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