A Brief History of the NSF and the Internet

The Internet that many of us take for granted today arose from a series of government-funded computer networking efforts. In 1969, the precursor to the Internet began with the U.S. Defense Department's ARPAnet. ARPA-funded researchers developed many of the protocols still used for most Internet communication. Several other agencies also developed networks so their researchers could communicate and share data. In 1981, for example, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a grant to establish the Computer Science Network (CSNET) to provide networking services to all university computer scientists.