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

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