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