What was the first satellite data link that can properly be called an internet connection?

Question

Scott Manley, in his second video about communication satellites, focusing on the 1963 Telstar 1, mentioned at 10:22:

(Telstar 1) could be used for telephones it could carry multiple circuits, it carried data at something like 800 kilobits per second. They were able to exchange data between the computers. So the ground stations had these IBM 1620 computers that were needed to operate all the equipment and they were able to send the data from one computer to another, making it, well, kind of one of the earliest examples of satellite internet.

Telstar one was also used to synchronize clocks between Europe and the US. They had managed to get the clock synchronization down to 200 microseconds -- two milliseconds sorry 2,000 microseconds. But after Telstar they had got the clocks between these two continents synchronized to within one microsecond making the clock people very very happy.

Data exchange between computers is indeed not (as Manley points out) the same thing as "the internet", so I'd like to ask:

Question: What was the first satellite data link that can properly be called an internet connection?

Answer 1

What was the first satellite data link that can properly be called an internet connection?

I'd say the first dial up across the pond that by chance happened to end up on a satellite connection:)

A less random candidate might be the SATNET demonstration of late 1977. Here satellite as well as mobile data links were used to transport TCP controlled packets between the California (US), England and Norway, using Intelsat IV-A and ground stations in West Virginia, US, Goonhilly, England and Tanum, Sweden.

(Picture taken from Wikipedia)

While the satellite link to Tanum was already used since 1973 for an ARPANET connection to NORSAR(*1), but of course with ARPANET's own protocol. After all, it was the time of great plurality: Many networks wit even more protocols:))

SATNET was the very reason the Internet Protocol was developed by Vint Cerf and others. SATNET, envisioned by Bob Kahn, was a packet network like ARPANET, but using its own protocols. It was developed with a focus on a single satellite connections shared between stations. By the mid 1970s it connected ground stations in Germany, Italy, Norway, UK and US. Those data channels were in parallel to the ARPANET ones.

Kahn thought about bridging between those networks by implementing an _Inter_net protocol allowing to maintain and route connections across different networks. Vint Cerf joined and combining Kahn's ideas with principles from the French CYCLADES network, which unlike ARPANET or SATNET was already designed for inter-networking. The result was TCP/IP and above setup of 1977, which might be considered not only the first satellite using Internet but also the first Internet at all :)

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It's Complicated:

It feels as if this question is based on a false dichotomy of 'The Internet' vs. 'a' data link. If not a trichotomy.

The internet as we know it today is collection of applications using on the internet protocol suite, which in turn uses data links to transfer information. Neither of this defines how many computers are involved (*2),nor does it define what functionality must exist to call data link use 'Internet'. Thus any question using this dichotomy may be invalid in itself.

In addition, the question itself already illuminates the issue of fuzzy definition even further:

What was the first satellite data link that can properly be called an internet connection?

(Emphasis mine)

It's That 'Proper' Part Highlightening the Whole Issue

Internet is not only a very vague definition (*3) but also one that changed over time - not at least by gradual development of the protocols that build the internet.

Putting commercial/manufacturer specific applications like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram aside, It's safe to state that everything Joe Average sees is HTTP based - a protocol as recent as 1991 (*4).

Can There Be Internet Proper Without HTTP i.e. before 1991?

Older gents like yours truly will of course object and point to SMTP and NNTP being all they need. Except, that only pushes the date back at most to 1980 when SMTP application level protocols were moved to IP .Which also moves the question to

Can There Be An Internet Proper Without Application Protocols i.e. before 1980?

1980 is not only the year of many applications moving toward IP but also when the IP suite was extended with UDP. Which kicks the can further down the road as 'The Internet Protocol' and in turn TCP was only developed in 1974. Thus:

Can There Be An Internet Proper Without Internet Protocol itself i.e. before 1974?

Some may say yes, as the ARPANET, cited as the start of the internet (*5), started operations in 1967

So What?

Don't ask me. it all depends on your value of 'proper' Internet. One may be eager to find something spectacular early and twist as many adjectives as needed, or come down to a rather sober conclusion that satellite based internet is a nice thing to support remote operation, but otherwise was already outdated when the Internet became the Internet we know.

All of that still based on a

Regarding Mr.Manley point I'd say it's neither right nor wrong. It's a valid description for today's viewers about an achievement at a time when the internet we know was still just some fluctuations in the primordial soup it would some day evolve from.

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*1 - Which in turn was already connected to ARPANET as early as 1971.

*2 - Well, commonly at least two would be nice, but all of those applications work as fine using localhost :))

*3 - For some people and/or even whole countries Facebook or Tick-Tock is the internet.

*4 - Though, he might name whatever browser he uses.

*5 - More rational, the ARPANET was just one of many networking attempts during the 60s and 70s. neither the first not the definitive one.

Answer 2

The main question is "define Internet": When we're talking about the commercial Internet, that really only took off in the late 1980s, early 1990, this coincides with the development and commercial introduction of satellite TV which really made transponder rental and thus dedicated satellite network connections commercially viable. Satellite datacomms is, astonishingly, much older than "the Internet" (whatever that might be...)

If you go earlier, you can find the necessary technical capabilities fulfilled as early as 1965, starting with Intelsat F1, which had two C-Band transponders that could provide (serial) data connections. Thus, data connections provided via satellite pre-date the introduction of "Internet protocols" (as standards) by about 15 years.

"Traditional" satcom is really not much of a technical challenge for an internet connection - Because the satellite transponder is in principle nothing but a big "mirror in space", it behaves like an (admittedly very long) piece of wire, typically at T1 (1.5Mbps) or E1 (2Mmbps) data rate, to the connection. TCP connections simply increase their window size to adapt to the longer round-trips. UDP and interactive connections, however, tend to suffer from the roughly 3-500ms delay on the data path.

The timeframe mentioned above coincides with the introduction of satellite-based TV, which did provide satellite transponder capacity that was "affordable" for the first time and enabled commercially viable satellite internet (with all the downsides of comms over geo-stationary satellites).

This "old-style" technology is in nearly no way comparable with contemporary satellite Internet like StarLink - That works with low-earth-orbit satellites that are interconnected through optical laser links (thus, the sender and receiver do not need to be both in the same coverage area of one single satellite, and the round-trip-delay is much lower because of the low orbits of the satellites). Thus, Starlink is a real network compared to classical satcom, which typically provides a point-to-point connection.