The ``founder" of the Internet in Iran is the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM), which is also the .ir national TLD manager, the hub of an academic and research network in Iran, and until recently the host of the only international gateway to the Internet.
In mid-1994, IPM modified its BITNET gateway to TERENA (formerly EARN), a MicroVAX 3100/20E, to support the TCP/IP protocol suite, establishing an Internet connection for IREARN members (vax.ipm.ac.ir). The network was assigned 512 IP addresses (194.225.70.0-194.225.71.255) and used the same 9.6 kbps link to Vienna as had been used by IREARN. The slow connection was explained by Ebrahim Mashayekh, then director of IPM, as being due to the poor quality of the telephone lines available. Thus, the universities that had IREARN connections gained access to the Internet, although applications were limited to principaly email, due to the slowness of the international link. At least 18 government universities and research centers were connected to the Internet via IPM. Other universities gained dial-up access to the Internet via IPM at this time. Due to the lack of LANs at most universities, however, Internet access was generally limited to some faculty and graduate students, who used a single computer terminal or a small LAN.