2008-11-17 1 year ago
Happy birthday: 20 years of Internet in the Netherlands. Given the fact that I first experienced hands-on Internet at a traineeship at FOM Rijnhuizen in 1991 I thought Internet for research networks in the Netherlands were older. But the push to use committee-standards based X.25 networks was very strong in the Netherlands (and in the rest of Europe) which held back TCP/IP for a while. I remember working at Cetis when the Hogeschool had Internet access and still hearing people talk about grant proposals to be read by the European Union directorate on telecommunications and regulations (DG-XIII) making sure there was absolutely no mention of "Internet" or "TCP/IP" in those proposals but generic terms like "a telecommunications network" so the DG-XIII wouldn't deny them right away because "Internet" was America-centric.
