Alumni Association Honors Pioneers of the Internet

Despite the gray clouds, around 70 former and current members of the Dortmund Department of Computer Science joined the tour to learn firsthand how four members of the Computing Service Group (IRB) connected Germany to the internet via EUnet in the mid-1980s. The Dean of the Department of Computer Science, Prof. Gernot Fink, took the audience on a journey back in time 40 years in his welcoming address: “At that time, telephones had rotary dials. There was fax – and one device for the entire university. The Federal Post Office had a monopoly on the lines. And connections abroad were very, very expensive. At that time, the IRB acquired a computer called unido, which from 1983 onwards became the backbone of the German internet as part of the EUnet research project.”

It came about – as it so often does in life – through a combination of chance and the right constellation of people who had the drive, courage and perseverance to do it at the right time. These were computer science students Daniel Karrenberg and Axel Pawlik, research assistant Rüdiger Volk and IRB head Dr. Rudolf Peter. For example, Daniel Karrenberg had learned about a new form of computer-based correspondence during a stay abroad at Microsoft in the USA: e-mail. Driven by the idea of using something like that in Dortmund as well, he began to network unido with other UNIX computers at the IRB. A dedicated line to Amsterdam finally provided the connection to the internet, which at that time mainly connected individual research institutions. The project behind it was called EUnet, a Europe-wide network: European UNIX network. In 1985, a pilot phase of several months was initially launched at the University of Dortmund, after which it was actually Germany’s first internet service provider. It was not until 1993 that operations were transferred to EUnet Deutschland GmbH in the neighboring technology park, a typical spin-off company founded by Axel Pawlik and some colleagues.

The nucleus of German Internet

“At the beginning, we didn’t expect any commercial use of the internet or email at all, but rather saw it as a new kind of self-organized communication network, like amateur radio,” said Daniel Karrenberg during the tour. Axel Pawlik recalled how, as a student, he issued invoices for EUnet customers from research and development on which the term “invoice” was not even mentioned, but which were nevertheless paid. Felix Peter read out a cheerful greeting from his 87-year-old father, who had repeatedly convinced the university administration to rent even more powerful and expensive lines in the belief that the money would come back in again. Meanwhile, in 1988, the IRB even took over the administration of DE domains for six years. Here Rüdiger Volk laid the foundations for today’s DENIC.

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