Origins of the effort to bring the Internet to Iran date back to 1987. At the time, the Internet (also called ARPANET) was a project supported by the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), connecting various academic and defense research centers in the US. This network supported only email and simple data transfer (ftp). A similar network supported by IBM was known as BITNET. In Europe, only universities and academic centers were connected to the European Academic Research Network (EARN) which was part of the BITNET network.
Iran's entrance into the Internet was then spearheaded by IPM and its deputy director, Dr. Siavash Shahshahani. The link was at first through the BITNET network and Iran's membership in EARN (which developed later to the Trans-European Research and Educational Networking Association - TERENA). It consisted of a single 9600 baud leased line to the University of Vienna in Austria in January 1993. The first email from Iran was a simple greeting from IPM's director, Dr. Larijani, to Vienna University administrators.
The link later developed into a full-fledged Internet link with the assignment of 500 IP addresses to the country and acceptance of Iran as a Class C node. Primary users of the connection at first were academics and research institutions, all being served through their own connections to IPM.
Over the past few years, domestic Internet connections have grown very rapidly, at times placing Iran among the top countries in terms of rate of growth of Internet access. The present Iranian Internet scene, more than seven years after the original connection, is still a very dynamic one, with tens of thousands of mostly academic users being served via a single 512 kbps link, and with networks and bulletin boards expanding everywhere. Recently however additional outside links have been put into operation by the Iranian PTT, serving mostly commercial entities and government agencies. Ambitious plans for expanding Internet access and availability nationwide have also been announced.
As an indication of the rapid growth of the Internet in Iran, for the first time, the two leading presidential candidates in the May 1997 elections used the world wide web to get their message across: President Khatami at http://www.khatami.com and the conservative candidate Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri at http://nategh.co.ir. Results of the elections were announced ``live" on the web site of the Iranian government (http://www.netiran.com) as well.
The technical know-how for putting very fast links into operation in Iran is certainly there. A variety of protocols for satellite channels at T1 speeds of 1.544 Mb/s were tested by the Data Communication Company of Iran (DCI) in the late 1980's. A major reason for lack of progress on fast connections to Iranian universities and research centers for some time was friction between DCI and both IPM and the High Council of Informatics (HCI) - the governmental body charged with strategic planning of information technology expansion in Iran. At the same time one cannot discount the effect of the U.S. embargo on Iran, which has made the acquisition and maintenance of powerful servers, workstations, and satellite communication equipment difficult, if not impossible in certain cases.
Political tension between Iran and the US unfortunately made an impact on the free flow of information between the two countries as well (despite this last item being specifically excluded from the text of the US embargo on Iran). For a year or so after Iran's Internet debut, U.S. academic sites (on NSFNET) were not even recognizing Iranian IP addresses for telnet/ftp access. This problem resurfaced recently in August of 1996 only to be put swiftly to rest through the efforts of many people and organizations in the US, Europe, and Iran (including IPM, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation), who brought pressure on NSF to correct the situation that had been brought about by unilateral and unauthorized actions of one of its administrators, Dr. Steve Goldstein.