The “Hidden” Prehistory of European Research Networking
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The two last decades of the twentieth century brought about a revolution in computing and telecommunication all over the world. From scattered small test projects that connected a few computers the Internet emerged as a new information and communication infrastructure. During this period, networks evolved from using 9.6 Kb/s links to using 10 Gb/s links, an incredible increase by a factor of 1,000,000. Email and Web search are now so ubiquitous that Googling has become a verb. Few businesses can run without a Web strategy and social structures like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are part of the daily life of a large percentage of the world population. Olivier Martin has focused on development in Europe and has described how Universities and Research Institutions led this revolution. In the process there were choices to be taken and the developers and policy makers in Europe were basically in two camps: those who backed de jure standards and the OSI development versus those who initially used ad hoc solutions and next de facto standards for IP. We now know that the latter group prevailed but that was certainly not obvious in the first years and the arguments and fighting were fierce. The telecommunication monopolies certainly did not make the development easier. On the other hand, when telecommunication liberalization came in the EU an impressive expansion in capacity and user numbers took off. Ideally, the history of war or competition should not be written by one of the participants. On the other hand Oliver Martin, being part of the development in the whole period, can provide a lot of information as well as his personal assessment of the persons involved. And, as you will see in the literature list, the other party has already written their version of the story. In addition to writing history, Olivier Martin gives some thought to future developments and, among other things, raises the question whether it will always be optimal to have a special computer network for universities and research institutions. After all, they do not have a special postal service or a special telephony service. Frode Greisen
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About the Book
The main purpose of this book, which mostly covers the period 1984–1993, is about the history of European research networking. In particular, it strives to throw some light on some lesser known, sometimes forgotten, aspects of the European research networking history, as the EARN and EASInet initiatives from IBM but also DEC (EARN/OSI), thanks to operational pan-European networks, which were built during the period 1984–1990 thus allowing the start of operational European academic and research networking services in a very effective and swift manner. A secondary purpose of this article is to make a critical assessment of the political and technical achievements of the European NRENs and especially those of DANTE, the company set up by these same NRENs to build and operate a pan-European backbone interconnecting their national networking infrastructures as well as establishing international connections to other NRENs worldwide.