1958 - The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is formed by the US government to expand America`s technological frontiers, in response to the USSR`s launch of Sputnik 1 the previous year.
1961 - Leonard Kleinrock, at MIT, publishes the first paper on packet switching theory.
1962 - JCR Licklider, of MIT, publishes a paper discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programmes from any site.
1962 - ARPA forms the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), which conducts research on command and control systems.
1965 - The first wide area computer network (ever) is built.
1967 - MIT researcher Lawrence G Roberts, intending to realise Licklider`s idea, publishes his plan for the "Arpanet".
1969 - The first node is connected to the Arpanet. By the end of that year, four host computers are connected.
1970 - The first packet network, AlohaNet, is developed at the University of Hawaii.
1970 - The Network Working Group (NWG) finishes the initial Arpanet host-to-host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP).
1972 - ARPA becomes DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency). It subsequently went back to ARPA on 22 February 1993, and then back to DARPA again on 11 March 1996.
1972 - Arpanet is publicly demonstrated for the first time at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC).
1972 - In March, Ray Tomlinson, at Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN), writes basic e-mail software. In July, he expands its functionality, writing the first e-mail utility programme to list, selectively read, file, forward and respond to messages.
1973 - FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is introduced.
1973 - Arpanet makes its first international connection, while Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf team up to develop the details of the protocols that will become TCP/IP.
1973 - Bob Metcalfe, at Xerox PARC, develops Ethernet technology.
1974 - BBN announces "Telenet" - the first public packet data service.
1980 - Widespread development of workstations, PCs and LANs.
1983 - The Arpanet host protocol changes from NCP to TCP/IP as of 1 January.
1984 - Domain Name System (DNS) is introduced to identify which type of institution represents a computer host.
1984 - The National Science Foundation develops the first wide area network designed specifically to use TCP/IP.
1985 - The Internet is a well-established technology supporting a wide community of researchers and developers.
1986 - The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) starts as a quarterly meeting of US government-funded researchers.
1988 - Robert Morris sends a worm through the Internet, affecting 6 000 of the 60 000 hosts on the network.
1989 - The first ISPs, including the first dial-up ISP world.std.com, are formed.
1990 - Arpanet is decommissioned and McGill University releases the Archie search engine.
1990 - Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), jointly propose to create a hypertext system (HTTP and HTML) accessible via browsers, which would form the basis of the World Wide Web.
1992 - The Internet Society is formed and the IETF is transferred to operate under it as an independent international standards body.
1993 - One of the first graphical Web browsers, Mosaic, is released by Marc Andreessen, at the US National Centre for Supercomputing Applications.
1995 - The first Internet phone software is released by Vocaltec.
1995/6 - The term NGN is first mooted by vendors such as Ericsson.
1996 - POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) is published.
1997 - The original version of IEEE 802.11, the wireless LAN standard, is released.
2003 - An ITU Joint Rapporteur Group is formed to study NGN requirements, the general reference model, functional requirements and architecture of the NGN, and evolution to NGN.
2004 - The ITU forms a Focus Group on NGN (FGNGN) to address the urgent need for NGN standards.
2005 - The one billionth Internet user goes online.
2006 - NGN is a reality. Work on NGN standards continues under the auspices of the ITU`s NGN-Global Standards Initiative (NGN-GSI).
Compiled by Samantha Perry. Sources: The History and Development of the Internet: a Timeline, Rhonda Davila. A Brief History of the Internet, Barry M Leiner, Vinton G Cerf, David D Clark, Robert E Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G Roberts, Stephen Wolff. Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org). Keith Lynch`s timeline of Net related terms and concepts (http://keithlynch.net/timeline.html), A Computer Geek`s History of the Internet (http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/history/). Hobbes` Internet Timeline (http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/). International Telecommunications Union (http://www.itu.int).
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