Twenty years on: the network that became the Internet

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 28 November 2007 04:51

Business IT - Networking

The network came into operation in July 1988 eight months after the award. Using T1 (1.5Mbps) links it connected thirteen regional networks and supercomputer centres, representing a total of over 170 constituent campus networks and was transmitting 152 million packets of information per month. The increase in supply caused a surge in demand. Usage increased on the order of 10 percent per month and by 1989, Merit Network was already planning to upgrade the backbone to T3 (45 Mbps).

This upgrade represents the transition of NSFNet to what became the Internet. According to the official history, "The T3 upgrade, like the original network implementation, deployed new technology under rigorous operating conditions. It also required a heavier responsibility than NSF was prepared to assume. The upgrade, therefore, represented an organisational as well as a technical milestone—the beginning of the Internet industry."

A not-for-profit entity called Advanced Networks and Services was create to provide backbone service for NSFNet as a subcontractor to Merit Network, while a for-profit subsidiary was spun off to enable commercial development of the network.

The new T3 service was fully inaugurated in 1991, representing a thirtyfold increase in the bandwidth on the backbone. The network then linked sixteen sites and over 3,500 networks. By 1992, over 6,000 networks were connected, one-third of them outside the United States. By 1995 the transition to what is basically the structure of the Internet today was complete. NSFNet had spurred Internet growth in all kinds of organisations with the result that there were about 100,000 networks - both public and private—in operation around the US. On April 30 of that year, NSF decommissioned the NSF backbone declaring that effort to privatise backbone functions had been successful and it was no longer necessary.