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The Internet

30th Birthday of the Internet 110

Posted by CmdrTaco from the celebrate-good-times-(come-on!) dept.
Dymaxion writes "September 2nd is officially the 30th birthday of the Internet, being the day that the first packets were sent between the Sigma 7 mainframe that was the first internet node and its Honeywell based IMP (Internet Message Processor) at UCLA. There is a party at UCLA to celebrate the event, and although the deadline for RSVP's is over for that party, go ahead and throw your own. "
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30th Birthday of the Internet More

30th Birthday of the Internet

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  • Happy Birthday Internet. Did ya every think
    you would become this huge? Heh! Any really
    OLD timers using slashdot? I've been on since
    1990, anyone want beat that and chat about the
    good old days? No graphical browsers, just lynx
    gopher, telnet, usenet, and irc back then. Never
    crowded, netcitizens were generally nice. Ahh
    the good old days. Lets hear how it was in the
    old days to give these kids some perspective.
  • Brothers and Sisters of the Information Age, hear me!!

    We must go forth to our various places of activity on the Internet, and spread this Joyous news for all to share! Sadly, many of our brothers and sisters live in the dark, and do not know about the Internet's Birthday. So be a light in the darkness, and at some point in your Internet activities make the Good News known to those around you.

    Aside: Please don't spam people doing so either as I'd hate to be responsible for something as idiotic as that. Thank you. :)
  • Happy birthday to you, me and the internet.
  • Which is your opinion, to which you're entitled. It's also wrong, of course.

    Look at the name: internet. Interconnected networks. The first time someone glued networks from two sites together via the magic of packet switching and nicotine they created an internet.

    The one we've got nowadays (B1FFs, pr0n, /. and all) could be dated back to 1982-1983 (TCP/IP adopted in preference to NCP/IP and DNS put in place), which is about the first time the whole shooting match got called 'the Internet'.

    Hell, the Great Renaming was in '85...
    --
    Cheers

    Jon
  • My girlfriend and I had to fight over my computer for surf time, when she moved in I set up her computer on my network so now we can both surf at the same time. We even "talk" from one room to the other on her telnet and my Linux box.

    We are much happier now.
  • We couldn't possibly celebrate the Internet's 30th birthday without a link to some Internet history stuff [isoc.org] now could we... (it's the ISOC's).
  • Here's a little culture for Internet Birthday Day. This is a famous poem about ArpaNET being switched on for the first time, which can be found in RFC1121, along with many other gems like "Ode to a Queue."

    THE BIG BANG!
    (or the birth of the ARPANET)
    by
    Leonard Kleinrock

    It was back in '67 that the clan agreed to meet.
    The gangsters and the planners were a breed damned hard to beat.
    The goal we set was honest and the need was clear to all:
    Connect those big old mainframes and the minis, lest they fall.

    The spec was set quite rigid: it must work without a hitch.
    It should stand a single failure with an unattended switch.
    Files at hefty throughput 'cross the ARPANET must zip.
    Send the interactive traffic on a quarter second trip.

    The spec went out to bidders and t'was BBN that won.
    They worked on soft and hardware and they all got paid for fun.
    We decided that the first node would be we who are your hosts
    And so today you're gathered here while UCLA boasts.

    I suspect you might be asking "What means FIRST node on the net?"
    Well frankly, it meant trouble, 'specially since no specs were set.
    For you see the interface between the nascent IMP and HOST
    Was a confidential secret from us folks on the West coast.

    BBN had promised that the IMP was running late.
    We welcomed any slippage in the deadly scheduled date.
    But one day after Labor Day, it was plopped down at our gate!
    Those dirty rotten scoundrels sent the damned thing out air freight!

    As I recall that Tuesday, it makes me want to cry.
    Everybody's brother came to blame the other guy!
    Folks were there from ARPA, GTE and Honeywell.
    UCLA and ATT and all were scared as hell.

    We cautiously connected and the bits began to flow.
    The pieces really functioned - just why I still don't know.
    Messages were moving pretty well by Wednesday morn.
    All the rest is history - packet switching had been born!

  • I followed that link, and hit the "Hobbes' Internet Timeline" link...

