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THE BEGINNING OF THE OPEN INTERNET

Dennis Jennings

“I told you this Internet thing would catch on”

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MY BACKGROUND (1977 TO 1985)

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  • A University Computer Centre Director
    • Building and providing computing infrastructure for the university

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  • Active in Irish and European Networking
    • HEAnet, EARN, ESPRIT (CEC)

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  • Convinced that networking was the Future Infrastructure for Research
    • Based on interconnected and affordable national networks open to all researchers and extending to every researcher’s desktop computer and providing working services.

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HEAnet

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THE BEGINNING OF HEANET

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  • 1982: 1st One-Page Proposal for an Irish Universities Network

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  • 1983: HEA Advisory Committee on an Irish Universities Network

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  • 1983/4: HEA / University Agreement to fund and proceed with HEAnet

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The Internet

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AN OVERVIEW OF INTERNET HISTORY

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  • The Conception Phase – 1963 to 1973

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  • The Birth of the Internet – 1973 – Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf – TCP/IP

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  • The Research / Experimental / Pilot Phase – 1973 to 1983

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  • The Production Phase – 1983 – ARPANET adopts TCP/IP - CSnet started

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AN OVERVIEW OF INTERNET HISTORY

  • The Production Phase – The Open Internet as Infrastructure

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    • NSFNET – 1985 to 1992

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    • The ISPs – 1989/90 – The Internet Exchanges

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    • The Web –Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau (CERN) – 1990/1993

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    • The Web Browser – Mosaic (NCSC, Illinois Supercomputer Centre)

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    • The dot.COM Boom and Bust, and Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc…..

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THE BEGINNING OF THE OPEN INTERNET

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NSFNET

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Dennis Jennings, 1st Program Director for Networking, NSF

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NSFNET 35:

  • NSFNET:
  • The Purpose: to provide access�to Supercomputers

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  • My Interpretation:
  • A general-purpose network of�networks (an Internet) open to�all (US) academic research, �including supercomputer users

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  • …. so, the Program Director for Networking position in the OASC

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(with a $50 million budget (over 5 years))

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    • Was an Opportunity – A blank canvas ……..

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    • For an “Open” network for all US academic researchers

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(All existing US networks, including the ARPANET were mission oriented

and for a specific set of users)

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  • NSFNET: The Three-Layer Model

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NSFnet Backbone

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Mid-Level Networks

(Supercomputer Centre / Regional / State / ARPANET / etc. Networks)

 

Campus Networks

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(All mandated to run Internet Protocols (TCP/IP) and use IP Addressing)

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THE THREE LAYER MODEL

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      • Campus networks – connecting end users and someone else’s problem

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      • Regional Networks – leveraging the networking community and State and other funding

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      • A backbone connecting all the networks together funded by the NSFnet Programme

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NSFNET 35:

  • NSFNET: �The [Interim] Backbone
  • 56kbps

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The later backbones

  • 1987 1.5 Mbps
  • 1992 45 Mbps
  • 1994 1.0 GBps

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  • NSFNET: The Regional Networks

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BARRnet; CERFnet; CICNet; JvNCNet,

Merit; MIDnet, NEARNET, NorthWestNet,

NYSERnet, SESQUINET, SURAnet, Westnet

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  • NSFNET: �The SCIENCE Article

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  • NSFNET: SCIENCE Article - The Vision Statements

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“Our vision of this network is of a vast network of networks interconnecting the scientist’s local advanced graphics workstation environment to other local and national resources.”

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“Through … single window … … the scientist may gain access to required computing facilities and databases and communicate with peers, colleagues and scholars throughout the world.”�

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A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

NSFNET

  • The beginning of the Internet - designed to serve the US Academic Research Community (and the supercomputer users), and it developed into the Internet we know today…..

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  • My Role: Conceived, Designed, and drove the programme, and spent much of my time travelling the USA, explaining the benefits, and encouraging local research communities to build their own local and regional networks and connect to the Internet.

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  • I spent or committed $17 million while at the NSF

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  • I spent 15 months at the NSF on leave of absence from University College Dublin.

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  • I got all the conceptual design done and initial implementation started

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  • …. and, with an enormous amount of hard work by a lot of people at the NSF and across the USA, the model I developed worked well and eventually – through Privatisation and Commercialisation – and user demand - evolved into the Internet we know today…..

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…. and Europe ?

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THE BEGINNING OF THE OPEN INTERNET

  • What about Europe ?

Basically, when I returned from the USA, the networking community in Europe – the various national research networking organisations - said

NO TCP/IP

European networkers were just as keen on standards but demanded international Standards – as promoted by the CEC (who had the money!) and the Telcos (who had the monopoly powers).

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However, in late 1991, after the European research users lost their collective tempers, an initiative called EBONE was started (I served on the Board for a while), and the log-jam was broken.

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Some Takeaways

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SOME TAKEAWAYS

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HEAnet was one of the earliest

national research and education networks

and is 43 years old

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SOME TAKEAWAYS

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The Open Internet is one of humanities greatest inventions

and has had enormous societal, economic, and political

impact – some of it very positive – and was first implemented

for the US academic research community

by an Irishman.

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THE BEGINNING OF THE OPEN INTERNET

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Thank You

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