birth of the internet (as we know it)

LegacyUser

can folk remember when the internet started to take off.

i'm 29, and can remember watching tomorrows world, think i was 15 or so, and they were going on about it. it was one of those, "will it catch on" reports, gas.

whiskeyman

Once porn started appearing on it tbh...

Seriously - demand for it soared back then and many in the business realise that that industry helped fuel the surge of the internet.
Of course lots of other factors like web based email and the rise of branded search engines (yahoo) helped, but the old hanky trade sure helped....

Chong

I first got it in 1998 my mother promised it to us after we came back from our summer hols. It was excellent until she got it cut off for two years because of the price of it lol.
Btw I was 14 at the time and spent my time on mostly chat rooms, which I thought were the coolest thing ever.

Pigman II

Ah yes, I remember it well................

During the 1950s, several communications researchers realized that there was a need to allow general communication between users of various computers and communications networks. This led to research into decentralized networks, queuing theory, and packet switching. The subsequent creation of ARPANET in the United States in turn catalyzed a wave of technical developments that made it the basis for the development of the Internet.

The first TCP/IP wide area network was operational in 1984 when the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) constructed a university network backbone that would later become the NSFNet. It was then followed by the opening of the network to commercial interests in 1995. Important seperate networks that have successfully entered the Internet include Usenet, Bitnet and the various commercial and educational X.25 networks such as Compuserve and JANET.

The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 Tim Berners-Lee publicized his new World Wide Web project, two years after he had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. In 1993 the Mosaic web browser version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks such as FidoNet have remained separate). This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.

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Well, no not really (^^ thats all from wikipedia)! I'd never used the net prior to going to University in 96 and tbh iirc I think I was only vaguely aware it even existed or what it did prior to that.

Goodshape

In this country, Galway On-Line was formed between 1991 and 1993; the first comercial internet service provider in the state. During this time it was primarly on online bulliten board service.

In 1993 it became one of the first providers in the world to support the new World Wide Web and, by default, the Mosaic browser. Due to the increased interest in the service and the posibilites presented by the WWW, the company moved to Dublin and became Ireland On-Line. It remains one of Irelands largest ISPs.


I remember those early days quite well.. the online world was very different back then. Before the dot-com boom 'community' was definitely the key word and personal sites (taking advantage of the 5mb of web space typically offerd by your ISP) were the order of the day. Frames, when they reared their ugly head, seemed new and exciting; simple pictures took eaons to load on the high-tech 14.4kbps modems and MMORPG's looked like this.

Happy days


Also worth noting that in those early days the Irish government saw fit to tax the sale of modems up the yazoo; making it very dificult for the average joe to get connected to anything without importing a modem (somewhat illegally) from overseas.

Miguel_Sanchez

I remember when I was about fifteen downloading William Shatner's version of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds in about 1994 (could have been '95). Did it on a brilliant modem (26 or 28k I think).

Me and My Dad cracked up for about an hour listening to it.

Them was the days.

I think we were one of the first customers on IOL. We were on their Christmas card list I believe.

Blisterman

About 1995. The first site I looked up was a simpsons one about Who Shot Mr Burns.

BLITZ_Molloy

Vaguely remember being at a friends house using a computer running Windows 3.1 and logging into the TCC (now Trouble) chatroom. Might have been 1994 or 95.

Got internet of my own in 1997 (Ennis Information Age Town - remember that?). I was 12 and did what any 12 year old would do; look up some porn. My dad walked into the room and I was frantically trying to close the 50 popup windows that had accumulated (I hadn't yet fully comprehended the concept of multiple windows).

delly

BLITZ_Molloy wrote:

Got internet of my own in 1997 (Ennis Information Age Town - remember that?)

Did some work down there at the time installing smart card readers and can remember talking to one of the guys who was delivering the PC's to peoples houses. He told us of one women who wanted the unopened box put in the attic so that she could use it when her son became a teenager. lol, he was 4 the time.

skyhighflyer

Ah, the memories. I too remember getting the internet for the first time... about 1997 I think it was, when I was around 12... I remember that at the time the only internet access from Kildare via Eircom was via an 01 number, which meant that the dial-up bills were feckin massive... resulting in this amazing new world of delights (ok, softcore porn and illicit chats using Micrsoft Chat 2.0) was cut off to me after a couple of months. Wasn't for another couple of years that we got it back again... by which time it had completely lost it's novelty value...