Summary

  • The national academic-network project began in 1991; the public launch of Croatia’s IP network and international Internet connection followed on 17 November 1992.
  • That connection ran from Zagreb to the University of Vienna at 9.6 kbps. The initial institutional users and a public computer at Srce mark access points, not household reach.

A country can be connected by one line long before most people can use it. Croatia’s official Internet date is a useful example: the link was real, but the access map remained institutional.

The project began in October 1991, when the Ministry of Science, Technology and Informatics started a national academic-network effort. A committee followed that autumn. The University of Zagreb Computing Centre, known as Srce, received responsibility for building and administering the network and supporting users. Those dates describe a project and its operating arrangement; they should not be collapsed into the later legal history of the institution.

On 17 November 1992, the Croatian academic and research computer network based on IP, together with its connection to the global Internet, was officially launched at the University of Zagreb Rectorate. The international circuit linked Zagreb with the University of Vienna at 9.6 kbps. That figure is a line capacity, not a measure of how many people were online or how much traffic they exchanged. CARNET’s anniversary account gives the date, route and capacity; the Croatian Government’s account independently records the Zagreb–Vienna connection.

The first named institutions included faculties in Osijek, Zagreb, Split and Rijeka, as well as the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the science ministry. This was a research and education network built through institutions, not a claim that every school, business or home had a connection. CARNET’s retrospective also says citizens could use a public computer at Srce. A shared terminal widened the point of access, but it is not evidence of widespread personal connectivity.

The chronology continued in distinct steps. Registration and operation of Croatia’s .hr top-level domain began on 27 March 1993, according to CARNET. The communications regulator says the CARNET institution itself was established by government decree in 1995, after the project had started in 1991 and the international link had been established in 1992. HAKOM’s history helps keep the project, network launch and institution on separate dates.

The 9.6 kbps link matters as evidence of an international academic connection, not as a proxy for national adoption. The surviving public accounts identify who organized the network and several early institutional access points. They do not provide a complete node map, traffic series, user count or household-access measure. Croatia joined the Internet through a research network; the reach of that connection must be measured separately.