Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:35:56 -0400
From: John C Klensin <klensin(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
Message-ID: <60CBF25E851513F3E437727D(_at_)JcK-HP8200(_dot_)jck(_dot_)com>
| As others have pointed out, the first international connections
| were to the UK and Norway, not The Netherlands.
The UK and NO links were really arpanet links, not internet, and
were subject to all of the arpanet restrictions. For example, I am
reasonably sure that mail from janet users to arpanet users did not
travel over the arpnet's UK link. I suspect the same was true of Norway.
So, while it was technically true that there were those international
arpanet links, they (like all the private intra-company links, whether
they used IP or something else) don't really count as internet links.
I would certainly count the NL link (really, EU link, that happened to
terminate in Amsterdam) as the first international true internet link
(in that it connected other networks, not just an end system or two).
But wrt ccTLDs you're right, NL certainly wasn't first - excluding US
and UK (which were registered before registrations opened...) I think
the first was IL (and it would have been 1985 - before the 1986 reg
date cited for NL). Ignoring UK, NL might well have been the first
European TLD registered though.
| I really wish that we could somehow restore the spirit of a
| collaborative effort, one with many cooperating contributors to
It would be good, but it is too big for that now, and includes all those
people whose primary interest is publicity (including politicians of
course) - for whom outlandish claims and self promotion are normal.
kre