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Intro

• Early 1980
• While CSNET was growing, NSF (National Science Foundation) began funding improvements in the academic computing infrastructure

• 1984
• NSF launched a supercomputing program
• Designed to make high performance computers accessible to researchers around the country

• NSF envisioned a general high-speed network:
• Moving data more than twenty-five times the speed of CSNET
• Connecting existing regional networks

• NSF wanted to create an "inter-net," a "network of networks," connected to DARPA's own internet

• Offer users the ability to access remote computing resources from within their own local computing environment

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TCP/IP Sets the Standard

• Researchers and scientists began to build their own large computer networks

• Many attempted to develop their own protocols and technologies to run their networks, the tools and concepts developed by researchers in the 1970s became widely adopted (e.g. packet-switching and TCP/IP)

• Beginning of 1980
• Department of Defense made it clear they did not want to run a national computer network that wasn’t directly related to defense work
• The demand for a large and robust network open to all was opened

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 The Demand for New Networks

• Early 1980
• NSF had several initiatives running to help spread the benefits of networking
• Eample : CSNET, which linked together several computer science departments across the country using TCP/IP

• 1981
• Universities came together to form BITNET
• Allowed thousands of new users to experience innovations such as email and file transfers for the first time
• New networks showed the possibilities of computer networks and helped stoke demand for a robust nationwide network like NSFNET

 

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NSFNET is Born

• Mid-1980
• NSF decided to try to link its regional university networks and its supercomputer centers together (the effort was called NSFNET)

• 1984
• NSF began construction of several regional supercomputing centers to provide very high-speed computing resources for the US research community

• 1985
• NSF hired Dennis Jennings to lead the establishment of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) to link five of the university based super-computer centers to enable sharing of resources and information

• 3 critical decisions were made by Jennings :
• A general-purpose research network, not limited to connection of the supercomputers
• Act as the backbone for connection of regional networks at each supercomputing site
• Use the ARPANET's TCP/IP protocol

• 1987
• NSF gave a contract to a consortium of  IBM (International Business Machines Corporation), MCI (Microwave Communications Inc.) and Merit Networks
• To create a network or networks (or inter-net) capable of carrying data at speeds up to 56 kilobits a second
• The system was up by July 1987

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Private-Public Innovation

• Decided that the network should eventually become financially self-sustaining

• Not dependant on government funding or control

• Wanted the network to be able to grow quickly and accommodate as many users as possible

• Came up with a way to satisfy the requirements:
• Awarding the NSFNET grant to a team of private companies and public universities
• Giving private industry an incentive to participate in—but not control—the network
• Encouraging anyone who wished to join the network to connect

 

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NSFNET Grows a Backbone

• July 1988
• A much faster 1.5 Mbps network had been established for communication between the original supercomputing center
• Including seven additional networks:
• BARRNet
• Merit
• MIDnet
• NCAR     
  
• NorthWestNet
• SESQUINET
• SURAnet
• Westnet
• Connected more than 170 TCP/IP enabled networks (transmitting 152 million packets of information per month)
• Merit received a contract to manage the backbone
• The network grew at 10% a month pace

• 1989
• Merit Network planned for the upgrade of the NSFNET backbone service from T1 (1.5 megabits per second or Mbps) to T3 (45 Mbps).

 

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Upgrade to T3

• Like the original network implementation, deployed new technology under rigorous operating conditions

• Represented an organizational as well as a technical milestone—the beginning of the Internet industry

• 1990 – 1991
• NSFNET team was restructured
• Advanced Networks and Services (not-for-profit entity) continued to provide backbone service as a subcontractor to Merit Network
• For-profit subsidiary was spun off to enable commercial development of the network

 

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Rapid Growth

• 1991
• T3 service was fully inaugurated
• Linked sixteen sites and over 3,500 networks
• March 1991: the Internet was transferring 1.3 trillion bytes of information per month

• 1992
• Jan
• Exceeded 12 billion packets (1 trillion bytes) of traffic a month
• Nov
• NSFNET was connected to more than 7,500 networks (one-third were outside the United States)
• Dec
• NSFNET backbone was completely converted to a T3 or 44.736 Mbps capacity
• Capable of transmitting 4 and a half million characters a second
• 1994
• The traffic broke the 10 trillion bytes a month level (transmitting 17.8 trillion bytes per month)

 

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The NAPs

• 1990 and over the next few years
• A series of workshops and studies was conudcted to plan for transition of the NSFNET to private industry
• The vehicle that evolved to support this new architecture was a set of Network Access Points (NAP)
• To act as connection points for the commercial backbones so that the network would remain connected at the top level once the NSFNET has retired

• Feb 1994
•  4 NAPs operating at 155 Mbps were established in:
• New York operated by Sprint
• Washington, D.C. operated by MFS (Metropolitan Fiber Systems)
• Chicago operated by Ameritech
• California operated by Pacific

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Decides (Some of its) Work is Done

• NSF decided that the Internet no longer needed public support to operate

• Private sector entities had found it profitable to build and expand the Internet’s infrastructure

• All of the regional NSFNET networks migrated their connections to commercial network providers who were connected to one or more of the NAPs

• April 30, 1995
• NSFNET was officially dissolved
• NSF retained a core research network for research only use called the Very High Speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), which went on to form the basis for the Internet2 project

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References

• http://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/launch.htm

• http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/

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