Announcing A Celebration of the NSFNET: The Partnership That Changed
the World
A significant building block in Internet history will be celebrated
with a symposium and celebratory event on November 29-30 in Arlington,
Virginia. Scientists, scholars, technologists, business leaders and
educators will gather to celebrate the NSFNET, a program of networking
projects funded by the National Science Foundation beginning in 1985.
The NSFNET comprised a set of projects that encouraged the adoption of
internetworking in education and research. At the start of the
program, networking was neither strongly standardized nor ubiquitous
on campuses. The NSFNET program vastly expanded network availability,
advanced technological development, and helped prove the value of the
set of services that ultimately became today's commercial Internet.
The NSFNET backbone network connected colleges, universities and
research centers throughout the U.S. and exchanged traffic with many
overseas networks. The network grew from 56 kbps bandwidth in 1985 to
T1 (1.5 Mbps) in 1988 and finally to T3 (45 Mbps) in 1991, reflecting
the explosive growth in usage during this period. The T3 network was
the immediate precursor to today's Internet, transitioning in 1995
from a private network to an infrastructure connecting the resources
of countless commercial network providers. At the same time, outreach
initiatives helped early adopters in academia use the new resource for
scientific and educational progress.
The theme of the November event, "The Partnership That Changed the
World," points to the NSFNET's signature integration of public and
private resources: a collaboration of academic, commercial and
governmental institutions working toward a single goal. The sum of
those efforts, greater than any organization could have achieved on
its own, led to technical, operational and academic advancements that
have had immense influence on modern life.
At the event, participants will discuss the NSFNET's history,
celebrate its contributions, and consider the major impact the
Internet has had on science, education, research and commerce. The
program includes speakers and panelists who directed the NSFNET
program, did research and scholarship across the network, and built
services and businesses in the resulting network economy.
The November event is planned by a group of NSFNET program leaders,
with organizational support from Merit Network and Internet2. Sponsors
include Advanced Network & Services, Inc., Cisco Systems, IBM, Juniper
Networks and the National Science Foundation. The event will be of
particular interest to those who participated in NSFNET projects or
conducted research and education that benefited from early advances in
network services. There will also be a webcast of the event, available
to the public.
The event will be held at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington,
Virginia, It begins the morning of Thursday, November 29, with a
formal program throughout the day and a gala reception and dinner
following in the evening. The program resumes the morning of Friday,
November 30, and concludes that afternoon.
More information about the event and about the NSFNET is available at
the Web site: www.nsfnet-legacy.org
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