1974: Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn (the duo said by many to be the Fathers of the Internet)

publish "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection," which details the design of TCP.

In the spring of 1973, Vinton Cerf joined Kahn on the project. They started by conducting
research on reliable data communications across packet radio networks, factored in lessons
learned from the Networking Control Protocol, and then created the next generation
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the standard protocol used on the Internet today.

In the early versions of this technology, there was only one core protocol, which was
named TCP. And in fact, these letters didn't even stand for what they do today Transmission
Control Protocol, but they were for the Transmission Control Program. The first version of this
predecessor of modern TCP was written in 1973, then revised and formally documented in RFC
675, Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program from December 1974.

The design of the network included the recognition that it should provide only the functions of
efficiently transmitting and routing traffic between end nodes and that all other intelligence
should be located at the edge of the network, in the end nodes. Using a simple design, it became
possible to connect almost any network to the ARPANet, irrespective of their local
characteristics. One popular saying has it that TCP/IP, the eventual product of Cerf and Kahn's
work, will run over two tin cans and a string.

1974: The first Internet Service Provider (ISP) is born with the introduction of a commercial
version of ARPANET, known as Telenet.

Telenet was founded by Larry Roberts and introduced in 1974. Telenet was the first commercial
network service and could be considered the first Internet Service Provider (ISP). This service
was later purchased by Sprint and changed names to Sprintnet.

1979: A dial-up Internet access is created (USENET)

It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy) dial-up network
architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in
1980.Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one
or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in
many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today. Discussions
are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
The name comes from the term "users network".

1980: CSNET becomes the first autonomous network to attach to ARPANET

The Computer Science Network (CSNET) was a computer network that began operation in
1981 in the United States. Its purpose was to extend networking benefits, for computer
science departments at academic and research institutions that could not be directly connected
to ARPANET, due to funding or authorization limitations. It played a significant role in
spreading awareness of, and access to, national networking and was a major milestone on the
path to development of the global Internet. CSNET was funded by the National Science
Foundation for an initial three-year period from 1981 to 1984.

Lawrence Landweber at the University of Wisconsin-Madison prepared the original CSNET

proposal, on behalf of a consortium of universities (Georgia Tech, University of
Minnesota, University of New Mexico, University of Oklahoma, Purdue University, University
of California-Berkeley, University of Utah, University of Virginia, University of
Washington, University of Wisconsin, and Yale University). The US National Science
Foundation (NSF) requested a review from David J. Farber at the University of Delaware. Farber
assigned the task to his graduate student Dave Crocker who was already active in the
development of electronic mail. The project was deemed interesting but in need of significant
refinement. The proposal eventually gained the support of Vinton Cerf and DARPA. In 1980, the
NSF awarded $5 million to launch the network. It was an unusually large project for the NSF at
the time. A stipulation for the award of the contract was that the network needed to become self-
sufficient by 1986.
The first management team consisted of Landweber (University of Wisconsin), Farber
(University of Delaware), Peter J. Denning (Purdue University), Anthony Hearn (RAND
Corporation), and Bill Kern from the NSF. Once CSNET was fully operational, the systems and
ongoing network operations were transferred to Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN)
of Cambridge, Massachusetts by 1984.
The Purdue team, consisting of Peter Denning, Douglas Comer, and Paul McNabb, was
responsible for designing and building the kernel interfaces that would allow sites outside of the
ARPANET infrastructure to connect via public X.25 networks, such as Telenet. The mechanism
allowed systems with TCP/IP network stacks to use an X.25 network device, with IP datagrams
being sent through dynamically allocated X.25 sessions. Purdue and other sites with ARPANET
access would act as gateways into the ARPANET, allowing non-ARPANet sites to have email,
telnet, ftp, and other forms of network access directly into the ARPANET.
By 1981, three sites were connected: University of Delaware, Princeton University, and Purdue
University. By 1982, 24 sites were connected expanding to 84 sites by 1984, including one in
Israel. Soon thereafter, connections were established to computer science departments in
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Korea, and Japan. CSNET eventually connected more than
180 institutions.
One of the earliest experiments in free software distribution on a network, netlib, was available
on CSNET.
CSNET was a forerunner of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) which
eventually became a backbone of the Internet. CSNET operated autonomously until 1989, when
it merged with Bitnet to form the Corporation for Research and Educational
Networking (CREN). By 1991, the success of the NSFNET and NSF-sponsored regional
networks had rendered the CSNET services redundant, and the CSNET network was shut down
in October 1991.