    It lists the first node at UCLA as being a SDS SIGMA 7.

    Running an operating system called "SEX".

    Is is possible that they know even back then that the net would be used for downloading porn? The foresight of these people amazes me.

  • Don't you need more than one network to have an *Inter*-net? Maybe both machines had loopback too.
  • I've been on since 1990, anyone want beat that and chat about the good old days?

    I can beat that by a year...1989 was the year that the University of Illinois (where I spent my freshman year) started hooking everybody up with free access. They only allowed seven hours a week on the machine (uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) set aside for that purpose, but there were some other machines available for unlimited use...in particular, there was a brand-new '030 NeXTcube that I remember word getting around about for unlimited access.

    First modem I had to dial in from the dorm room was an old 300-bps Zoom internal modem that I borrowed from a friend across the street. I managed to snag an Applied Engineering DataLink 2400 that Christmas...said I could use it for classwork (which wasn't a lie, though I suspect I spent too much time on other activities :-) ). Both modems, BTW, were for the Apple IIe I was using at the time. (Still have that computer, though I upgraded it to a IIGS back in '92 or '93.)

    No graphical browsers, just lynx gopher, telnet, usenet, and irc back then.

    No Lynx (no WWW) and no Gopher. Usenet was a much more useful place before the commercial spammers and AOLers arrived, though. I remember when comp.sys.apple (what comp.sys.apple2 used to be called) had useful info every day, techies from Apple getting involved in discussions, etc. Nowadays it's a shadow of its former self. Some of the changes that have happened there have been mirrored in other newsgroups.

    The Internet definitely isn't what it used to be. In some ways, it's better (there's more info out there, and it's easier to get at). In others, it's worse (any moron with a few bucks a month can gain access, make an ass of himself, pollute Usenet, etc.)

  • Corporations are artificial creations of the state. They have no natural, inherent rights.
  • A bit of irony hearing the free speech of corporations defended with such vigor.

    I'm sure there are many worthy corporations, especially among the non-profits. Legally they are persons, so their rights are the same as ours.

    I wish I could say I viewed them as allies in the fight for free speech. Unfortunately, too many corporations have workplace environments that lack rather badly in privacy and ability to express opinions without fear of retaliation. I didn't see too many huge corporations funding ads against the CDA, did you? Too many are also very happy to hop on any "self-censorship" bandwagon rather than lobby against the threatened laws. When the insurance industry wants drug testing, they salute and implement -- no discussion by employees required.

    I'm not for taking freedom of speech away from anyone or any group, but corporations just aren't at the top of my list either as victims of censorship, or proponents of free speech.

    On this thirtieth birthday of the Internet, it might behoove us to think about whether corporations are helping to make the internet what we want it to be or not. Does it even matter what we think anymore?

    Jim
  • I don't think Rob ever posted an explanation of this. I think I've read the relevant moderation info, although I may have missed it. I also know someone with permanent moderation status. He's not a friend of Rob's or anything. Anyone know how one gets that?
  • No, actually he was 21. (Born in 1948)
    Amazing here I am learning about internet protocols doing all kinds of math, thinking "wow, some people are geniouses", but it was a poltician the whole time!
  • Go figure, and for some reason, rob's scripts have given me a default score of 2. Guess I'm just really magical or something.

    If you post a number of articles that are moderated up, your default score gets boosted. I have no idea how many it takes, but I too am one of the Chosen...;-)
  • Heh here's an idea. stop spending 12 hours a day on the internet.

    That just might solve a problem or two.

    Don't Blaim the Object of your addiction for your own inability to solve your problems.

    And finally. get some help. or you are gonna have more problems in the future. There _ARE_ 12 step programs out there. don't ask me where, search yahoo for "internet addiction 12 step" or something. mabey you'll get laid once in a while, after you get 'cured'

    EOF
  • And to think that without the Internet, I'd probably still be a paramedic/firefighter.
    Scary, eh?

