for compatibility of addressing and routing. The term was used in technical writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including in RFCs and IENs. Catenet was gradually displaced by the short-form of the term internetwork, internet (lower-case i), when the Internet Protocol spread more widely from the mid 1980s and the use of the term internet took on a broader sense and became well known in the 1990s.

Interconnection of networks