EUnet was a very loose collaboration of individual European

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

sites in the 1980s that evolved into the fully commercial entity EUnet International Ltd in 1996. It was sold to Qwest in 1998. EUnet played a decisive role in the adoption of

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

in Europe beginning in 1988. A separate company, EUnet GB, was founded in 1993 in the United Kingdom, which also played a role in the early commercial Internet in the UK.

History

The roots of EUnet, originally an abbreviation for European

Network, go back to 1982 under the auspices of the EUUG (European UNIX Users Group), later EurOpen, and the first international UUCP connections. FNET was the French branch of EUnet. Once there was a central European backbone node that was separate from the expensive telecom network,

was adopted in place of store and forward. This enabled EUnet to connect with NSFNET in the US and with CERN’s TCP/IP connections. On January 1, 1990 EUnet began selling Internet access to non-academic customers in the Netherlands, making them one of the first companies to sell Internet access to the general public. EUnet provided local service through a respective national EUnet business partner in many European countries. In 1990 the Soviet IP-based network RELCOM, mostly operated by DEMOS-powered computers, was connected to the EUnet. EUnet GB Ltd was founded in the United Kingdom by a group of academics as a commercial

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

(ISP) in 1993. Jim Omand, the Chairman of EUnet GB, worked with EUnet Europe to form a pan-European Eunet in 1994. In April 1998 the company together with nearly all of the national European business partners of EUnet was sold to Qwest Communications International, which in turn later merged EUnet into the ill-fated joint-venture KPNQwest. In 2000, it was estimated that KPNQwest was carrying more than 50% of European IP traffic. Some of the ISPs operating under the name EUnet today can be traced back to the original EUnet.

Timeline

* 1982 UUCP links established between 4 countries (UK, Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden).http://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marshall/Internet/node16.html Cardiff University/Dave Marshall, History of the internet * 1984 kremvax April Fools Joke.http://godfatherof.nl/kremvax.html The Kremvax Hoax *1986 FNET, the French branch of EUnet, converted from UUCP to TCP/IP. * 1988 First connection in Europe to NSFnet by CWI, a Dutch computing centre. * 1990 First offerings for "all comers". *1993 GBnet Ltd becomes EUnet GB Ltd. *1994 EUnet GB and EUnet Europe form a pan-European Eunet. *1994 EUnet DE purchased by UUnet. * 1995 EUnet GB Ltd sold to PSI. *1996 EUnet International formed by share swaps with seven of the national organisations. * 1998 Sale to Qwest for $154.4 million.

Legacy

Most national EUnet affiliates or subsidiaries predated other commercial Internet offerings in the respective countries by many years. Until the early 1990s, nearly every European country had a telecommunications monopoly with an incumbent national PTT. Commercial and non-commercial provision of telecommunications services was prohibited or, at least, took place in a legal "grey zone". During the same period, as part of an industrial political strategy to stop US domination of future network technology, the European Community embarked on efforts to promote OSI protocols, founding for example RARE and associated national "research" network operators ( DFN, SURFnet, SWITCH to name a few). During this period, EUnet played an important and decisive role in the adoption of

in Europe, beginning in 1988.

People

The following people were involved in EUnet: *

Teus Hagen Teus Hagen (* 6 October 1945 in Wijnjeterp)Helmut Neumann: Das Lexikon der Internetpioniere. Flintbek, 2001. is a Dutch Internet pioneer. Biography Hagen started his career at the Computer Laboratory of the Mathematical Centre. Later, he initia ...

* Daniel Karrenberg * Piet Beertema * Peter Collinson (EUnet GB) * Jim Omand (EUnet GB – Chairman) *Keld Simonsen * Björn Eriksen * Julf Helsingius * Glenn Kowack * Luc De Vos * Michael Habeler

References

External links