    -brendan
  • A story [wired.com] on Wired News [wired.com] claims the first "ping" was sent on October 20, 1969. They cite this website, the International Internet Day site [hypermart.net], as a source of information. Would anyone be so kind as to explain the difference of dates? Was the first ping time a month?
  • Yes, I'm replying to my own message. From the timeline on UCLA's site [ucla.edu] it looks like Sept 2 was the first ping within a node, but on Octo 20 they actually sent a message to another host, at the Stanford Research Institute. Personally, I'd side with the second as the real birthday.
  • I've been on since 1990, anyone want beat that and chat about the good old days?

    I sent my first Internet email in 1981. It was the ARPAnet then. I was dialed into the net at 300 baud.


    ...phil
  • The first PING was actually in December of 1983. The DARPA IP network existed before PING was invented. Now PING is a routine network tool, but the IP net was created without it.

    See The Story of the PING Program [arl.mil] by its programmer. Slashdot covered this topic in Review: The Story About Ping [slashdot.org].

  • Apparently she doesn't suck? Perhaps she didn't leave of her own accord, buit was thrown out. Nex
  • Agreed, it was an awfully stupid thing to say. But you should be glad someone *did* get the enabling legislation passed, because geeks would have had a rather rough time with that part.

    Jim
  • Who here remembers having to sign the NSF agreement agreeing to not use the 'net for commercial purposes? I had to sign it back in '88!

    So when did you sign the NSF agreement cancelling the previous restriction? Are you still restricted? :-)

  • CNN.COM [cnn.com] has graced it's homepage with this news. It has information, and a bit'o'lore.
  • So I guess the Internet is a Virgo, then?

    Traditional Virgo Traits:
    Modest and shy
    Meticulous and reliable
    Practical and diligent
    Intelligent and analytical

    On the dark side:
    Fussy and a worrier
    Overcritical and harsh
    Perfectionist and conservative

    Hmm.

  • You need an excuse??
  • >>I've been on since 1990, anyone want beat that and chat about the good old days?

    Well, you've got me beat a little bit. I first logged onto the eBay-net in 1998, when the clever marketing scheme of AOL won me over. I figured "If they've got enough money to send everyone on the planet about 50 CDs each, they've gotta be good" And I was right.
  • damn.....to think that all of us who make our livings from the Net would have been writing newspaper columns or being stock analysts...

    Happy Birthday to the place I live!

  • internet birthday party (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is al gore going to be there? he is the father, after all.

  • Thanks Al Gore! (Score:4)

    by joshv ( 13017 ) on Thursday September 02, 1999 @02:41AM (#1709961)
    I betcha he is celebrating too - he was in it from the very beginning. Hat's off Al!
  • Hah, It's my 21st birthday today too. Reason #2 today is the best day in the whole year. Btw Andy Grove (intel) was born today too. yea dawg.
  • damn.. beat me to the political punch! Oh well, maybe my hysterical Internet rantings are catching on. See the rise and fall of the internet and what you can do about it. [infoshop.org]
  • Yay! And here's to the next 30 years :)
  • Well, you've seen your kid grow up showing unusual promise at first...

    ...but then it nears its 30th Birthday and gets seduced by the dark side and starts talking shit like "portals" and "branding" and "American Corporate Imperialism" and insists on being as rhizomatic as a ruddy fart...

    ...Yes, happy birthday internet.
  • Well, I wonder how much did they get payed for that. Or maybe it the Internet in UCLA has died after those first packets between those two machines.

    Lame...
  • Anonymous Coward wrote:

    >is al gore going to be there? he is the father, after all.

    This is true, however Mrs. Gore has found it in her heart, with the help of her Creator, to forgive Al his past transgressions. Though Al's bastard love child, The Internet, torments Mrs. Gore's heart, heartless bastards continue to dredge it up.

    Al has had no contact with The Internet since the night of its conception, a hazy combination of free love and proscribed narcotics.

  • 1 st email message (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I heard the first email message was short- He tried to send "log" the "l", and "o" got sent, but before the "g" could get out, the system crashed. I think Bill Gates took lessons from this.
  • Ah! At last an excuse to get drunk!

    Geeks around the world; get off your lazy butts
    and celebrate!
  • The last ten years, esp. since NSF decided to wash its hands of the infrastructure has been terrific. I am waiting to see the fruits of todays research. I hope - A gigabit connection for 20$/month or heck even free in the next ten years.

