CERN,
the European Internet, the link to the Pacific and beyond
Between 1984 and 1988 CERN began installation and operation of
TCP/IP
to interconnect its major internal computer systems, workstations, PCs and an
accelerator control system. CERN continued to operate a limited self-developed
system (CERNET) internally and several incompatible (typically proprietary)
network protocols externally. There was considerable resistance in Europe
towards more widespread use of TCP/IP,
and the CERN TCP/IP intranets remained isolated from the Internet until 1989.
In 1988, Daniel Karrenberg, from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam,
visited Ben Segal, CERN's TCP/IP Coordinator, looking for advice about the
transition of the European side of the UUCP Usenet network (much of which ran
over X.25 links) over to TCP/IP. In 1987, Ben Segal had met with Len Bosack
from the then still small company Cisco
about purchasing some TCP/IP routers for CERN, and was able to give Karrenberg
advice and forward him on to Cisco for the appropriate hardware. This expanded
the European portion of the Internet across the existing UUCP networks, and in
1989 CERN opened its first external TCP/IP connections.[35]
This coincided with the creation of Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), initially a group of IP network
administrators who met regularly to carry out co-ordination work together.
Later, in 1992, RIPE was formally registered as a cooperative
in Amsterdam.
At the same time as the rise of
internetworking in Europe, ad hoc networking to ARPA and in-between Australian
universities formed, based on various technologies such as X.25 and UUCPNet. These were limited in their
connection to the global networks, due to the cost of making individual
international UUCP dial-up or X.25 connections. In 1989, Australian
universities joined the push towards using IP protocols to unify their
networking infrastructures. AARNet was formed in 1989 by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee and provided a dedicated IP based network for Australia.
The Internet began to penetrate Asia
in the late 1980s. Japan, which had built the UUCP-based network JUNET in 1984, connected to NSFNET in 1989. It hosted the annual
meeting of the Internet Society, INET'92, in Kobe. Singapore
developed TECHNET in 1990, and Thailand
gained a global Internet connection between Chulalongkorn University and UUNET
in 1992.[36]
Global
digital divide
While developed countries with
technological infrastructures were joining the Internet, developing countries
began to experience a digital divide separating them from the Internet. On an essentially
continental basis, they are building organizations for Internet resource
administration and sharing operational experience, as more and more
transmission facilities go into place.
Africa
At the beginning of the 1990s,
African countries relied upon X.25 IPSS and 2400 baud modem UUCP links for
international and internetwork computer communications.
In August 1995, InfoMail Uganda,
Ltd., a privately held firm in Kampala now known as InfoCom, and NSN Network
Services of Avon, Colorado, sold in 1997 and now known as Clear Channel
Satellite, established Africa's first native TCP/IP high-speed satellite
Internet services. The data connection was originally carried by a C-Band RSCC
Russian satellite which connected InfoMail's Kampala offices directly to NSN's
MAE-West point of presence using a private network from NSN's leased ground
station in New Jersey. InfoCom's first satellite connection was just 64 kbit/s,
serving a Sun host computer and twelve US Robotics dial-up modems.
In 1996, a USAID funded project, the Leland initiative, started work on developing full Internet connectivity for
the continent. Guinea, Mozambique, Madagascar
and Rwanda
gained satellite earth stations in 1997, followed by Côte d'Ivoire
and Benin
in 1998.
Africa is building an Internet
infrastructure. AfriNIC, headquartered in Mauritius,
manages IP address allocation for the continent. As do the other Internet
regions, there is an operational forum, the Internet Community of Operational
Networking Specialists.[38]
There are a wide range of programs
both to provide high-performance transmission plant, and the western and
southern coasts have undersea optical cable. High-speed cables join North
Africa and the Horn of Africa to intercontinental cable systems. Undersea cable
development is slower for East Africa; the original joint effort between New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) has broken off
and may become two efforts.[39]
Asia
and Oceania
The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), headquartered in Australia, manages IP address allocation
for the continent. APNIC sponsors an operational forum, the Asia-Pacific
Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT).[40]
In 1991, the People's Republic of
China saw its first TCP/IP college network, Tsinghua University's TUNET. The PRC went on to make its first global Internet
connection in 1994, between the Beijing Electro-Spectrometer Collaboration and Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center. However, China went on to
implement its own digital divide by implementing a country-wide content filter.[41]
Latin
America
As with the other regions, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry
(LACNIC) manages the IP address space and
other resources for its area. LACNIC, headquartered in Uruguay, operates DNS
root, reverse DNS, and other key services.
