The Original forefathers of punk will always be the best, but a history of punk cannot be denied with a reference to 60's/70's garage rock like MC5, The Stooges to bands like The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Chelsea, Stiff L:ittle Fingers, The Buzzcocks, The Voidvods, The Slits, Siouxsie and The Banchees, Generation X, amongst many others
Then Second Wave Punk was always very exciting (around 1977) when many of the bands above first broke through, but at this time the US scene became even more seminal with bands like Black Flag, The Misfits, Wire and Crass.
Post- Punk Followed and this introduced The Fall, Throbbing Gistle, Gang of Four, Television, XTC etc etc
Hardcore Punk greats: Bad Brains, Social Distortion, The Replacements, Dead Kennedies, The Germs, Minor Threat, Husker Du, Agnostic Front and Sick of It All.
My least favourite but still important OI punk is best known through Sham 69, The Exploited and the like
While it's mostly hardcore/punk bands now, pop-punk was the biggest of the nineties many influenced by the above e.g. The Offspring, Green Day, Rancid, Less Than Jake, Bouncing Souls etc etc.
Hope it's a good compiliation