On this day 25 years ago, the very first meeting of the Committee for the Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNet was held, whose objective was to organise a network that will enable communication to every scientific researcher or student with all other scientists and students in the Republic of Croatia and the entire world.
In November of 1992, the first international communication link was set up, connecting the CARNet node in Zagreb with Austria. This represented the dawn of the age of the Internet in the Republic of Croatia, making the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet) the first Internet service provider (ISP) in the country. The first institutions that used an Internet connection were the University Computing Centre – Srce, the Faculty of Economics and Business in Osijek, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Zagreb, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding in Split, the Ruđer Bošković Institute, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Zagreb and the Faculty of Engineering in Rijeka. For the next several years, CARNet was the only Internet service provider in Croatia. It provided Internet services free of charge, not only to the academic community, but to all citizens of the Republic of Croatia.
On 27 March 1993, the international organisation Internet Assigned Number Authority (IAN) granted CARNet the rights to administer the top-level.hr domain while on 1 March 1995, the Government of the Republic of Croatia adopted the Regulation on the Establishment of the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet) as an institution for computer-based and IT infrastructure activities in education and science.
In its work during the past 25 years, CARNet has been actively contributing to the development of a digitally mature society in Croatia with numerous projects, such as e-Islands, e-Class Register, Schools 2.0 and, in particular, the project “e-Schools: Establishing a System for Developing Digitally Mature Schools (Pilot Project)”. CARNet also offers more than 70 services ranging from education and training to Internet connection, multimedia, computer security and user support, connecting almost 1.400 schools and more than 250 academic institutions, 35 of which belong to the health-care community.
