Happy (Belated) Birthday Internet!
Happy (Belated) Birthday Internet!
Al Gore must be proud. Not.
Source: VUNet.com
Happy 20th birthday to the internet
By Nick Farrell [02-01-2003]
Transition to TCP/IP took place on 1 January 1983
The internet has officially celebrated its 20th birthday.
On 1 January 1983 the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) of the US Department of Defence – the forerunner of the internet – was switched to the TCP/IP protocol.
This enabled millions of computers to go online instead of the Network Control Protocol (NCP) which limited it to just 1,000 machines.
The TCP/IP protocol was designed by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn.
On the mailing list of the Internet Engineering Task Force, internet pioneer Bob Braden wrote: “The most logical date of origin of the internet is 1 January 1983, when the Arpanet officially switched from the NCP protocol to TCP/IP.
“Six months later, the Arpanet was split into the two subnets – Arpanet and Milnet [Military Network] – which were connected by internet gateways.
“There may still be a few remaining T-shirts about that read: ‘I Survived the TCP/IP Transition’.”
Braden added that some people would be surprised to discover that there were actually a few souls wanting to work on the TCP/IP changeover on 1 January. But they did.
