Networking timeline

1940: George Stibitz uses a teletype machine to send instructions for a problem set to his Complex Number Calculator in New York and receives results back by the same means.

1958: The US government forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency to expand America's technological frontiers, in response to the USSR's launch of Sputnik 1 the previous year.

1961: Leonard Kleinrock at MIT publishes the first paper on packet-switching theory.

1962: JCR Licklider of MIT publishes a paper discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisions a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone can quickly access data and programs from any site.

1964: Paul Baran publishes a paper entitled "On Distributed Communications Networks" detailing packet-switching networks, but no single outage point.

1967: MIT researcher Lawrence G Roberts, intending to realise Licklider's idea, publishes his plan for the "Arpanet".

1969: The first node is connected to the Arpanet. By the end of that year, four host computers are connected.

1971: Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents an e-mail program to send messages across a distributed network.

1972: Arpanet is publicly demonstrated for the first time at the International Computer Communication Conference.

1973: FTP (file transfer protocol) is introduced.

1973: Arpanet makes its first international connection, while Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf team up to develop the details of the protocols that will become TCP/IP.

1973: Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC develops Ethernet technology.

1974: BBN announces "Telenet", the first public packet data service.

1976: UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy), which allows remote execution of commands and transfer of files, e-mail and such between computers, is developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with Unix one year later.

1977: Dennis C Hayes introduces the PC modem.

1980: Novell announces its networking software, leading to widespread development of workstation and PC LANs.

1980: Telnet software is introduced so remote login and long-distance work (telecommuting) are now possible.

1982: TCP/IP (transmission control protocol and Internet protocol) is established as the standard for Arpanet.

1984: The National Science Foundation develops the first wide area network designed specifically to use TCP/IP.

1988: Joe Leichleder develops ADSL by placing wideband digital signals above the existing baseband analogue voice signal carried between telephone company central offices and customers on conventional twisted-pair cabling.

1988: 3Com ships 3+Open, the first network operating system based on Microsoft's LAN Manager.

1989: The first ISPs, including the first dial-up ISP world.std.com, are formed.

1990: Arpanet is decommissioned and McGill University releases the Archie search engine.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, jointly propose to create a hypertext system (HTTP and HTML) accessible via browsers, which would form the basis of the World Wide Web.

1991: The first Web server is nxoc01.cern.ch, launched in November, and later renamed info.cern.ch.

1992: The Internet Society is formed and the IETF is transferred to operate under it as an independent international standards body.

1992: Start-up Grand Junction reveals it is developing a 100Mbps version of Ethernet that will use unshielded twisted-pair cabling.

1993: One of the first graphical Web browsers, Mosaic, is released by Marc Andreessen, at the US National Centre for Supercomputing Applications.

1995: NSFNET reverts back to a research network. The main backbone of US traffic is now routed through interconnected network providers.

1995: Compaq, 3Com and Sun pitch 1Gbps Ethernet as a backbone alternative.

1997: The original version of IEEE 802.11, the wireless LAN standard, is released; AT Attachment interface three (ATA-3) is approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); 3Com buys US Robotics for $6.6 billion, making the consolidation the largest in the history of computer companies.

1998: ATA-4 is approved by ANSI; the V.90 standard is agreed upon; it merges the Kflex56k and X2 modem standards.

1999: The IEEE introduces 802.11b.

2000: Internet2 backbone network deploys Ipv6; ATA-5 is approved by ANSI.

2001: Enterasys Networks announces the industry's first pre-standard 10 Gigabit Ethernet product; Serial ATA (SATA 1) is released.

2003: Standards-based 10G Ethernet switches arrive.

2004: The Abiline, the Internet2 backbone, upgrade from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps is completed.

2005: The one-billionth Internet user goes online.

Sources: The History and Development of the Internet: a Timeline, Rhonda Davila. A Brief History of the Internet, Barry M Leiner, Vinton G Cerf, David D Clark, Robert E Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G Roberts, Stephen Wolff. Wikipedia. Keith Lynch's timeline of Net-related terms and concepts. A Computer Geek's History of the Internet. Hobbes' Internet Timeline. International Telecommunications Union. Ezine. VOIP Dealer. Global Networking, Dr T Matthew Ciolek. A history of the computer. Network World. Babel: A Glossary of Computer-Oriented Abbreviations and Acronyms - Irving & Richard Kind. Computer Hope.com.