Thank you for joining us for a special program featuring luminaries and colleagues from research and education as they reflected on NSFNET’s important networking contributions and share their outlook for the future.
Andrew Sullivan, our President and CEO, talked about Building, Defending, and Promoting the Internet through the Internet Society.
Abstract: The Internet is clearly now a critical resource for global society, yet decades in and still half of humanity is deprived of the opportunities that Internet connectivity offers. Now, more than ever, powerful forces and frustrated governments seek to mold the Internet to their own wishes and devices, threatening the most generative, innovative, and human technology ever invented. At the Internet Society we focus on growing and strengthening the Internet, and we will talk about the critical areas we see for the future of the Internet, tomorrow or 35 years from now.
In the United States, the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) program, established in 1985, was a pivotal program that laid the foundation of the global Internet. NSFNET was the first nationwide physical network in the US for the support of research and higher education. It connected supercomputing centers, regional research and education networks, federal agency networks, and international research and education networks from 1985-1995.
