HISTORY OF
COMPUTER NETWORK
NETWORKING
TELEX MESSAGING NETWORK COMES ONLINE
 1933 - Telex starts as a way to distribute military
Networking is the exchange of
information and ideas among people with
a common profession or special interest,
usually in an informal social setting.
Networking often begins with a single
point of common ground.
“WORLD BRAINS”
 1934 - Belgian Paul Otlet has a modest goal:
THE EARLY AGE OF
messages, but soon becomes a world-wide
network of both official and commercial text
messaging that will persist in some countries into
the 2000s. Telex uses teleprinters, which date
back to the 1910s for use in telegraphy.
collect, organize, and share all the world’s
knowledge. Otlet had co-created a massive
“search engine” starting in the early 1900s. His
Mundaneum now combines enhanced card
catalogs with sixteen million entries, photos,
documents, microfilm, and more. He is working
on integrating telegraphy and multiple media,
from sound recordings to television.
DIGITAL PHONE LINES
 1958 - Phone companies develop digital transmission for internal
uses – specifically to put more calls on each of the main lines
connecting their own switching centers. By 1958, this produces
the T1 standard still used in North America. By the 1980s, phone
companies will be leasing digital lines to commercial customers.
SAGE AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM: NETWORK
PIONEER
 1958 - Phone companies develop digital transmission for internal
uses – specifically to put more calls on each of the main lines
connecting their own switching centers. By 1958, this produces
the T1 standard still used in North America. By the 1980s, phone
companies will be leasing digital lines to commercial customers.
TIMESHARING: THE FIRST ONLINE
COMMUNITIES
 1961 - By the early 1960s many people can share a single
computer, using terminals (often repurposed teleprinters) to log
in over phone lines. These timesharing computers are like central
hubs with spokes radiating to individual users. Although the
computers generally can't connect to each other, these are the
first common multi-user systems, with dozens of people online
at the same time.
SABRE
 1961 - By the early 1960s many people can share a single
computer, using terminals (often repurposed teleprinters) to log
in over phone lines. These timesharing computers are like central
hubs with spokes radiating to individual users. Although the
computers generally can't connect to each other, these are the
first common multi-user systems, with dozens of people online
at the same time.
 THE MIDDLE AGE OF COMPUTER
NETWORK
BIRTH OF MODERN MOBILE NETWORK
 1973 - in 1973, ARPA funds the outfitting of a
packet radio research van at SRI to develop
standards for a Packet Radio Network (PRNET).
As the unmarked van drives through the San
Francisco Bay Area, stuffed full of hackers and
sometimes uniformed generals, it is pioneering
wireless, packet-switched digital networks,
including the kind your mobile phone uses today.
IBM ANNOUNCES SNA (SYSTEMS NETWORK
ARCHITECTURE)
 1974 - IBM has been building hierarchical, special-
purpose networks since the SAGE system in the
late 1950s and SABRE not long after. In 1974 it
announces Systems Network Architecture (SNA), a
set of protocols designed for less centralized
networks..
LINKING THE OFFICE: ETHERNET AND LOCAL
NETWORK
 1973 - Computers have to communicate down the
hall, as well as globally. Local area networks
(LANs) evolved from the early links to peripheral
devices such as terminals and printers. 1973 marks
the birth of the standard that will eventually
prevail: Ethernet. All possible because of Robert
Metcalfe and Dave Boggs, creators of Ethernet.
THE “WORLD WIDE WEB” IS BORN
 1990 - At the world’s biggest physics laboratory, CERN in
Switzerland, English programmer and physicist Tim
Berners-Lee submits two proposals for what will become the
Web, starting in March of 1989. Neither is approved. He
proceeds anyway, with only unofficial support from his boss
and his coworker Robert Cailliau. By Christmas of 1990 he
has prototyped “WorldWideWeb” (as he writes it) in just
three months on an advanced NeXT computer. It features a
server, HTML, URLs, and the first browser.
ONLINE ADS: START OF THE
WEB BROWSERS  In 1999, the growing IEEE 802.11b short-range radio
COMMERCIAL WEB
BROWSER WAR II: NETSCAPE VS. MICROSOFT
 1995 - Browser War I had been more of a coup – when half
the Mosaic team defected in early 1994 and formed Netscape
under entrepreneur Jim Clark, Mosaic lasted less than a
year. But when Microsoft licenses a version of Mosaic and
rebrands it Internet Explorer, the fight is on. In the mid to
late 1990s Netscape revolutionizes the business model for
the Web, and helps it spread to ordinary people as well as
businesses.
CONTACT INFORMATION
ONLINE SERVICES MAKE WAY FOR THE WEB
 1995 - the Web is growing quickly, and Microsoft CEO
Bill Gates decides it is better to fight within the Web
than to fight the Web itself. In a single memo, he turns
company strategy completely around to focus on the
Web in nearly every product. MSN becomes a Web
portal.
WIFI COMES HOME
networking standard is rebranded “Wi-Fi” by the Wi-Fi
Alliance. This is the same year Apple releases its
"Airport" Wi-Fi router and builds Wi-Fi connectivity
into new Macs. These and other consumer products
help popularize cable-free connections at work, in
cafes, and at home.
“THE CLOUD”
 Starting in the mid-2000s the computer utility model
starts to became fashionable again under the name
“The Cloud,” and is once again a major trend in both
networking and computing. Amazon's 2006 Elastic
Compute Cloud helps popularize the idea.
WEB 2.0
 From the early 2000s a number of sites begin helping
users generate and shape content: wikis, blogs, social
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