[ih] Origination date for the Internet

[Bob Braden]

It is perhaps fun to identify all the technical milestones during
R&D on internetworking, on IP, on TCP, on PUP, on packet radios in bread 
trucks, in packet satellites, ... , perhaps even on packet switching, 
none of these seem very germane to the original question -- when did 
*THE Internet* enter service.

Speaking as one of the soldiers in the trenches at the time,
I have always counted the beginning of THE Internet as Jan 1, 1983. 
That was (to some us, memorable and for Dan Lynch, traumatic)
the crunch time when we freed ourselves from the good old reliable
NCP and leapt into the TCP/IP world.  (Was the new thing REALLY
going to work at some realistic scale?) And we took with us a
significant population of real network users, which justifies the
capital I on Internet.

Someone had a T shirt bearing the inscription "I survived Jan 1, 1983" 
or something like that. I wish I had one.

Bob Braden



On 10/28/2010 9:39 AM, internet-history-request at postel.org wrote:
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>     1. birth of the Internet? (Miles Fidelman)
>     2. Re: birth of the Internet? (Vint Cerf)
>     3. Re: birth of the Internet? (Miles Fidelman)
>     4. Re: birth of the Internet? (John Curran)
>     5. Re: birth of the Internet? (Matthias B?rwolff)
>     6. Re: birth of the Internet? (Dave Walden)
>     7. Re: birth of the Internet? (Noel Chiappa)
>     8. Re: birth of the Internet? (Vint Cerf)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:19:26 -0400
> From: Miles Fidelman<mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
> Subject: [ih] birth of the Internet?
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID:<4CC96A4E.2070704 at meetinghouse.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I've been part of an interesting discussion, on another list, that's led
> to the question of when the Internet was actually "born."
>
> Was it:
> - when the ARPANET moved from NCP to TCP/IP?
> - when the ARPANET was split into two, linked backbones (ARPANET/MILNET)?
> - was there an earlier point at which IP was linking LANs across the
> ARPANET?
> - some other event?
>
> Miles Fidelman
>