🖥️ ipv4.events

A retro Windows 95–style timeline of the Internet's IPv4 era. From ARPANET to dual-stack — and beyond. 📡

▶ Launch ipv4.events

Curated by IPXO and a growing community of contributors. 500+ milestones, 32 categories, 8 decades of Internet history — rendered in glorious silver-gray panels with beveled borders.

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🗂️ Repository Structure

ipv4-events/
├── docs/                          # 💾 Public site root (served by GitHub Pages)
│   ├── index.html                 # Main app — Win95 UI, loads data & renders timeline
│   ├── 404.html                   # Blue Screen of Death 404 page
│   ├── CNAME                      # Custom domain: ipv4.events (apex)
│   ├── robots.txt                 # Crawling rules + sitemap pointer
│   ├── sitemap.xml                # SEO sitemap (homepage only — SPA canonical)
│   ├── icons/                     # 🖱️ Win95/98/NT/W2K/XP .ico files + social card
│   ├── css/style.css              # All styles — retro theme, tabs, filters, modal
│   ├── js/app.js                  # Data fetch, hash routing, filters, render, modal
│   └── data/                      # 📋 Human-editable JSON (the real source of truth)
│       ├── categories.json        # Category IDs / labels / groups / icons
│       ├── news.json              # Daily news feed (updated by GitHub Actions)
│       └── events/                # Events split by topic
│           ├── manifest.json      # Load order for all event JSON files
│           └── *.json             # One file per category
├── scripts/
│   └── fetch-news.mjs             # 📰 Fetches RSS feeds → docs/data/news.json
└── .github/workflows/
    └── fetch-news.yml             # ⚙️ Runs fetch-news.mjs daily at 06:00 UTC

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📋 Event Format

Each event lives in docs/data/events/<category>.json:

{
  "id": "1981_rfc791",
  "year": 1981,
  "categories": ["Standards"],
  "title": "RFC 791 — IPv4 Published",
  "overview": "The Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is standardized in RFC 791, defining the dominant packet format for decades.",
  "hashtags": ["RFC791", "IPv4", "Standards"],
  "links": {
    "wikipedia": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4"
  }
}

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
id	string	✅	Unique key — lowercase, underscores, no spaces
year	integer	✅	e.g. 1981
categories	string[]	✅	One or more IDs from categories.json
title	string	✅	Short event title
overview	string	✅	2–3 sentences describing the event
hashtags	string[]	✅	Keywords for search and filtering
links.wikipedia	string	☑️	Wikipedia article URL

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🖱️ Categories

32 categories organized into 10 groups displayed as a grouped pill bar on the homepage:

Group	Categories
📜 Standards & Governance	Standards, Governance, RIRs
📡 Networking & Backbone	Networking, Backbone Speeds, Submarine Cables, Wireless, IXPs & NOGs, Hardware & Vendors
💻 Operating Systems	Windows OS, Linux Distros, Mobile OS
👨‍💻 Programming & Software	Programming Languages, Software & Tools, Web Browsers, Streaming & Multimedia
💬 Social & Messaging	Social Networks, Messaging
🤖 AI & Emerging Tech	Artificial Intelligence, Quantum & Next-Gen, Metaverse & XR
🔒 Security & Policy	Security, Policy & Regulation
💰 Economy	Finance, Market
☁️ Cloud & Infrastructure	Cloud & Virtualization, Serverless, Edge Computing, CDN, Data Centers
🚀 Space & Satellite	Satellite Internet, Space

Each entry in categories.json:

{
  "id": "Standards",
  "label": "Standards",
  "group": "Standards & Governance",
  "iconUrl": "icons/w98_help_book_small.ico"
}

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💾 Contributing

The easiest way: click "+ Propose an Event" on the homepage — it opens a pre-filled GitHub issue, no fork required.

To contribute JSON directly, read CONTRIBUTING.md.

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⚙️ Development

Pure static HTML + vanilla JS on GitHub Pages — no build step.

Running locally

npx serve docs
# open http://localhost:3000

Key files

File	What it does
docs/js/app.js	Parallel data fetch, hash routing, category pill bar, news tab, contribute modal, dynamic meta tags
docs/css/style.css	Retro Win95 theme, view tabs, filter controls, decade jump nav, news cards
docs/data/categories.json	Canonical category list — edit to add/rename categories
docs/data/events/manifest.json	Load order for all event JSON files
docs/data/news.json	Auto-generated daily — do not edit by hand
scripts/fetch-news.mjs	Fetches RSS from RIPE Labs, APNIC, ARIN, Cloudflare, etc.

Hash routing

The app uses client-side hash routing. All routes are handled by app.js:

URL	View
https://ipv4.events/	Timeline, defaults to 2020s
https://ipv4.events/#/category/networking	Timeline filtered by category
https://ipv4.events/#/decade/1990s	Timeline filtered by decade
https://ipv4.events/#/search/arpanet	Timeline filtered by search term
https://ipv4.events/#/news	News view

Dynamic meta tags

updatePageMeta() in app.js updates <title> and <meta name="description"> on every route change. This ensures Google's JS-rendering crawl indexes unique titles and descriptions per category, decade, and search view.

Asset cache busting

CSS and JS are loaded with a ?v= query param in index.html. Bump the version string on every deploy that changes these files:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css?v=20260423i">
<script src="js/app.js?v=20260423i" defer></script>

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📰 News Feed

The News tab shows the latest articles from IPv4/internet news sources, fetched daily by a GitHub Actions workflow.

Sources: RIPE Labs, APNIC, ARIN, Cloudflare, The Register, IETF, CircleID

Workflow: .github/workflows/fetch-news.yml — runs scripts/fetch-news.mjs daily at 06:00 UTC and commits the result to docs/data/news.json via the GitHub Contents API (signed commit, satisfies branch protection).

To trigger manually: GitHub → Actions → "Fetch news feed" → Run workflow.

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🌐 SEO

This is a pure client-side SPA. SEO approach:

• Single canonical URL — https://ipv4.events/ is the only URL in sitemap.xml. Category/decade/news routes are hash-based and not separately indexed.
• Dynamic meta tags — updatePageMeta() sets unique <title> and <meta description> per route for Google's JS-rendering crawl.
• HTTPS enforced — GitHub Pages "Enforce HTTPS" is enabled on the repo (Settings → Pages). All http:// requests get a server-side 301 redirect. A JS fallback in index.html handles edge cases.
• robots.txt — references the HTTPS sitemap.
• Open Graph + Twitter cards — set in index.html <head>.

Note: Do not add category or decade URLs back to sitemap.xml. When Ahrefs (or other crawlers that don't execute JS) encounter these paths, they see thin-content pages and flag them as duplicates, which tanks the health score. The updatePageMeta() approach handles SEO for JS-capable crawlers (Google) without creating duplicate-content issues for non-JS crawlers.

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📜 License

• Code: MIT License
• Content: CC BY-SA 4.0 (attribution required)

Made with 💾 by IPXO and contributors.