DISA/DCA

On May 12th 1960 DISA – the Defense Information Systems Agency – was founded under its old name DCA (Defense Communications Agency) in Washington. In 1991 DCA was renamed DISA. DISA is an agency of the United States Department of Defense, whose primary mission is the planning, development and operation of communications- and information systems needed by the President, the Secretary of Defense and all armed forces in times of war and peace. The original idea of the ARPANET – the predecessor of the internet – was to create a military communications- and information network.

Of course DCA was very interested in such a network and in 1975 the operation of the early internet was given to DCA.
In 1982 ARPA and DCA agreed on using the protocols TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) as the standard protocols on the ARPANET. Hereupon the Department of Defense declared TCP/IP as their standard as well. One year later ARPANET split up in ARPANET and MILNET – a military network, which got 68 of the 113 existing nodes.