Hobbes' Abridged Internet Timeline

1950s

1957
USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the following year, within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military

1960s

1961
Leonard Kleinrock, MIT: "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" (May 31)

1962
J.C.R. Licklider & W. Clark, MIT: "On-Line Man Computer Communication" (August)

1964
Paul Baran, RAND: "On Distributed Communications Networks"

1965
ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing computers"

1966
Lawrence G. Roberts, MIT: "Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers" (October)

1967
ARPANET design discussions held by Larry Roberts at ARPA IPTO PI meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan (April)

ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in Gatlinburg, Tennessee (October)

National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex, England develops NPL Data Network under Donald Watts Davies who coins the term packet. The NPL network, an experiment in packet-switching, used 768kbps lines

1968
PS-network presented to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded Network Measurement Center contract in October

Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors (IMPs)

US Senator Edward Kennedy sends a congratulatory telegram to BBN for its million-dollar ARPA contract to build the "Interfaith" Message Processor, and thanking them for their ecumenical efforts

Network Working Group (NWG), headed by Steve Crocker, loosely organized to develop host level protocols for communication over the ARPANET.
1969
ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking

Nodes are stood up as BBN builds each IMP [Honeywell DDP-516 mini computer with 12K of memory]; AT&T provides 50kbps lines

Node 1: UCLA (30 August, hooked up 2 September)

Node 2: Stanford Research Institute (SRI) (1 October)
  • Network Information Center (NIC)
  • SDS940/Genie
  • Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect"

Node 3: University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) (1 November)
  • Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics
  • IBM 360/75, OS/MVT

Node 4: University of Utah (December)
  • Graphics
  • DEC PDP-10, Tenex

Diagram of the 4-node ARPAnet

First Request for Comment (RFC): "Host Software" by Steve Crocker (7 April)

RFC 4: Network Timetable

First packets sent by Charley Kline at UCLA as he tried logging into SRI. The first attempt resulted in the system crashing as the letter G of LOGIN was entered. (October 29) [ Log entry ]

1970s

1970

ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), first host-to-host protocol

First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps. This line is later replaced by another between BBN and RAND. A second line is added between MIT and Utah

1971
15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames

BBN starts building IMPs using the cheaper Honeywell 316. IMPs however are limited to 4 host connections, and so BBN develops a terminal IMP (TIP) that supports up to 64 terminals (September)

Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network. The original program was derived from two others: an intra-machine email program (SENDMSG) and an experimental file transfer program (CPYNET)

Project Gutenberg is started by Michael Hart with the purpose of making copyright-free works, including books, electronically available. The first text is the US Declaration of Independence

1972
Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March)

1973

SRI (NIC) begins publishing ARPANET News in March; number of ARPANET users estimated at 2,000

ARPA study shows email composing 75% of all ARPANET traffic

1974

BBN opens Telenet, the first public packet data service (a commercial version of ARPANET)

1975
First ARPANET mailing list, MsgGroup, is created by Steve Walker. Einar Stefferud soon took over as moderator as the list was not automated at first. A science fiction list, SF-Lovers, was to become the most popular unofficial list in the early days

John Vittal develops MSG, the first all-inclusive email program providing replying, forwarding, and filing capabilities.

Satellite links cross two oceans (to Hawaii and UK) as the first TCP tests are run over them by Stanford, BBN, and UCL

1976
Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom sends out an email on 26 March from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern

UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.

1978
TCP split into TCP and IP (March)

1979
USENET established using UUCP between Duke and UNC by Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. All original groups were under net.* hierarchy.

