Pre-Internet Packet-Switched Research Networks

Pre-Internet packet-switched research networks were the government and university funded projects of the 1960s through 1980s that developed and proved packet switching before the modern Internet existed. ARPANET, launched under contracts awarded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1969, became the pioneering foundation that first connected research computers using packet switching. CYCLADES, a French research network designed and directed by Louis Pouzin, explored an alternative datagram based design in the same era, and its ideas later influenced the Internet protocol suite. The Computer Science Network, known as CSNET and supported by the National Science Foundation starting in 1981, connected computer science departments that could not get direct access to ARPANET. NSFNET, created by the National Science Foundation in 1986 as a 56 kilobit per second backbone to support its sponsored supercomputing centers, eventually succeeded ARPANET as the primary academic and research networking backbone in the United States. Together these four networks trace the stepwise progression of packet switching research toward the single global Internet.