providers in search of a hacker. 10,000 people are left without Net
     access. (:api:)

     RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near
     real-time

     Radio HK, the first 24 hr., Internet-only radio station starts
     broadcasting

     WWW surpasses ftp-data in March as the service with greatest
     traffic on NSFNet based on packet count, and in April based on byte
     count

     Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online,
     Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access

     A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading
     the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value (9
     August)

     Thousands in Minneapolis-St. Paul (USA) lose Net access after
     transients start a bonfire under a bridge at the Univ of MN causing
     fiber-optic cables to melt (30 July)







 
RFC 2235               Hobbes' Internet Timeline           November 1997


     Registration of domain names is no longer free. Beginning 14
     September, a $50 annual fee has been imposed, which up until now
     was subsidized by NSF. NSF continues to pay for .edu registration,
     and on an interim basis for .gov

     The Vatican comes on-line

     The Canadian Government comes on-line

     The first official Internet wiretap was successful in helping the
     Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) aprehend three
     individuals who were illegally manufacturing and selling cell phone
     cloning equipment and electronic devices

     Operation Home Front connects, for the first time, soldiers in the
     field with their families back home via the Internet.

     Richard White becomes the first person to be declared a munition,
     under the USA's arms export control laws, because of an RSA file
     security encryption program emblazoned on his arm (:wired496:)

     CERT advisories: 18, reports: 2412

     Country domains registered: Ethiopia (ET), Cote d'Ivoire (CI), Cook
     Islands (CK) Cayman Islands (KY), Anguilla (AI), Gibraltar (GI),
     Vatican (VA), Kiribati (KI), Kyrgyzstan (KG), Madagascar (MG),
     Mauritius (MU), Micronesia (FM), Monaco (MC), Mongolia (MN), Nepal
     (NP), Nigeria (NG), Western Samoa (WS), San Marino (SM), Tanzania
     (TZ), Tonga (TO), Uganda (UG), Vanuatu (VU)

     Technologies of the Year: WWW, Search engines Emerging
     Technologies: Mobile code (JAVA, JAVAscript), Virtual environments
     (VRML), Collaborative tools

1996
     Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication
     companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology (which has
     been around for years)

     The controversial US Communications Decency Act (CDA) becomes law
     in the US in order to prohibit distribution of indecent materials
     over the Net. A few months later a three-judge panel imposes an
     injunction against its enforcement. Supreme Court unanimously rules
     most of it unconstitutional in 1997.

     9,272 organizations find themselves unlisted after the InterNIC
     drops their name service as a result of not having paid their
     domain name fee




 
RFC 2235               Hobbes' Internet Timeline           November 1997


     Various ISPs suffer extended service outages, bringing into
     question whether they will be able to handle the growing number of
     users. AOL (19 hours), Netcom (13 hours), AT&T WorldNet (28 hours -
     email only)

     New Yorks' Public Access Networks Corp (PANIX) is shut down after
     repeated SYN attacks by a cracker using methods outlined in a
     hacker magazine (2600)

     Various US Government sites are hacked into and their content