Opening
the network to commerce
The interest in commercial use of
the Internet became a hotly debated topic. Although commercial use was
forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use could be unclear and
subjective. UUCPNet
and the X.25 IPSS had no such restrictions, which would eventually see the
official barring of UUCPNet use of ARPANET
and NSFNET
connections. Some UUCP links still remained connecting to these networks
however, as administrators cast a blind eye to their operation.
Number
of Internet hosts worldwide: 1981-2012
During the late 1980s, the first Internet
service provider (ISP) companies were formed.
Companies like PSINet, UUNET, Netcom, and Portal Software
were formed to provide service to the regional research networks and provide
alternate network access, UUCP-based email and Usenet News to the
public. The first commercial dialup ISP in the United States was The World, which opened in 1989.[43]
In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed
the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1862(g),
which allowed NSF to support access by the research and education communities
to computer networks which were not used exclusively for research and education
purposes, thus permitting NSFNET to interconnect with commercial networks.[44][45]
This caused controversy within the research and education community, who were
concerned commercial use of the network might lead to an Internet that was less
responsive to their needs, and within the community of commercial network
providers, who felt that government subsidies were giving an unfair advantage
to some organizations.[46]
By 1990, ARPANET had been overtaken
and replaced by newer networking technologies and the project came to a close.
New network service providers including PSINet, Alternet,
CERFNet, ANS CO+RE, and many others were offering network access to commercial
customers. NSFNET
was no longer the de facto backbone and exchange point for Internet. The Commercial
Internet eXchange (CIX), Metropolitan Area Exchanges (MAEs), and later Network Access Points (NAPs) were becoming the primary interconnections between
many networks. The final restrictions on carrying commercial traffic ended on
April 30, 1995 when the National Science Foundation ended its sponsorship of
the NSFNET Backbone Service and the service ended.[47][48]
NSF provided initial support for the NAPs and interim support to help the
regional research and education networks transition to commercial ISPs. NSF
also sponsored the very high speed Backbone
Network Service (vBNS) which continued to provide
support for the supercomputing centers and research and education in the United
States.[49]
Networking
in outer space
The first live Internet link into low earth orbit
was established on January 22, 2010 when astronaut T. J. Creamer posted the
first unassisted update to his Twitter account from the International
Space Station, marking the extension of the
Internet into space. (Astronauts at the ISS had used email and Twitter before,
but these messages had been relayed to the ground through a NASA data link
before being posted by a human proxy.) This personal Web access, which NASA
calls the Crew Support LAN, uses the space station's high-speed Ku band
microwave link. To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop computer
to control a desktop computer on Earth, and they can talk to their families and
friends on Earth using Voice over IP
equipment.[50]
Communication with spacecraft beyond
earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-point links through the Deep Space Network. Each such data link must be manually scheduled and
configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new network
protocol, Delay-tolerant
networking (DTN) which automates this process,
allows networking of spaceborne transmission nodes, and takes the fact into
account that spacecraft can temporarily lose contact because they move behind
the Moon or planets, or because space "weather" disrupts the
connection. Under such conditions, DTN retransmits data packages instead of
dropping them, as the standard TCP/IP internet protocol does. NASA conducted
the first field test of what it calls the "deep space internet" in
November 2008.[51]
Testing of DTN-based communications between the International Space Station and
Earth (now termed Disruption-Tolerant Networking) has been ongoing since March
2009, and is scheduled to continue until March 2014.[52]
This network technology is supposed
to ultimately enable missions that involve multiple spacecraft where reliable
inter-vessel communication might take precedence over vessel-to-earth
downlinks. According to a February 2011 statement by Google's Vint Cerf,
the so-called "Bundle protocols" have been uploaded to NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft (which is in
orbit around the Sun) and communication with Earth has been tested at a
distance of approximately 80 light seconds.[53]
