A twenty-year journey through the origins of networking — from Italy's first packet-switched network to the country's entry into the Internet era.
Italy's first national packet-switched network, connecting CNR and university computing centres from Palermo to Milan, and the direct ancestor of Italy's networking culture.
Europe's first satellite-based packet network, linking CERN with major European physics laboratories at 2 Mbps — a remarkable rate for the period.
One of the six most important OSI projects worldwide — an ambitious bet on the standard that, in the end, TCP/IP would overtake.
Six years of delays, a coffee break with Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, and the gateway at CNUCE that connected Italy on 30 April 1986.
Each project page links to its original technical fact sheet (PDF) and to the official "Origini di Internet in Italia" archive — the IIT-CNR / University of Pisa project preserving the photos and documents of this history.