On April 12, Kevin MacKenzie emails the MsgGroup a suggestion of adding some emotion back into the dry text medium of email, such as -) for indicating a sentence was tongue-in-cheek. Though flamed by many at the time, emoticons became widely used after Scott Fahlman suggested the use of :-) and :-( in a CMU BBS on 19 September 1982

1980s

1980
ARPANET grinds to a complete halt on 27 October because of an accidentally-propagated status-message virus
1981
BITNET, the "Because It's Time NETwork"

CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) built by a collaboration of computer scientists and Univ of Delaware, Purdue Univ, Univ of Wisconsin, RAND Corporation and BBN through seed money granted by NSF to provide networking services (especially email) to university scientists with no access to ARPANET. CSNET later becomes known as the Computer and Science Network. (:amk,lhl:)
1982
Norway leaves network to become an Internet connection via TCP/IP over SATNET; UCL does the same

DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET.

EUnet (European UNIX Network) is created by EUUG to provide email and USENET services. (:glg:)
1983
Name server developed at Univ of Wisconsin, no longer requiring users to know the exact path to other systems

CSNET / ARPANET gateway put in place

ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET; the latter became integrated with the Defense Data Network created the previous year. 68 of the 113 existing nodes went to MILNET

Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX (4.2 BSD) which includes IP networking software

Networking needs switch from having a single, large time sharing computer connected to the Internet at each site, to instead connecting entire local networks
1984
Domain Name System (DNS) introduced

Number of hosts breaks 1,000

Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET (mod.*)
1985
Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) started

Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC is given responsibility for DNS root management by DCA, and SRI for DNS NIC registrations

Symbolics.com is assigned on 15 March to become the first registered domain. Other firsts: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, berkeley.edu, ucla.edu, rutgers.edu, bbn.com (24 Apr); mit.edu (23 May); think.com (24 may); css.gov (June); mitre.org, .uk (July)

RFC 968: 'Twas the Night Before Start-up

1986
NSFNET created (backbone speed of 56Kbps)

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) comes into existence under the IAB. First IETF meeting held in January at Linkabit in San Diego

New England gets cut off from the Net as AT&T suffers a fiber optics cable break between Newark/NJ and White Plains/NY. Yes, all seven New England ARPANET trunk lines were in the one severed cable. Outage took place between 1:11 and 12:11 EST on 12 December
1987
NSF signs a cooperative agreement to manage the NSFNET backbone with Merit Network, Inc. (IBM and MCI involvement was through an agreement with Merit). Merit, IBM, and MCI later founded ANS.

UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access. Originally an experiment by Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell

First TCP/IP Interoperability Conference (March), name changed in 1988 to INTEROP

The concept and plan for a national US research and education network is proposed by Gordon Bell et al in a report to the Office of Science and Technology, written in response to a congressional request by Al Gore. (Nov) It would take four years until the establishment of this network by Congress

Number of hosts breaks 10,000

Number of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000

1988
2 November - Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting ~6,000 of the 60,000 hosts on the Internet (:ph1:)

CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) formed by DARPA in response to the needs exhibited during the Morris worm incident. The worm is the only advisory issued this year.

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established in December with Jon Postel as its Director. Postel was also the RFC Editor and US Domain registrar for many years.

1989
Number of hosts breaks 100,000

First relays between a commercial electronic mail carrier and the Internet: MCI Mail through the Corporation for the National Research Initiative (CNRI), and CompuServe through Ohio State Univ

Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN) is formed by merging CSNET into BITNET (August)

Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities

RFC 1121: Act One - The Poems

1990s

1990
ARPANET ceases to exist

Archie released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill

The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access

The first remotely operated machine to be hooked up to the Internet, the Internet Toaster by John Romkey, (controlled via SNMP) makes its debut at Interop.

RFC 1178: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

1991

Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle, released by Thinking Machines Corporation

Gopher released by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the Univ of Minnesota

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman (:ad1:)

US High Performance Computing Act (Gore 1) establishes the National Research and Education Network (NREN)

NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps)

NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion packets/month

1992
Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered (January)

IAB reconstituted as the Internet Architecture Board and becomes part of the Internet Society

Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000

First MBONE audio multicast (March) and video multicast (November)

Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by Univ of Nevada

The term " surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly; Brendan Kehoe uses the term "net-surfing" as early as 6 June 1991 in a USENET post (:bt1:)

Zen and the Art of the Internet is published by Brendan Kehoe (:jap:)

RFC 1300: Remembrances of Things Past

1993
InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: (:sc1:)

Worms of a new kind find their way around the Net - WWW Worms (W4), joined by Spiders, Wanderers, Crawlers, and Snakes ...

Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting

Businesses and media begin taking notice of the Internet

Mosaic takes the Internet by storm (22 Apr); WWW proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997%.

RFC 1437: The Extension of MIME Content-Types to a New Medium

1994
ARPANET/Internet celebrates 25th anniversary

Shopping malls arrive on the Internet

Arizona law firm of Canter & Siegel "spams" the Internet with email advertising green card lottery services; Net citizens flame back

NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes/month

Yes, it's true - you can now order pizza from the Hut online

WWW edges out telnet to become 2nd most popular service on the Net (behind ftp-data) based on % of packets and bytes traffic distribution on NSFNET

First Virtual, the first cyberbank, open up for business

Radio stations start rockin' (rebroadcasting) round the clock on the Net: WXYC at Univ of NC, KJHK at Univ of KS-Lawrence, KUGS at Western WA Univ

IPng recommended by IETF at its Toronto meeting (July) and approved by I ESG in November. Later documented as RFC 1752

The first banner ads appear on hotwired.com in October. They were for Zima (a beverage) and AT&T

After noticing that many network software vendors used domain.com in their documentation examples, Bill Woodcock and Jon Postel register the domain. Sure enough, after looking at the domain access logs, it was evident that many users were using the example domain in configuring their applications.

RFC 1605: SONET to Sonnet Translation

RFC 1607: A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY

1995
NSFNET reverts back to a research network. Main US backbone traffic now routed through interconnected network providers

The new NSFNET is born as NSF establishes the very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) linking super-computing centers: NCAR, NCSA, SDSC, CTC, PSC

Sun launches JAVA on May 23

RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time

Radio HK, the first commercial 24 hr., Internet-only radio station starts broadcasting

WWW surpasses ftp-data in March as the service with greatest traffic on NSFNet based on packet count, and in April based on byte count

Traditional online dial-up systems ( CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access

Chris Lamprecht (aka "Minor Threat") becomes the first person banned from accessing the Internet by a US District Court judge in Texas

A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value (9 August)

Registration of domain names is no longer free. Beginning 14 September, a $50 annual fee has been imposed, which up until now was subsidized by NSF. NSF continues to pay for .edu registration, and on an interim basis for .gov

The first official Internet wiretap was successful in helping the Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) apprehend three individuals who were illegally manufacturing and selling cell phone cloning equipment and electronic devices

RFC 1882: The 12-Days of Technology Before Christmas

1996
Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology (which has been around for years)

The controversial US Communications Decency Act (CDA) becomes law in the US in order to prohibit distribution of indecent materials over the Net. A few months later a three-judge panel imposes an injunction against its enforcement. Supreme Court unanimously rules most of it unconstitutional in 1997.

Various ISPs suffer extended service outages, bringing into question whether they will be able to handle the growing number of users. AOL (19 hours), Netcom (13 hours), AT&T WorldNet (28 hours - email only)

Domain name tv.com sold to CNET for US$15,000

The WWW browser war, fought primarily between Netscape and Microsoft, has rushed in a new age in software development, whereby new releases are made quarterly with the help of Internet users eager to test upcoming (beta) versions.

RFC 1925: The Twelve Networking Truths

Restrictions on Internet use around the world:

1997
2000th RFC: "Internet Official Protocol Standards"

71,618 mailing lists registered at Liszt, a mailing list directory

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is established to handle administration and registration of IP numbers to the geographical areas currently handled by Network Solutions (InterNIC), starting March 1998.