  • Citizens of the Net (Score:4)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday September 02, 1999 @03:04AM (#1709972) Homepage Journal
    Yep, it's that time again. We're all perhaps the closest thing to a world citizen [worldgovernment.org] that has ever existed. More so than those jetsetting punks who just subscribe to the philosophy to avoid visas, we all exist in a society that stretches around the world. And we have existed in this society, without government or authority, for 30 years. Lets not let the corporations ruin that.
  • you'll pay for it, with advertising and profiling information gathered via the violation of your freedom and privacy.
  • Hi Internet, hope you'll have a nice day with not too many AOL users asking silly questions and sending unsubscribe messages into mailing lists ;)

    Greetings
  • E-mail wasn't invented until almost a decade later.
  • So how many people posted to their favourite nerd news site, claiming FIRST PING !!!!!!!!!!!?
  • According to this article [wired.com] the first ping went out on October 20th. Anyone know what's what?

    --
  • Nice hypocritical site. They claim they want to
    Support freedom of speech for EVERYONE. No exceptions.
    but right at the top of the page, it says
    We believe that corporations have no free speech rights
    What a rousing battlecry. FREE SPEECH FOR SOME! NO SPEECH FOR OTHERS!
  • i personally know that i owe a good 90% of my life to the internet.

    I owe my career to it. My first break in computers
    (real job) was a job to build an internet service
    provider for a business man (30k a year). And of
    course I used linux which probably wouldn't exist
    beyond Linus's hard drive without the Internet.
    From there I have worked on dozens of internet
    related projects over the years and built myself a
    VERY nice lifestyle out of it. Beyond just the job
    I have learned so much by others sharing their
    knowledge over the net.

    Thanks to the guys who created the Net. We all owe
    you a debt of gratitude! I'll drink a beer for ya
    tonight!

    Malice95
  • can be attained with this link. [isc.org] I urge you to wander around the site too for more stuff on the Domain Survey [isc.org].

    It was a past time of mine back in 92 and 93 to download the *entire* host list from these people. It was 20 mb or so at that time!

    Now there's *at least* 56 million hosts around. That would be like, huge.

    Let the good times roll? Bah.

    The Internet was a good idea, but commercialism ruined it.
  • Yes, mah bruthas, the internet has turned me from a waitress with a creative writing degree into a savvy geeky webmistress!
    Happy Birthday, you sexy thing you! Give us a kiss!
    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • Wired's been wrong before... it will be wrong again. If ucla says its today (where the net was born) then its today.

    Malice95
  • but, I can remember using gopher in maybe late '92 for the first time. Then on to usenet and I remember downloading mosaic and installing it on my old rs/6000 and feeling really cool.

    I quite frankly wouldn't be doing the job I have today if it weren't for the growth of the 'net, so Happy Birthday! Many happy returns on the day!
    (btw, I love my job - sysadmin/webmaster/network geek at a small startup)
    (I'll hoist a few tonight)
  • I can't get to the UCLA anniverary page. See what old age does?

  • Actually, today we're celebrating the birth of the ARPANET, which preceeded the Internet.

    The ARPANET was born on this day in 1968, and was finally laid to rest in March of 1991 when the IMPs (subsequently called Packet Switch Nodes (PSNs)) were finally decommissioned (long live 1822!).

    The Internet was born on January 1, 1983 when the ARPANET was switched from Network Control Protocol (NCP) to the TCP/IP that we know today with not-so-gentle prodding from what was then the Defense Communications Agency (DCA, now the Defense Information Systems Agency [disa.mil]), which had taken over operation of the ARPANET from the Advanced Research Projects Agency [darpa.mil] (ARPA).

    Before that day, you had to have a computer attached to an IMP on the ARPANET to be on the network. After that day, with a router, you could be on any old LAN, and exchange IP packets with any other host anywhere, whether it was attached to an IMP, an Ethernet, a Chaosnet, an ARCnet, or whatever. The growth of the network accelerated from that point on to the world-embracing network we see today.

    Now, if we can just get IP version 6 (and IP Security!) deployed to solve the address space problem. Unfortunately, we don't have any one organization with control over the Internet who can cause such a change to happen (i.e. they order it, and they have guns to back it up their authority).

