orbit is getting closer to reality. By early January 2022, SpaceX will launch more than 1,900 Starlink total satellites. The constellation now offers broadband service in select areas around the world.
Additional Resources
To learn more about the SpaceX satellite internet project, you can watch This video (opens in new tab) about the mission. To also read an interview with Leonard Kleinrock, visit the ACM Website Notices (opens in new tab).
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