[tt] CHE: Happy 20th Birthday, Modern Internet!

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Happy 20th Birthday, Modern Internet!
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3138/happy-20th-birthday-modern-internet?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
8.7.2

"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

Comments

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. July 1969: eventful month in retrospect. . . .--dan    Jul 3, 09:02 AM

5. 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