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