In protest of the DNS monopoly, AlterNIC's owner, Eugene Kashpureff, hacks DNS so users going to www.internic.net end up at www.alternic.net

Domain name business.com sold for US$150,000

101,803 Name Servers in whois database

RFC 2100: The Naming of Hosts

1998
US Depart of Commerce (DoC) releases the Green Paper outlining its plan to privatize DNS on 30 January. This is followed up by a White Paper on June 5

Web size estimates range between 275 (Digital) and 320 (NEC) million pages for 1Q

Companies flock to the Turkmenistan NIC in order to register their name under the .tm domain, the English abbreviation for trademark

Internet users get to be judges in a performance by 12 world champion ice skaters on 27 March, marking the first time a television sport show's outcome is determined by its viewers.

Network Solutions registers its 2 millionth domain on 4 May

Electronic postal stamps become a reality, with the US Postal Service allowing stamps to be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.

Compaq pays US$3.3million for altavista.com

CDA II and a ban on Net taxes are signed into US law (21 October)

ABCNews.com accidentally posts test US election returns one day early (2 November)

RFC 2323: IETF Identification and Security Guidelines

RFC 2324: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)

Emerging Technologies: E-Trade, XML, Intrusion Detection

1999
vBNS sets up an OC48 link between CalREN South and North using Juniper M40 routers

First Internet Bank of Indiana, the first full-service bank available only on the Net, opens for business on 22 February

IBM becomes the first Corporate partner to be approved for Internet2 access

European Parliament proposes banning the caching of Web pages by ISPs

The Internet Fiesta kicks off in March across Europe, building on the success of La Fête de l'Internet held in 1998

US State Court rules that domain names are property that may be garnished

MCI/Worldcom, the vBNS provider for NSF, begins upgrading the US backbone to 2.5Gbps

A forged Web page made to look like a Bloomberg financial news story raised shares of a small technology company by 31% on 7 April.

First large-scale Cyberwar takes place simultaneously with the war in Serbia/Kosovo

Abilene, the Internet2 network, reaches across the Atlantic and connects to NORDUnet and SURFnet

The Web becomes the focal point of British politics as a list of MI6 agents is released on a UK Web site. Though forced to remove the list from the site, it was too late as the list had already been replicated across the Net. (15 May)

Activists Net-wide target the world's financial centers on 18 June, timed to coincide with the G8 Summit. Little actual impact is reported.

MCI/Worldcom launches vBNS+, a commercialized version of vBNS targeted at smaller educational and research institutions

ISOC approves the formation of the Internet Societal Task Force (ISTF). Vint Cerf serves as first chair

Free computers are all the rage (as long as you sign a long term contract for Net service)

vBNS reaches 101 connections

business.com is sold for US$7.5million (it was purchased in 1997 for US$150,000 (30 Nov)

RFC 2549: IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service

RFC 2550: Y10K and Beyond

RFC 2555: 30 Years of RFCs

RFC 2626: The Internet and the Millennium Problem (Year 2000)

2000s

2000
The US timekeeper (USNO) and a few other time services around the world report the new year as 19100 on 1 Jan

A massive denial of service attack is launched against major web sites, including Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay in early February

Web size estimates by NEC-RI and Inktomi surpass 1 billion indexable pages

Internet2 backbone network deploys IPv6 (16 May)

After months of legal proceedings, the French court rules Yahoo! must block French users from accessing hate memorabilia in its auction site (Nov). Given its inability to provide such a block on the Internet, Yahoo! removes those auctions entirely (Jan 2001). The case is eventually thrown out (Feb 2003).

The European Commission contracts with a consortium of 30 national research networks for the development of Géant, Europe's new gigabit research network meant to enhance the current capability provided by TEN-155 (6 Nov)

RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite

Technologies of the Year: ASP, Napster

Emerging Technologies: Wireless devices, IPv6

Viruses of the Year: Love Letter (May)

Lawsuits of the Year: Napster, DeCSS

2001
The first live distributed musical -- The Technophobe & The Madman -- over Internet2 networks debuts on 20 Feb

VeriSign extends its multilingual domain testbed to encompass various European languages (26 Feb), and later the full Unicode character set (5 Apr) opening up most of the world's languages

SETI@Home launches on 17 May and within four weeks its distributed Internet clients provide more computing power than the most powerful supercomputer of its time

US Dept of Commerce issues a notice of intent on 6 April to turn over management for the .edu domain from VeriSign to Educause. Award agreement is reached on 29 October. Community colleges will finally be able to register under .edu

Napster keeps finding itself embroiled in litigation and is eventually forced to suspend service; it comes back later in the year as a subscription service

European Council finalizes an international cybercrime treaty on 22 June and adopts it on 9 November. This is the first treaty addressing criminal offenses committed over the Internet.

