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| Internet history timeline |
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Early research and development:
Merging the networks and creating the Internet:
Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet:
Examples of Internet services:
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BITNET was a co-operative U.S. university computer network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University.[1] The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.
The name BITNET originally meant "Because It's There Network", but it eventually came to mean "Because It's Time Network".[2]
A college or university wishing to join BITNET was required to lease a data circuit from a site to an existing BITNET node, buy modems for each end of the data circuit, sending one to the connecting point site, and allow other institutions to connect to its site free of charge.
In the early 1980s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) had several initiatives running to help spread the benefits of networking. One of these efforts was called CSNET, and it linked together several computer science departments across the country using TCP/IP. Another was a network of regional computer networks that linked up universities in different parts of the country. In 1981, universities came together to form BITNET, which allowed thousands of new users to experience innovations such as email and file transfers for the first time. All of these new networks showed the possibilities of computer networks and helped stoke demand for a robust nationwide network like NSFNET.
- ^ "A Brief History of "Bit.net"". Bit.net. Retrieved August 30, 2012.
- ^ Cailliau, Robert; Gillies, James (1 January 2000). How the Web Was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. San Val, Incorporated. pp. 74, 75. ISBN 978-0-613-92163-3.