How to read this timeline
Dates in internet history depend on definitions. A date for a launch, a first test and a public release can differ by months or years, and some milestones have been described differently by different participants. The entries below use widely cited dates, and notes flag where care is needed.
The 1960s: ideas and a first network
- 1961 to 1964: Leonard Kleinrock studies message flow in networks. Paul Baran at RAND publishes reports on distributed communications networks using small message blocks.
- 1962: J.C.R. Licklider joins ARPA and writes about a network of computers for researchers.
- 1965: Donald Davies at Britain’s National Physical Laboratory devises the idea of packets. Around 1965 to 1966, Lawrence Roberts and Thomas Marill link two computers in different states by telephone line in an experiment.
- 1967 to 1968: ARPA’s network plan is presented, and bids are invited for the hardware.
- 1969: The first ARPANET node is installed at UCLA. The first message is sent to the Stanford Research Institute in October. By December, four sites are connected. Steve Crocker starts the Request for Comments series.
The 1970s: email, new networks and a shared protocol
- 1970 to 1971: ARPANET adopts its first host protocol. Ray Tomlinson sends the first networked email and uses the @ sign to separate user and machine names.
- 1971: ALOHAnet, a radio data network in Hawaii, begins operating.
- 1973: Robert Metcalfe’s memo at Xerox PARC describes Ethernet. The first international ARPANET connections link University College London in Britain and a research site in Norway.
- 1974: Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn publish their design for an internetworking protocol.
- 1976: X.25, a packet network standard promoted by telephone administrations, is approved.
- 1979: Usenet, a distributed discussion system, is created by graduate students in North Carolina.
The 1980s: standards and the academic internet
- 1983: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP on January 1. The military portion splits off into a separate network. The IEEE approves its Ethernet standard around this time.
- 1983 to 1984: The Domain Name System is designed, replacing a single list of host names.
- 1986: The National Science Foundation starts NSFNET. The Internet Engineering Task Force holds its first meeting.
- 1988: NSFNET links are upgraded to higher speeds. The Morris worm, released in November, disrupts a considerable number of connected computers and raises awareness of security.
- 1988: The first transatlantic fiber cable, TAT-8, goes into service.
- 1989: Tim Berners-Lee at CERN writes his proposal for a linked information system. Early commercial dial-up providers appear in the United States.
The 1990s: the web and the public
- 1990: ARPANET is formally shut down. Berners-Lee builds the first browser and server.
- 1991: The web is announced publicly. NSFNET’s rules on commercial use begin to relax.
- 1993: CERN puts the web software in the public domain. Mosaic is released and spreads quickly.
- 1994: Netscape Navigator is released in December.
- 1995: NSFNET’s backbone role ends, leaving commercial providers to carry traffic. Microsoft launches Internet Explorer. Netscape’s public share offering in August draws wide attention. Several well-known online shops and auction sites start operating.
- 1998: ICANN is formed to coordinate names and addresses. Google is founded.
The 2000s and later: broadband and mobile
- Around 2000: Dot-com stock prices fall sharply after rising rapidly, and many online companies close.
- Early 2000s: Home broadband over cable and DSL becomes common in many countries. Wi-Fi spreads in homes and cafes.
- 2004 to 2006: Social networking sites and video-sharing sites grow quickly.
- 2007: The first iPhone is released and popularizes the touch-screen smartphone with a full web browser. Smartphone use and faster cellular networks make mobile access routine over the following decade.
- 2010s: Cloud services move data and software into large data centers. Connected sensors and home devices multiply.
Disputed or uncertain points
The date of the first message is firmly recorded (October 29, 1969), but its content is told in different ways in different accounts; the usual version is that it was meant to read “login” and the system crashed after “lo”. Claims about who sent the first email, who coined the word internet and who invented the web each need qualification. The word was used in the 1974 design documents, and several authors contributed to those. For the web, the standard account credits Berners-Lee with the proposal and the first software, but his work built on earlier hypertext systems.
A timeline can also suggest that events came in a neat sequence. In practice, many developments overlapped, and changes spread unevenly across countries; in some places, the commercial internet arrived years later.