.biz and .info are added to the root server on 27 June with registrations beginning in July. .biz domain go live on 7 Nov.

Afghanistan's Taliban bans Internet access country-wide, including from Government offices, in an attempt to control content (13 Jul)

.museum begins resolving (Nov)

First uncompressed real-time gigabit HDTV transmission across a wide-area IP network takes place on Internet2 (12 Nov).

RFC 3092: Etymology of "Foo"

RFC 3093: Firewall Enhancement Protocol (FEP)

Emerging Technologies: Grid Computing, P2P

Global Terabit Research Network (GTRN) is formed composed of two OC-48 2.4GB circuits connecting Internet2 Abiline, CANARIE CA*net3, and GÉANT (18 Feb)

Abilene (Internet2) backbone deploys native IPv6 (5 Aug)

Internet2 now has 200 university, 60 corporate, and 40 affiliate members (2 Sep)

Having your own Blog becomes hip

A new US law creates a kids-safe "dot-kids" domain (kids.us) to be implemented in 2003 (3 Dec)

RFC 3251: Electricity over IP

RFC 3252: Binary Lexical Octet Ad-hoc Transport

2003

Taxes make headlines as: larger US Internet retailers begin collecting taxes on all purchases; some US states tax Internet bandwidth; and the EU requires all Internet companies to collect value added tax (VAT) on digital downloads starting 1 July

The French Ministry of Culture bans the use of the word "e-mail" by government ministries, and adopts the use of the more French sounding "courriel" (Jul)

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues 261 individuals on 8 Sep for allegedly distributing copyright music files over peer-to-peer networks

VeriSign deploys a wildcard service (Site Finder) into the .com and .net TLDs causing much confusion as URLs with invalid domains are redirected to a VeriSign page (15 Sep). ICANN orders VeriSign to stop the service, which they comply with on 4 Oct

Last Abilene segment upgraded to 10Gbps (5 Nov)

National LambdaRail announced as a new US R&D networking infrastructure (16 Sep). The first connection takes place between Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF) in Chicago (18 Nov)

RFC 3514: The Security Flag in the IPv4 Header (The Evil Bit)

2004
For the first time, there are more instances of DNS root servers outside the US with the launch of an anycast instance of the RIPE NCC operated K-root server

Abiline, the Internet2 backbone, upgrade from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps is completed (4 Feb)

Network Solutions begins offering 100 year domain registration (24 Mar)

One of the .ly nameservers stops responding (7 Apr) causing the other nameserver to go offline (9 Apr), making the domain inaccessible. Service is restored 13 Apr

VeriSign Naming and Directory Service (VNDS) begins updating all 13 .com/.net authoritative name servers in near real-time vs. twice each day (8 Sep)

Lycos Europe releases a screen saver to help fight spam by keeping spam servers busy with requests (1 Dec). The service is discontinued within a few days after backbone providers block access to the download site and the service causes some servers to crash.

