CNR is preparing to celebrate a landmark occasion: April 30, 1986, was no ordinary date, but the day of Italy’s first connection to the Internet, with the first “ping” sent from the research center of the then CNUCE at CNR in Pisa, marking Italy’s entry into the global network. This milestone placed the country fourth in Europe among connected nations, after the United Kingdom, Norway, and Germany.
On April 30, 2026, the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) will celebrate 40 years of Internet in Italy, a landmark anniversary for the country’s digital history. The event, which will have a high-level scientific and institutional focus, will take place at the CNR Auditorium in Pisa, with the participation of local authorities, the CNR President Andrea Lenzi, and numerous representatives from the research and innovation sectors, particularly experts in artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.
That first “ping” was not just a milestone, but the beginning of a path of innovation that continues to this day: over a decade later, CNUCE was dissolved, giving rise to two new CNR institutes, the Institute of Information Science and Technologies "Alessandro Faedo" (ISTI) and the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT), which inherited its legacy and today serve as reference points in research on Internet and its evolutions.
Building on the expertise developed in this pioneering context, in 1987, the U.S. authorities that had been overseeing - and continue to oversee - the Internet entrusted the CNUCE with the management of the national .it domain: the registration of the first Italian domain, “cnuce.cnr.it,” officially marked the establishment of the .it Registry, which is still managed by CNR-IIT today. The Registry now includes over 3.5 million domains and ranks seventh among European registries in terms of the number of registered domains.
On the occasion of the April 30th celebration, CNR and Pisa are not just looking back at history but also forward to the future: forty years after its inception, the Internet is no longer merely a communication infrastructure, but a dynamic and intelligent system at the center of the technological, industrial, and geopolitical challenges of tomorrow.
The event represents a concrete signal of continuity between past and future: from the historic first “ping” of 1986 to the new experiments that will help shape the Internet of tomorrow. The discussion will focus on artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and the transformation of the Internet toward increasingly distributed, intelligent, and pervasive models.
The day aims to offer a comprehensive and multidisciplinary vision of this transformation, bringing together research, industry, and institutions to understand not only where we are today but, above all, what kind of Internet we are building for the coming decades.
In this context, the anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect and discuss the future of the Internet and the role that Italy - and in particular CNR with Pisa and Tuscany - continues to play in the field of digital innovation.