Since 1985, Denmark had been on the EARN, The European Academic and Research Network, with connections to the mainframes at all three computing centres.

At that time, UNI•C was involved in the EARN network, and there was only one Internet provider in Denmark, namely DKUUG, the Danish UNIX User Group. The Internet provision part of DKUUG became a separate company, DKnet, in 1986.

In late 1987, UNI•C established a nation-wide network based on TCP/IP, which eventually led to DENet, the Danish Educational Network that proposed to be the Danish part of the Internet.

This perception of the DENet was valid at the time, because DKnet was mainly specialising in UUCP-based mail.

In mid 1988, the DENet was connected to the University of Copenhagen, where DKUUG resided, and thereby the DENet got international connection. At this time, only mail could be exchanges, whereas online connections still were not possible.

In 1989, the NORDUnet project was fully implemented, and resulted in an international connection for the DENet.

UNI•C expanded the net and by 1993 also allowed private companies and institutions not initially on the net to have connections established on a commercial basis.

At the same time, UNI•C introduced Internet provision for private individuals, which was, of course, based on classic character-based login via modem lines. This later became known as the "Internet Service Classic" product, as opposed to "Internet Service 2000" which was introduced by the end of 1994 and gave a PPP-based access to the World Wide Web.

With the rising number of Danish Internet providers, the need for a Danish internetwork exchange point arose, so as the domestic traffic would not be exchanged via the international lines, and in May 1994, UNI•C established the Danish Internet Exchange, called the DIX.

In the begining of 1996, a political decision was made to establish the Danish Research Network. This was in practice done by taking the existing DENet and upgrading it, whilst moving the private customers to a new, separate network.

At that time, it was decided that DENet was not the appropriate name for the research network, which is now known as Forskningsnettet. Instead the name, DENet, was used for the commercial part of the network and changed to be an acronym for Dansk Erhvervs Net (ie. the Danish Business Network).

In July 1997, UNI•C sold the commercial Internet activities to Netcom (parent company of Tele2 and Get2Net). These activities, which comprised 34 employees, equipment, communication lines, goodwill and the right to market a certain range of products, were used by Netcom to form the core of a new Internet providing company, called UNI2.

Around the same time, UNI•C was entrusted, by the Danish Ministry of Education, to operate and extend the network for the Danish educational sector, called the Sektornet.

On behalf of the Danish Ministry of Research and Information Technology, UNI•C still operates the Danish Research Network, called Forskningsnettet.

Thus, UNI•C only operates networks which serve the public sector it is still, with these two networks, one of the biggest Internet providers in Denmark. UNI•C also continues to host the Danish Internet Exchange (DIX).

Martin Bech