Greenpeace's E-mail, Internet and WWW history

Chronological summary:

  • 1978: First inter-office telex (5-bit code) link. In the USA, telex services were migrating towards electronic services such as Easylink (Western Union), which eventually included 7-bit ASCII coded email.

  • July 1983: San Francisco: Introduction of Easylink email service for Greenpeace use.

  • Early 1984: USA-wide BBS and E-mail via Greenlink (the first) via direct dial in San F'co;

  • January 1985: Introduction of Tina/Comet (commercial service based in Boston) with global access via Infonet

  • mid 1985: Global (but slow) access to Greenlink via CompuServe data networks

  • 23 March 1989: Greenpeace was the first NGO to gain access to international data services in Moscow.

  • December 1989: Commencement of Comet-based GreenLink-2 with extended global access via CompuServe, Tymnet and Sprintnet data networks

  • 24 June 1993: Email gateway with Internet: domain green2.maxcom.com

  • 20 December 1993: New email gateway with Internet: domain green2.dat.de

  • 23 February 1994: Gopher submenu on dds.hacktic.nl (FreeNet-type service); Press releases, several MB's campaign archive, etc

  • 1 June 1994: WAIS index on press release and campaign archives

  • 17 August 1994: in-house Gopher/FTP server in domain greenpeace.org
    • ; on 2nd-hand Compaq 386/20 with GNU/Linux (thanks to Antenna: www.antenna.nl)

  • 30 August 1994: First Greenpeace WWW page: http://www.eunet.ch/local/greenpeace

  • 12 September 1994: in-house WWW home page: http://www.greenpeace.org; gopher + FTP being moved here (still the 386/20 PC)

  • 28 September 1994: major Ozone campaign site: http://www.cyberstore.ca/greenpeace/ozone, mirrored to www.greenpeace.org

  • December 1994: addition of several Climate/Ozone/anti-Whaling campaign and legal info WWW areas

  • 20 March 1995: new email gateway for Greenlink-2: domain green2.greenpeace.org

  • 31 March 1995: Server upgrade to SuperSparc Sun-clone: xs2.greenpeace.org

  • 17 October 1995: pilot project for GreenLink-3: domain ams.greenpeace.org

  • 7 December 1995: start of world-wide intranet GreenLink-3 with several new subdomains

  • 25 January 1996: Muscat free text WWW indexer and search engine

  • during 1996: concerted effort to provide in-depth campaign info and archives.

  • 12 November 1996: Upgrade to Muscat FX search engine

  • January 1997: Addition of secure public server (SSL): www.greenpeace.com

  • 1 April 1997: Shutdown of Greenlink-2

  • 27 and 29 January 1999: Public non-secure www.greenpeace.org hacked by US hackers

  • July 2000: Two new public servers physically colocated near AMS-IX Internet exchange.

  • During 2001: Ever-increasing WWW interest (see statistics), increasing number of national WWW sites, new site developers, and a 10-node/dual-hubbed world-wide intranet and an additional 15-node VPN'ed global network (info for techies).

  • June 2002: A new WWW content management system was introduced, running on servers in Germany. The old server is renamed archive.greenpeace.org.

  • December 2002: All leased lines for the Intranet replaced by VPN's, expanded to 30 offices.

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