The first "internet" companies?
Johnny Billquist
>
> A friend asked me yesterday who the "first" Internet company would
> have been, in the context of a commercial organisation specifically
> created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
> an access provider like UUNET), and I had to answer that to my best
> immediate recollection that would have been Clari.Net from Brad
> Templeton & co. (I'll consider UUCP networking as the practical origin
> of the Net as we know it today.)
I have no idea what the first company might be, but one thing bothers
me here.
UUCP was the Unix way of passing mail (and whatever) around in the "early"
days, since Unix was/is braindamaged. The Internet (or rather ARPANET)
existed long before this, and was not connected to UUCP in any way.
How can anyone see UUCP as the practical origin of anything?
Let's be honest. Unix is a late coming player (Windows don't deserve
mentioning).
A guess at an answer to your question might be Bolt-Beranek-Newman,
or BBN.
That will get you to the early '70s. Don't know if they even can claim
reaching back with research into the '60s.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist | johnny.b...@netinsight.net
Net Insight AB | phone: +46 8 685 04 88
Västberga Allé 9 | fax: +46 8 685 04 20
Box 42093 |
SE-126 30 STOCKHOLM, Sweden | http://www.netinsight.net
Power Hungry Fluffazoid of Perversion
> Chris Baird wrote:
>>
>> A friend asked me yesterday who the "first" Internet company would
>> have been, in the context of a commercial organisation specifically
>> created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
>> an access provider like UUNET), and I had to answer that to my best
>> immediate recollection that would have been Clari.Net from Brad
>> Templeton & co. (I'll consider UUCP networking as the practical origin
>> of the Net as we know it today.)
Nah, that's the other net (Usenet) you're thinking of, which was
available to the general public a good decade before the Internet. At
the time, what became the Internet was largely the playground of the
government and academentia.
> I have no idea what the first company might be, but one thing
> bothers me here. UUCP was the Unix way of passing mail (and
> whatever) around in the "early" days, since Unix was/is
> braindamaged.
Correct. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that most
computers weren't allowed to use the ARPANET, or that uucp was better
suited to the dialup lines mere mortals could afford.
> The Internet (or rather ARPANET) existed long before this, and was
> not connected to UUCP in any way.
Gated lists appeared not long after uucp did.
> How can anyone see UUCP as the practical origin of anything?
Don't look , but you're using a direct descendant of its most visible
feature right now.
> Let's be honest. Unix is a late coming player (Windows don't deserve
> mentioning).
For public commercial use?
> A guess at an answer to your question might be Bolt-Beranek-Newman,
> or BBN.
Not really. They did the infrastucture work, but a more direct
descendant of the current commercial information providers would be
the commercial subcontractors who appeared on commercial services like
CompuServe. Remember that the ARPANET, then NFSnet, weren't there for
commercial activity.
Johnny Billquist
>
> Johnny Billquist <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
> > How can anyone see UUCP as the practical origin of anything?
>
> Don't look , but you're using a direct descendant of its most visible
> feature right now.
:-) Well, news isn't exactly the same as UUCP, but yes, news used to
travel over UUCP, and news was a Unix hack. ARPANET was more into mailing
lists.
Interesting question: Can UUCP be seen as the origin of news? I think more
of UUCP as a way of transporting whatever data you wanted to between sites.
In this view, news isn't really related to UUCP, it just happened to be
the way to transport the messages. No alternative existed back then.
> > Let's be honest. Unix is a late coming player (Windows don't deserve
> > mentioning).
>
> For public commercial use?
I guess that depends on what you mean by commercial. If you are talking
about companies selling access and acting as go-betweens for others
utilising the Internet, then Unix has been there since the beginning, but
then we're just talking about since 1992 or so.
However, ARPAnet had to be maintained, upgraded and so on before that.
This involved companies, who made money from it, and did pretty much
the same thing they do today. It's just the customers that have
changed.
> > A guess at an answer to your question might be Bolt-Beranek-Newman,
> > or BBN.
>
> Not really. They did the infrastucture work, but a more direct
> descendant of the current commercial information providers would be
> the commercial subcontractors who appeared on commercial services like
> CompuServe. Remember that the ARPANET, then NFSnet, weren't there for
> commercial activity.
No. But BBN is a commercial company. They worked on the infrastructure
for money. The difference is only in who the customers are. Commercial
companies, or academia.
One of the first companies I heard of, selling access to just about
anyone was the Well. How about that, then?
Power Hungry Fluffazoid of Perversion
> Interesting question: Can UUCP be seen as the origin of news? I think more
> of UUCP as a way of transporting whatever data you wanted to between sites.
