US National Science Foundation
Introduction
After winning World War 2 the American people realised that scientists and engineers had played a major role in victory. Penicillin and the Atomic bomb were the two best known contributions made by researchers. Politicians and researchers both felt the need to expand the frontiers of knowledge. The answer to this was the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF were given the responsibility to maintain the United States leadership in Scientific discovery and the development of new technologies. NSF is now the major source of federal backing for basic research conducted by America’s colleges, they also monitor areas that are most likely to result in spectacular progress and appoint the most promising people to conduct the research. (1)
Discussion
In 1981, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a grant to establish the Computer Science Network (CSNET) to provide networking services to all University computer scientists. In 1985 the CSNET were trying to work out how it could provide high-end Computing resources at its recently established supercomputer centres. NSF wanted the supercomputers to be shared by scientists and engineers around the country, the solution they were looking for had to link many research universities to centres.
NSFNET went online in 1986 and connected the supercomputer centres at 56,000 bits per second. Before long the network became congested and by 1988 its links were upgraded to 1.5 megabits per second. Both regional research and educational networks supported by the NSF in part, were added to the NSFNET Unit and became the very first national 45 megabits per second Internet network in 1991. (2)
The emergence of NSFNET and NSF’s supercomputing centres coincided with the rise of personal computers and the launch of the World Wide Web in 1991 thanks to Tim Berners Lee and colleagues at CERN and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva Switzerland. The NSF centres developed many tools for organizing, locating and navigating through information, including the first widely used web server applications. The most impressive advance the NSF made during this time was the creation of Mosaic, which was the first freely available web browser to allow web pages to include both graphics and text. Mosaic was created in 1993 by students and staff working at the NSF supported National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. In less than 18 months NCSA Mosaic became the “browser of choice” for more than a million users and set off a major growth in the number of web servers as well as web surfers in general. (3)
Due to the popularity of the growing Internet, commercial firms started to build their own networks. In the year following NSFNET, NSF helped create a commercially viable internet. Another important addition was the registrations of domain names which help computers locate one another.
The year 1998 marked the end of NSF’s direct role in the Internet. That year the network access points and routing arbiter functions were transferred to the commercial sector. However the decommissioning of NSFNET and privatization of the Internet did not mark the end of NSF’s involvement in networking. NSF continues to support many research projects to develop new networking tools, educational uses of the Internet and network-based applications. (4)
Through its programs, NSF continues to help research and education institutions enhance their connections to the internet. NSF have also played a major role in providing international connection services that have bridged the US network infrastructure with countries and regions including Europe, Africa, Latin America, Russia and the Pacific Rim. Also the NSF have continued to increase the level of the highest performance US research and education networks by supporting connectivity and collaborations with their counterparts in Canada, Europe and Asia.(5) Over the years the NSF have provided funding for thousands of distinguished scientists and engineers to conduct ground breaking research including more than 170 Nobel Prize winners. Although shut down and replaced by a faster architecture network called Vbns in 1995, NSF’s pioneering approach to connecting computers without doubt was one of the most important developments in the history of the internet and without their dedication we would not have such an efficient internet today. Other than NSFNET the NSF also established the InterNIC which was another very important invention because it provides domain name registration services, directory and data base services and information and education services for the Internet Community. (6)
Conclusion
It is clear to see that NSF’s contribution to the way we use the internet today is a major one. By creating five supercomputer centres throughout the US and connecting them to benefit researchers so they could share information with each other they also sparked an idea that would grow into the Internet as we know it today.
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Frazer, Karen (2000)
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How did the NSF get involved?
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The birth of the Internet (Last Updated July 10th 2008)
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Aaron Roberts