FUNET's 1984 network design

• The Ministry of Education launches the FUNET project to develop a computer network for universities and researchers.
• SUN releases its Network File System (NFS), which allows workstations to use hard disks on servers via a network as they would local disks. Because hard disks were still quite expensive and fragile, many workstations were supplied to universities totally without local disk storage, which made it especially easy to run workstation classes. NFS is still a standard feature of all Unix and Linux operating systems.
• The Apple Macintosh is released. A standard feature of this is the rather slow but easy-to-use AppleTalk local area network, which allows Apple Macs to be linked together. Later on, Appletalk networks could be linked into the Internet via a gateway.