    Of course, there are anarchists who say that this is better...

  • http://www.talkcity.com/communities/computing_tech .htmpl is URL of a party we're going to have on Talkcity tonight at 8:30 PM Pacific time (chat.talkcity.com port 6667). come celebrate =)
  • Oops... Oh well. I was working mostly from memory.
  • I've been around the Internet for about 6 years =) I remember tha good ol days too, where it was more the knowledge than the buck =) though, the buck is nice =) heheheheh specially if you have the knowledge.
  • If you'll look the the preferences settings a little closer, you'll notice that you can set it up to give a story greater than any particular length a +1 rating, as well as for other reasons.

  • Hey, the first ping was on October 20, 1969.

    Read the Wired article here [wired.com].

    Anyway, it's another occasion to celebrate! 30 years, that's at least a keg...
  • Yep, and if it wasn't that it was the tv or the fridge or the bars or that extramarital affair you had. Plenty more women out there.. this time don't marry em because no one women can satisfy all the different parts of your personality, just like you can't satisfy all of hers.
  • Happy birthday to you
    Happy birthday to you
    Happy birthday dear Internet,
    Happy birthday to you!

  • The term IMP stands for *Interface* Message Processor, not Internet Message Processor. See (eg) the glossary in RFC 760.
  • I'm ready for the next leap... just wire my brain in.

    http://www.moosoft.com [moosoft.com]
  • You do know that song is still in copyright, don't you?
  • Is there a sort of artificial intelligence aspect to this as well? Most of my posts now seem to have the default score of 2, but a few of them have been only one.

    Is there a length requirement for the automatically higher score to be applied? That seems reasonable, and it would match the ones I have seen for myself that do or do not get bumped up.

    I think this is a positive thing, in a world with too few moderator points; allows a sort of proxy voting which takes a reasonable idea (that someone who posts things which get bumped up by the moderators several times is likely to continue posting interesting things) and applies it without requiring that moderators actually approve each submission.

    Is this an accurate (if lowbrow) description of how / why this system works?

    timothy

  • gotta laugh at that one.
  • I just love it when AC's criticize /. moderation, especially when it's apparent they have little if any clue how moderation works [slashdot.org].

    If you want to do something about it, use an identity and one day maybe you too will be awarded moderation privileges.

    Now someone please moderate this here post down as off-topic.

  • Never trust anyone over 30.

  • my wife is from south africa, and im from the states, so i must be doing something right =)
  • You mean Internet Email.
    Email between users of the same machine did exist before 69.
    The first TCP-IP protocols they invented were rLogin & FTP. the "Log..." story probably relates to 1 of them.
  • It should be noted that this event was instituted and is being organised by the gentleman who MADE that ping.

    Not to be anal here, but I would tend to think he would recall the date properly ... Wired is probably wrong.
  • There is some debate to weather the internet was born 30 years ago. Some might argue that the Internet was born 16 years ago when the TCP/IP protocall was actually introduced in 1983.

    None the less, Happy Birthday.

    ...
  • Ok, so this comment is marked (0, Flamebait). The next comment, which says almost exactly the same thing, just different wording is (2, Funny). Go figure, and for some reason, rob's scripts have given me a default score of 2. Guess I'm just really magical or something.

  • XXX (Score:1)

    by Boolean ( 15853 )
    Well, the first 30 years seem to be pretty funky. Unfortunatly, I have only been around for sixteen of them and have only been using the internet for 8 years. The internet, I have come to realzie, is a very powerful thing (duh), but the best use some of us seem to find for it is to look at XXX pr0n (no offense Rob :P).
    I hope the internet stays around until I leave the picture, but I wish we could be a little more responsible with it. More coding Web sites, less Hardcore sex. Well, maybe to TOO much less :)

  • wow! (Score:1)

    by cswiii ( 11061 )
    so I guess Al Gore conceptualised this whole thing when he was about 15 years old, or so?

  • Isn't this a national holiday?

    shouldn't it be?

    hmmm, I guess I am going to have to throw another party

    hugme@hugme.org
    www.hugme.org

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