Growth

Internet growth: 

   Date       Hosts        |      Date       Hosts     Networks   Domains
   -----    ---------      +      -----    ---------   --------  ---------
   12/69            4      |      07/89      130,000        650      3,900
   06/70            9      |      10/89      159,000        837
   10/70           11      |      10/90      313,000      2,063      9,300
   12/70           13      |      01/91      376,000      2,338
   04/71           23      |      07/91      535,000      3,086     16,000
   10/72           31      |      10/91      617,000      3,556     18,000
   01/73           35      |      01/92      727,000      4,526
   06/74           62      |      04/92      890,000      5,291     20,000
   03/77          111      |      07/92      992,000      6,569     16,300
   12/79          188      |      10/92    1,136,000      7,505     18,100
   08/81          213      |      01/93    1,313,000      8,258     21,000
   05/82          235      |      04/93    1,486,000      9,722     22,000
   08/83          562      |      07/93    1,776,000     13,767     26,000
   10/84        1,024      |      10/93    2,056,000     16,533     28,000
   10/85        1,961      |      01/94    2,217,000     20,539     30,000
   02/86        2,308      |      07/94    3,212,000     25,210     46,000
   11/86        5,089      |      10/94    3,864,000     37,022     56,000
   12/87       28,174      |      01/95    4,852,000     39,410     71,000
   07/88       33,000      |      07/95    6,642,000     61,538    120,000
   10/88       56,000      |      01/96    9,472,000     93,671    240,000
   01/89       80,000      |      07/96   12,881,000    134,365    488,000
                           |      01/97   16,146,000               828,000
                           |      07/97   19,540,000             1,301,000
                                          *** see Note below ***

   Hosts    = a computer system with registered ip address (an A record)
   Networks = registered class A/B/C addresses   
   Domains  = registered domain name (with name server record)

   Note: A more accurate survey mechanism was developed in 1/98; new and 
         some corrected numbers are shown below.  

   Date      Hosts      |   Date      Hosts      |   Date      Hosts
   -----  -----------   +   -----  -----------   +   -----  -----------
   01/95    5,846,000   |  07/98    36,739,000   |   01/02  147,344,72
   07/95    8,200,000   |  01/99    43,230,000   |   07/02  162,128,493
   01/96   14,352,000   |  07/99    56,218,000   |   01/03  171,638,297
   07/96   16,729,000   |  01/00    72,398,092   |   01/04  233,101,481
   01/97   21,819,000   |  07/00    93,047,785   |   07/04  285,139,107
   07/97   26,053,000   |  01/01   109,574,429   |   
   01/98    29,670,000  |  07/01   125,888,197   |

Worldwide Networks Growth: (I)nternet (B)ITNET (U)UCP (F)IDONET (O)SI 

           ____# Countries____                         ____# Countries____
   Date     I   B   U   F   O                  Date     I   B   U   F   O
   -----   --- --- --- --- ---                 -----   --- --- --- --- ---
   09/91    31  47  79  49                     02/94    62  51 125  88  31
   12/91    33  46  78  53                     07/94    75  52 129  89  31
   02/92    38  46  92  63                     11/94    81  51 133  95  --
   04/92    40  47  90  66  25                 02/95    86  48 141  98  --
   08/92    49  46  89  67  26                 06/95    96  47 144  99  --
   01/93    50  50 101  72  31                 06/96   134  -- 146 108  --
   04/93    56  51 107  79  31                 07/97   171  -- 147 108  --
   08/93    59  51 117  84  31
Figure: Worldwide Networks Growth
Worldwide Networks Growth Chart

WWW Growth: 

