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The History of the Internet Internet Timeline 1999 Internet 2 / Napster / Domain Name Sales  Internet 2 Internet 2 (exceeding 8GBps), led by over 170 U.S. universities working in partnership with industry and government, developed and deployed advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. MCI/Worldcom, the vBNS provider for NSF, began upgrading the US backbone to 2.5GBps The world feared the unknown Y2K effects on the Internet, which never materialized. Computers were free with a 3-year network service agreement. Napster 
In mid-1999, the laid-back, 18-year-old Northeastern University dropout
Shawn Fanning – nicknamed "Napster" for the nappy hair –
developed Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platform. Napster,
a free software program, allowed people to easily exchange recordings
via the Net, cutting out stores and music publishers. Within a year
Napster would upend music's business model.Domain Name Sales Multi-million dollar domain name sales were the poster child of the dot-com excess, with the most infamous being Business.com, which was purchased by ECompanies Venture Group, headed by former Disney executive Jake Weinbaum. The following domain name purchases were realized in 1999 alone:
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