Barry M. Leiner

A brief history of the internet

This paper was first published online by the Internet Society in December 20031 and is being re-published in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review because of its historic import. It was written at the urging of its primary editor, the late Barry Leiner. He felt that a factual rendering of the events and activities associated with the development of the early Internet would be a valuable contribution. The contributing authors did their best to incorporate only factual material into this document. There are sure to be many details that have not been captured in the body of the document but it remains one of the most accurate renderings of the early period of development available.

The past and future history of the Internet

The Internet also represents one of the most successful examples of sustained investment and commitment to research and development in information infrastructure. Beginning with early research in packet switching, the government, industry, and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology. Today, terms like “leiner@mcc.com” and “http://www.acm.org” trip lightly off the tongue of random people on the street.1 The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects—technological, organizational, and community. And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations.2

Telescience and advanced technologies

Space Station and its associated laboratories, coupled with the availability of new computing and communications technologies, have the potential of significantly enhancing scientific research. Telescience involves the interaction of scientific researchers and equipment on earth with on-board personnel and equipment as well as with other researchers, remote ground-based resources, mission control personnel, and space station developers. To assure that this potential is met, scientists and managers associated with the Space Station project must gain significant experience with the use of these technologies for scientific research, and this experience must be fed into the development process for Space Station. In this talk, a pilot program is described that is attempting to address this problem. University researchers are conducting rapid prototyping testbeds employing new telescience technologies and ideas. These testbeds are specific research experiments within the scientific discipline areas that will use Space Station laboratories. The experiments are being carried out in a coordinated manner to allow the critical questions to be answered by groups of scientists working with technologists in a rapid prototyping testbed environment. The rapid prototyping testbeds are not like a typical testbed. Rather than being used to evaluate and integrate systems on the way to deployment, the rapid prototyping testbeds constitute a Technology Evaluation Environment (TEE), allowing users to interact with advanced technologies in the conduct of scientific research in order to develop the required base of experience to permit development and evaluation of requirements and specifications.