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In the early 1980s, the TCP and IP standards were not the only major renovation to networking. Email programs on the ARPANET were dependent on the original file-transfer protocol (FTP) to send and receive email. However, as email processing grew more complicated, it became clear that a separate transfer mechanism for mail was needed. In August 1982, Jon Postel and his colleagues introduced the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which clarified existing practices and added new control features.

During this time, networking faced another challenge as the number of hosts on the network increased. Each host machine had a given name, resulting in naming conflicts. To address this problem, the domain name system (DNS) was created. Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris, and Craig Partridge worked on developing the new addressing scheme. DNS introduced a hierarchical structure to network addresses, with each address having levels of information representing a smaller, more specific part of the network address. The internet community debated the sequence of the hierarchy and what the domains should be named, eventually settling on seven top-level domains: edu, com, gov, mil, net, org, and int.

The internet started to gain attention outside the scientific and academic communities in 1989 when Vint Cerf attended the Interop trade show. He was surprised to see the amount of money being spent on networking exhibitions and realized that the internet was expanding beyond its initial users. By this time, TCP/IP had become widespread and the infrastructure built upon it was growing in Europe. TCP/IP’s success showed that technology standards should be discovered rather than decreed.

The NSFNET program further democratized networking by allowing anyone with an internet connection on a college campus to become a user. The NSFNET became the internet’s backbone, offering faster connections than the ARPANET. By the late 1980s, more computers were connected via the NSFNET than the ARPANET, and the latter was considered outdated. In 1985, Bob Kahn left DARPA to form the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), focusing on developing a national information infrastructure. DARPA management no longer prioritized networking and decided to decommission the ARPANET.

Mark Pullen was given the task of decommissioning the ARPANET by transferring sites from the ARPANET to the NSFNET backbone. Although he was initially worried about breaking the news to Bob Kahn, Pullen found support from him. One by one, sites were transferred to regional networks, with DARPA and NSF helping create new homes when necessary. The IMPs that formed the original backbone of the ARPANET were powered down, removed, and some were junked. By the end of 1989, the ARPANET was officially shut down, and the NSFNET became the principal backbone.

Overall, the 1980s saw significant developments in networking. The introduction of SMTP and DNS improved email processing and addressed naming conflicts, and the proliferation of TCP/IP led to the dominance of the internet over multiple networks. The decommissioning of the ARPANET marked a symbolic transition towards a new era of networking.

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