Hitchhiker's Guide to Streaming Media: The History of IP
1974
The term Internetworking is coined in a paper concerning the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The term internet shows up in 1976 in the form of an Internet Experiment Note.
Work continues between the researchers with the core group expanding rapidly.
1979
Dr. Cerf, at the urging of Bob Kahn and sponsored by DARPA, establishes the Internet Configuration Control Board to guide the growth of the internet.
1983
Dr. Leiner succeeds Cerf and ‘reconstitutes’ the ICCB into a group task forces focused on defined scopes of the technical issues. The activities of the task forces are collectively known as the Internet Activities Board (IAB). The IAB was reconstituted as the Internet Architecture Board under the Internet Society in 1992. The IETF makes the standards and is overseen by IAB.
TCP/IP is adopted as the standard for the ARPANET and Berkley release BSD4.2 including TCP/IP for the first time.
1984
DARPA divides the military operations from the ARPANET and creates MILNET, which is operated by the Defense Communications Agency.
The National Science Foundation forms the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing (OASC). By now many more organisations are joining forces with DARPA to fund and support the project. The Federal Research Internet Coordinating Committee (FRICC) is formed in 1988 to address policy issues and the relationship between research and Government.
1986
The IAB create the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and the IRTF (Internet Research Task Force). Each consist of working groups addressing specific technical issues with the development of IP technologies. The IETF is a platform (virtual of course!) where engineers can collaborate to develop solutions and standards for real world deployment, where the IRFT are more concerned with understanding.
1989
The first commercial interconnection to Internet: MCI Mail, quickly followed by CompuServe, then UUNET, PSINET and CERFNet.
1990
The US Dept. of Defence declare decides that ARPANET has outlived its utility and it is retired. FRICC is reorganized and becomes the Federal Networking Council (FNC) to liase between the President’s Science Advisor and the internet’s developers. FNC sees a sister project come to life in Europe called the European Association of Research Networks (RARE).
In the late eighties many RARE members (which were national research networks organizations) were strongly against IP while some were in fact building IP networks at home. At a RARE meeting this discussion came up and a sub-group of the members established an open group which then became RIPE which provided the international co-ordination necessary to run international IP in Europe. RARE as such did not take any position at this time.
Later the RIPE NCC was established as an activity within RARE that eventually was spun off in 1997. As you can see from their web page the RIPE NCC is the regional ip registry providing ip addresses in Europe and surrounding areas.
Also in this year, CERN introduces hypertext and web servers, although they were not yet available for public access. (Thank you Frode Greisen at eBone! For the RIPE / RARE info!)
1991
The first Commercial Internet Exchange is formed (CIX) providing a platform for interchange of data between networks. In broad terms this is the first precursor to LINX, Telehouse and the event of the ISP. 1992
CERN finally releases Tim Berners Lee’s World Wide Web. This is also when the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) released MOSAIC.ISOC is formed. ISOC “provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the internet, and is the organization home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the newly re-formed Internet Architecture Board (IAB).”
1994
Pizza Hut (!) offers pizza ordering and First Virtual begins trading, thereby becoming the first commercial online services.