The birth of European Internet

CWI established the first connection between Europe and the Internet on 17 November 1988. The institute was the first non-American organization to gain access to the American science network NSFnet, which was the equivalent of Internet at the time.

This connection was a result of extensive negotiations with the American Internet administrators, in particular by CWI's network manager Piet Beertema and his colleagues.

Internet for everybody

The first open transatlantic internet connection was the first step to Internet for everybody. Soon, other academic and research organizations were connected, later followed by private companies and in 1993 by individual users. Since then, the internet has grown from a convenient way to exchange information with U.S. scientists into the indispensable mass medium it is today.

Registration of .nl and cwi.nl

Piet Beertema (CWI) played a central role within EUnet - the predecessor of the European Internet. Beertema managed the .nl administration for the Netherlands for 10 years from his room at CWI.
Due to the explosive growth of the number of domains, the task became too vast for one person. In 1996, the Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland (SIDN) was founded, which took over Beertema's registration work in January 1997. After that, Beertema became a board member of SIDN. In 1999 he received a royal decoration for his pioneering work for the development of internet in the Netherlands and Europe.