July 2, 2008
Happy 20th Birthday, Modern Internet!
“The NSFNet Backbone has reached a state where we would like to more officially let operational traffic on.” Twenty years ago, on the evening of June 30th, a network engineer named Hans-Werner Braun sent that text in an an e-mail message to users of the National Science Foundation’s fledgling NSFNet project. The network’s main lines, or backbone, had been upgraded, he said.
And that, according to Supercomputing Online today, was the birth of the modern Internet. In the early 1980s, NSF put together NSFNet as a network connecting regional computer networks around the country. The Department of Defense had already created the Arpanet network, which gave birth to many of the tools and techniques used on the modern Internet, but Arpanet traffic was limited to Defense-sponsored research. NSFNet was designed to be open to all users.
The design of NSFNet was awarded to a team made of MCI, IBM, and a computer-networking-technology consortium of Michigan universities called Merit Networks. Their main challenge: the network’s backbone ran at 56-kilobits per second. (That’s the old connection speed of a dial-up telephone modem.)
According to Supercomputing Online, George Strawn, who was in charge of the campus network at Iowa State University at the time, says that network users, frustrated by the clogged system, would “bang on my desk, ‘the network is too slow. I can’t use the thing.’”
The NSFNet supervisors upgraded to a 1.5 megabit-per-second capacity in 1988. Strawn said that people stopped banging on his desk.
For a while, at least. Network traffic from universities, commercial companies and individual users skyrocketed. And in 1995, NSFNet was decommissioned, replaced by robust backbones provided by commercial telecom companies. But without its demonstration of open access at high speeds, the modern Internet would not have lured millions of users. —Josh Fischman
Posted on Wednesday July 2, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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It’s worth noting that the regional networks were more than passive NSFNet connection points in the historic partnership that led to the Internet. They were able to solve formidable technical problems and create critical interoperability standards, develop and share organizational models, evangelize for new applications, and bring together diverse academic and corporate entities in a trusted network environment that had not existed before. This collaboration ultimately benefited institutions of all types, sizes, and missions. EDUCAUSE has recognized the regional networks with its 2008 Catalyst Award (www.educause.edu/2008/121980).
— Peter DeBlois, EDUCAUSE Jul 2, 05:47 PM #
Supercomputing Today is only talking aboot the network used (beginning in 1988) for University research etc..actually ARPANET was created and invented in the summer of 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon by DARPA err the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency..the folks now the sponsors of research for the robot vehicles…unmanned cars that are programmed to drive like humans…imagine July 1969 the Pentagon is surrounded by anti-war (Vietnam) protesters…and in the basement a group of very young computer geeks created the INTERNET…so the actual birthday of the net is July 1969..39 years old this month…
— deadmonz Jul 2, 06:35 PM #
Twentieth anniversary? That’s like counting the Information Age starting with the first Hallmark e-card. Must be a PR ploy.
Clearly, deadmonz is correct — it all started with the ARPANET in 1969. Let’s have a proper 40th-anniversary party next year, together with a serious assessment of where we are, where we need to go, and what we’re doing to ourselves. If Obama is elected president, we’ve got to get his head out of the Starbucks laptop crowd “hey, man, cool” mentality and focused on serious economic and national-security computing issues.
— S. Britchky Jul 3, 04:05 AM #
July 1969: eventful month in retrospect. . . .
— dan Jul 3, 09:02 AM #
Happy Birthday! it seems like only yesterday that I invented you. Although you haven’t made me nearly the money that carbon credits have, I still like you. Tipper is pissed about all the porn, though—
women, what can you do?
— Algore Jul 3, 11:01 AM #