> In this view, news isn't really related to UUCP, it just happened to be
> the way to transport the messages. No alternative existed back then.
Yeah, it's pretty closely tied in. Most obvious is that we still use
bang paths to tell where an article came from, but also more
fundamental stuff like the store-and-forward, flood-fill distribution
mechanism waas designed with short, intermittent connections in mind.
Even UUCP itself hasn't really been relegated to history; run it over
IP, and it can move articles over the wires much more efficiently than
NNTP (assuming a mostly text feed).
[...]
> I guess that depends on what you mean by commercial. If you are talking
> about companies selling access and acting as go-betweens for others
> utilising the Internet, then Unix has been there since the beginning, but
> then we're just talking about since 1992 or so.
Right, but that's the kind of thing the original poster ws asking
about -- "in the context of a commercial organisation specifically
created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
an access provider like UUNET)"
> However, ARPAnet had to be maintained, upgraded and so on before that.
> This involved companies, who made money from it, and did pretty much
> the same thing they do today. It's just the customers that have
> changed.
But they weren't information providers. BBN, DEC, IBM, Xerox et al
built the stuff that made it all work, but it was for others to
exploit the medium as a channel for commerce. Of course, that sort of
thing wasn't even really allowed on the Internet until the past decade
when the NSF backbone was moved into the private sector; even that far
back, there wasn't much one could *buy* in the way of information,
except maybe for something like a telnet session to Delphi (and those
online services don't fit the mold either, since they began as
independent networks).
For businesses started specifically to make a quatloo or three by
selling information using the Internet, there isn't much to look for
before Mosaic and the influx of the masses.
jmfb...@aol.com
Power Hungry Fluffazoid of Perversion <supe...@india.com> wrote:
>Johnny Billquist <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> A friend asked me yesterday who the "first" Internet company would
>>> created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
>>> immediate recollection that would have been Clari.Net from Brad
>>> Templeton & co. (I'll consider UUCP networking as the practical origin
>>> of the Net as we know it today.)
>
>Nah, that's the other net (Usenet) you're thinking of, which was
>available to the general public a good decade before the Internet. At
>the time, what became the Internet was largely the playground of the
>government and academentia.
>
>> I have no idea what the first company might be, but one thing
>> bothers me here. UUCP was the Unix way of passing mail (and
>> whatever) around in the "early" days, since Unix was/is
>> braindamaged.
>
>Correct. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that most
>computers weren't allowed to use the ARPANET, or that uucp was better
>suited to the dialup lines mere mortals could afford.
>
>> The Internet (or rather ARPANET) existed long before this, and was
>> not connected to UUCP in any way.
>
>Gated lists appeared not long after uucp did.
>
>
>Don't look , but you're using a direct descendant of its most visible
>feature right now.
>
>> mentioning).
>
>For public commercial use?
>
>> or BBN.
>
>Not really. They did the infrastucture work, but a more direct
>descendant of the current commercial information providers would be
>the commercial subcontractors who appeared on commercial services like
>CompuServe. Remember that the ARPANET, then NFSnet, weren't there for
>commercial activity.
JMF's first job at DEC was to connect quite a number of
computers at ORNL, including IBM stuff. After that
project, a group was formed whose charter was to do
that kind of customer-specific job. The code and hardware
developed in that group eventually became the product
known as ANF-10. I did not pay any attention to what
kind of customers this group serviced. There may well have
been some commercial businesses.
In the late 70s and early 80s, the code was shipped
bundled in the TOPS-10 monitor tape.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Chris Baird <anon...@brushtail.apana.org.au> writes:
> A friend asked me yesterday who the "first" Internet company would
> have been, in the context of a commercial organisation specifically
> created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
> an access provider like UUNET), and I had to answer that to my best
> immediate recollection that would have been Clari.Net from Brad
> Templeton & co. (I'll consider UUCP networking as the practical origin
> of the Net as we know it today.)
From another perspective, there were various companies & consoritums
that bid on NSFNET backbone (&/or were involved in regional networks
that connected to the backbone) ... a spin-off of the Merrit, IBM,
MCI, et. al that operated the NSFNET backbone was ANS ... Advanced
Network & Services, Inc. It was initially non-profit but then split
into a profit side and a non-profit side.