   12/90           1  |   07/98   2,594,622  |   10/01  33,135,768
   12/91          10  |   08/98   2,807,588  |   11/01  36,458,394
   12/92          50  |   09/98   3,156,324  |   12/01  36,276,252
   06/93         130  |   10/98   3,358,969  |   01/02  36,689,008
   09/93         204  |   11/98   3,518,158  |   02/02  38,444,856
   10/93         228  |   12/98   3,689,227  |   03/02  38,118,962
   12/93         623  |   01/99   4,062,280  |   04/02  37,585,233
   06/94       2,738  |   02/99   4,301,512  |   05/02  37,574,105
   12/94      10,022  |   03/99   4,349,131  |   06/02  38,807,788
   06/95      23,500  |   04/99   5,040,663  |   07/02  37,235,470
   01/96     100,000  |   05/99   5,414,325  |   08/02  35,991,815
   03/96     135,396  |   06/99   6,177,453  |   09/02  35,756,436
   04/96     150,295  |   07/99   6,598,697  |   10/02  35,114,328
   05/96     193,150  |   08/99   7,078,194  |   11/02  35,686,907
   06/96     252,000  |   09/99   7,370,929  |   12/02  35,543,105
   07/96     299,403  |   10/99   8,115,828  |   01/03  35,424,956
   08/96     342,081  |   11/99   8,844,573  |   02/03  35,863,952
   09/96     397,281  |   12/99   9,560,866  |   03/03  39,174,349
   10/96     462,047  |   01/00   9,950,491  |   04/03  40,100,739
   11/96     525,906  |   02/00  11,161,811  |   05/03  40,444,778
   12/96     603,367  |   03/00  13,106,190  |   06/03  40,936,076
   01/97     646,162  |   04/00  14,322,950  |   07/03  42,298,371
   02/97     739,688  |   05/00  15,049,382  |   08/03  42,807,275
   03/97     883,149  |   06/00  17,119,262  |   09/03  43,144,374
   04/97   1,002,612  |   07/00  18,169,498  |   10/03  43,700,759
   05/97   1,044,163  |   08/00  19,823,296  |   11/03  44,946,965
   06/97   1,117,259  |   09/00  21,166,912  |   12/03  45,980,112
   07/97   1,203,096  |   10/00  22,282,727  |   01/04  46,067,743
   08/97   1,269,800  |   11/00  23,777,446  |   02/04  47,173,415
   09/97   1,364,714  |   12/00  25,675,581  |   03/04  48,038,131
   10/97   1,466,906  |   01/01  27,585,719  |   04/04  49,750,568
   11/97   1,553,998  |   02/01  28,125,284  |   05/04  50,550,965
   12/97   1,681,868  |   03/01  28,611,177  |   06/04  51,635,284
   01/98   1,834,710  |   04/01  28,669,939  |   07/04  52,131,889
   02/98   1,920,933  |   05/01  29,031,745  |   08/04  53,341,867
   03/98   2,084,473  |   06/01  29,302,656  |   09/04  54,407,216
   04/98   2,215,195  |   07/01  31,299,592  |   10/04  55,388,466
   05/98   2,308,502  |   08/01  30,775,624  |   11/04  56,115,015
   06/98   2,410,067  |   09/01  32,398,046  |   12/04  56,923,737
    Sites = # of web servers (one host may have multiple sites by 
                             using different domains or port numbers)

USENET Growth: 

   Date  Sites  ~MB  ~Posts  Groups  |  Date   Sites   ~MB   ~Posts  Groups
   ----  -----  ---  ------  ------  +  ----  -------  ---   ------  ------
   1979      3            2       3  |  1987    5,200    2      957     259
   1980     15           10          |  1988    7,800    4     1933     381
   1981    150  0.05     20          |  1990   33,000   10    4,500   1,300
   1982    400           35          |  1991   40,000   25   10,000   1,851
   1983    600          120          |  1992   63,000   42   17,556   4,302
   1984    900          225          |  1993  110,000   70   32,325   8,279
   1985  1,300  1.0     375          |  1994  180,000  157   72,755  10,696
   1986  2,200  2.0     946     241  |  1995  330,000  586  131,614

      ~ approximate: MB - megabytes per day, Posts - articles per day

Security (CERT/US-CERT) Stats: 

   Date    Incidents   Advisories   Vulnerabilities   Tech Alerts
   ----    ---------   ----------   ---------------   -----------
   1988            6            1                 
   1989          132            7                 
   1990          252           12                 
   1991          406           23                 
   1992          773           21                 
   1993        1,334           19                 
   1994        2,340           15                 
   1995        2,412           18               171
   1996        2,573           27               345
   1997        2,134           28               311
   1998        3,734           13               262
   1999        9,859           17               417
   2000       21,756           22               774
   2001       52,658           37             2,437
   2002       82,094           37             4,129
   2003      137,529           28             3,784
   2004/1-3Q                                  2,683            22