History of the Pacific Islands as British protectorate by a Resident Commissioner from 1892 to 1916 as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), and later as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony from 1916 to 1974. A referendum was held in December 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony ceased to exist on 1 January 1976 and the separate British colonies of Kiribati and Tuvalu came into existence. Tuvalu became fully independent within the Commonwealth on 1 October 1978. On
Internet in Australia to the greater Internet, there existed an IP-based network, linking academic institutions within Australia, known as ACSNet, using the .oz domain and connected to international networks using other technologies. When Australia was fully integrated into the Internet, this domain was moved under .au to become .oz.au and still exists today. The first permanent circuit connecting AARNet to ARPANet using TCP/IP over X.25 was established in May 1989. It linked the University of Melbourne with the University of Hawaii via a 2400-bit/s (bits per second) satellite connection. It was later upgraded to 56 kbit/s (kilobits per second), and then 256 kbit/s,