NSF and the Birth of the Internet

MIT 44

LINCOLN MIT 6 CCA LBL RADC RCC 5 MOFFETT NYU RCC 49 AMES 16 LLL DEC AMES 15 RUTGERS BBN 40 SRI 2 SRI HAWAII GWC ANL BBN 30 SRI SI XEROX HARVARD UTAH STANFORD TYMSHARE CMU UTAH DOCB WPAFB SUMEX FNWC ILLINOIS ABERDEEN SCRL BELVOIR ACCAT SCOTT NSA NBS DCEC NORSAR UCSB UCLA NOSC RAND UCLA AFWL SDAC NRL ISI 52 USC MITRE ISI 22 ARPA PENTAGON GUNTER LONDON 1969 EGLIN

ARPANET 1977 TEXAS ARPANET

SEATTLE

ITHACA ITHACA ANN BOSTON ARBOR PRINCETON CHICAGO PRINCETON LINCOLN PITTSBURGH PALO BOULDER ALTO SALT BOULDER PITTSBURGH URBANA LAKE CITY CHAMPAIGN URBANA- WASHINGTON CHAMPAIGN SAN DIEGO

SAN DIEGO ATLANTA 1988 1995 NSFNET NSFNET HOUSTON Backbone T3 Backbone

These four maps show, in clockwise order, the growth late 1960s. By the 1970s, DoD expanded its network to for regional academic networks to connect to the of the Internet from its beginning to 1995, when the include several research universities and laboratories. By national supercomputer centers and with each other. NSFNET backbone was decommissioned and the the 1980s, it was clear that networking had great In less than ten years, traffic on NSFNET grew at a rate private sector took over its operation. potential to assist academic research. The National of 20% a month as more and more users came online. The Internet began as an experiment in computer Science Foundation created NSFNET, which provided a Eventually the private sector had built sufficient Internet networking by the Department of Defense (DoD) in the backbone network, shown in the bottom illustrations, infrastructure that NSFNET was decommissioned.

Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation National Science Foundation http://www.nsf.gov For more information on NSF and the internet, see: http://nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/ Where Discoveries Begin…