South Korea: Snapshot of the Internet around 1990

2012.5.21/5.26/7.11/10.1/10.27/10.28

from Kilnam Chon, et al., “An Internet History of Korea,” IEEE Communications Magazine, 2013

INTRODUCTION

The TCP/IP network called SDN had been in operation since 1982 in Korea. Many universities and research institutions were the members of the network. Please refer Chapter 2 for the detail on the development of SDN. The international connections use UUCP and CSNET protocols rather than IP, partly due to US restriction on the direct IP connection to ARPANET. The restriction was removed in 1986 when NSFNET with TCP/IP was created in USA. Many countries in Asia as well as Europe started preparation to connect to USA with IP.

PACCOM PROJECT

In 1989, the University of Hawaii was the focal point of the plan for PACCOM Project, connecting Australia, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand with funding from NASA, DoE and NSF in USA as well as funding from each country. In Korea, many member organizations of SDN agreed to join PACCOM Project with joint funding of the 56 Kbps leased line to Hawaii, and established an organization named HANA for this purpose. In March 1990, SUN workstation at KAIST was connected to NSFNET through the University of Hawaii with 56 Kbps satellite link, and the HANANET was constructed.

In the late 1980s, international connections to UUCPNET and CSNET were charged based on the amount of X.25 data packets. Thus, international Internet connections were highly limited due to the expensive charges. However, after the establishment of the leased line connections to NSFNET through University of Hawaii under PACCOM Project, people could use the international connections with relatively little limitations. Data traffic usage for Internet applications during this time was the highest for FTP, followed by Mail, Telnet, Archie, and DNS. In August 1992, the main gateway and the operation of the HANANET and SDN were transferred from KAIST to Korea Telecom (KT) Research Center. Thence-forth, HANANET of the KT Research Center assisted the development of KORNET, KT’s commercial Internet services.

SDN was used to designate domestic networks and HANANET was used to designate networks connected to the global Internet after the construction of HANANET. The name SDN gradually lost recognition, and Academic Network Council (ANC) decided to phase out the use of the name SDN in 1993.

INTERNET COORDINATION

In the mid-1980s, there occurred a series of critical events which enabled the Internet in Korea to meaningfully participate in the global Internet. The first IP address, 128.134.0.0 was assigned for Korea by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) in July 1986. The country code top level domain to represent Republic of Korea (South Korea), .kr, was put formal in operation in 1986. The rules for the second and third level domains under the .kr domain were established, too. Subsequently, the second level domain names in five categories with two letters were set up; ac for academic organization, co for company, go for government, re for research organization, and or for non-profit organization. The computers in KAIST and other sites were registered as the domain name server for the .kr domain (for example, sorak.kaist.ac.kr), thereby establishing the infrastructure for allowing not only domestic but also international open access to the computers using .kr as its top level domain name. KRNIC was set up in 1993 to handle the administration of the .kr top level domain name, the IP address, and the AS number among others.

The coordination on the Internet resources was done initially by the special interest group of SDN. Later, it became necessary to organize the Internet coordination more formally, and thus Academic Network Council (ANC) was created in 1991. ANC evolved to Korea Network Council (KNC) in 1995 as the commercial Internet service providers started their operations.