Early History of the Internet

• 1961 First packet-switching papers
• 1966 Merit Network founded
• 1966 ARPANET planning starts
• 1969 ARPANET carries its first packets
• 1970 Mark I network at NPL (UK)
• 1970 Network Information Center (NIC)
• 1971 Merit Network's packet-switched network operational
• 1971 Tymnet packet-switched network
• 1972 Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established
• 1973 CYCLADES network demonstrated
• 1974 Telenet packet-switched network
• 1976 X.25 protocol approved
• 1979 Internet Activities Board (IAB)
• 1980 USENET news using UUCP
• 1980 Ethernet standard introduced
• 1981 BITNET established

Merging the networks and creating the Internet

• 1981 Computer Science Network (CSNET)
• 1982 TCP/IP protocol suite formalized
• 1982 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
• 1983 Domain Name System (DNS)
• 1983 MILNET split off from ARPANET
• 1986 NSFNET with 56 kbit/s links
• 1986 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
• 1987 UUNET founded
• 1988 NSFNET upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1)
• 1988 OSI Reference Model released
• 1988 Morris worm
• 1989 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
• 1989 PSINet founded, allows commercial traffic
• 1989 Federal Internet Exchanges (FIXes)
• 1990 GOSIP (without TCP/IP)
• 1990 ARPANET decommissioned

Popular Internet services

• 1990 IMDb Internet movie database
• 1995 Amazon.com online retailer
• 1995 eBay online auction and shopping
• 1995 Craigslist classified advertisements
• 1996 Hotmail free web-based e-mail
• 1997 Babel Fish automatic translation
• 1998 Google Search
• 1999 Napster peer-to-peer file sharing
• 2001 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• 2003 LinkedIn business networking
• 2003 Myspace social networking site
• 2003 Skype Internet voice calls
• 2003 iTunes Store
• 2004 Facebook social networking site
• 2004 Podcast media file series
• 2004 Flickr image hosting
• 2005 YouTube video sharing
• 2005 Google Earth virtual globe