MCI also formed a number of organizations that were directed at
providing internet related-services (one of them was the first
involved with Mosiac ... aka Netscape in something that would be
referred to today as electronic commerce server).
misc. organizations that had acceptable use policies
ans.policy
barrnet.policy
cerfnet.policy
cicnet.policy
cren.policy
farnet.policy
fricc.policy
jvnc.policy
los-nettos.policy
michnet.policy
nearnet.policy
northwestnet.policy
nsfnet.policy
nysernet.policy
oarnet.policy
onet.policy
prepnet.policy
uninet.policy
actual text of some of the policies
ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
of
Advanced Network & Services, Inc.
Preamble.
Advanced Network & Services, Inc. ("ANS") is a
not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the advancement of education
and research in the interest of improving competitiveness and
productivity in the global economic environment. Accordingly, ANS'
objectives are to help expand access toand interchange of information
technology resources among academic, government and industry users,
provide state-of-the-art high speed data networks and related
services, engage in related research and development work, and improve
the ways that information is created and used for education and
research purposes. ANS aims to support the academic and research
communities, enhance education and research at all levels, and
contribute to improving the quality of education and research.
NYSERNet, Inc.
ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
NYSERNet, Inc. recognizes as acceptable all forms of data
communications across its network, except where federal subsidy of
connections may require limitations. In such cases use of the
network should adhere to the general principle of advancing
research and education through interexchange of information among
research and educational institutions in New York State.
In cases where data communications are addressed to recipients
outside of the NYSERNet regional network and are carried across
other regional networks or the Internet, NYSERNet users are advised
that acceptable use policies of those other networks apply and may,
in fact, limit use.
The President of NYSERNet, Inc. and his designees may at any time
make determinations that particular uses are or are not consistent
with the purposes of NYSERNet, Inc. which determinations will be
binding on NYSERNet users.
CERFnet - ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
Purpose of CERFnet
The purpose of the California Education and Research Federation is
to advance research and education in general by assisting in the
interchange of information among research and educational
institutions by means of high speed data communications and related
telecommunications techniques.
NORTHWESTNET ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
NorthWestNet is a regional data communications network serving a
consortium of universities and research groups in the northwest-
ern part of the United States. Its goals are summarized in the
Articles of Incorporation for the Northwest Academic Computing
Consortium, Inc. All use of NorthWestNet facilities must be
consistent with the goals and purposes of NorthWestNet. The
intent of this statement is to describe certain uses which are
consistent with the purposes of NorthWestNet, not to exhaustively
enumerate all such possible uses.
Los Nettos Acceptable Use Guidelines
------------------------------------
A member may send any type of data over the Los Nettos network.
If data from any source leaves Los Nettos and enters another network
that data must follow the acceptable use rules of the entered network
(including member networks, regional, or backbone networks). It is the
responsibility of the member where this traffic enters Los Nettos to
meet this requirement.
Any traffic which is disruptive from any source is prohibited.
NEARnet - ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
This statement represents a guide to the acceptable use of NEARnet for data
communications. It is only intended to address the issue of NEARnet use. In
those cases where data communications are carried across other regional
networks or the Internet, NEARnet users are advised that acceptable use
policies of those other networks apply and may limit use.
NEARnet member organizations are expected to inform their users of both the
NEARnet and the NSFnet acceptable use policies.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@adcomsys.net, ly...@garlic.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn/
David E. Fox
<Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
> I have no idea what the first company might be, but one thing bothers me
> here. UUCP was the Unix way of passing mail (and whatever) around in the
> "early" days, since Unix was/is braindamaged. The Internet (or rather
How can Unix be considered a "late-coming player", considering the
fact that Unix started in 1970, and the ARPANET in (I think) 1969?
What OSes (if any) would have been better suited ca. 1970? Multics,
maybe. IBM 360 OS? One wonders.
I don't see UUCP as being an ancestor to the Internet, either. Surely, the
Internet is derived from the ARPANET, and of course there was UUCP, but
it existed alongside the ARPANET (Internet), and not as such a progenitor
of it. Surely there were networks (of a sort) besides the Internet -- even up to
the 1990s (PC Board, anyone?) :) In this context, UUCP was just another way
to transmit mail, and not a bad way either. Unix did have 'mail' from about the
very beginning -- obviously there had to be a way to transmit that mail from
machine to machine.
> Johnny
David E. Fox
<Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
> Interesting question: Can UUCP be seen as the origin of news? I think
> more of UUCP as a way of transporting whatever data you wanted to
If so, I would think it's the origin somewhat indirectly. News didn't
directly descend from UUCP as such, but it certainly was inspired
by it (in the sense that things like irc and ftp etc. were "inspired' by
TCP/IP). IOW, the transport existed, and there (I suppose) needed to
be something to transport files around. Mail existed, certainly, and you
could transmit arbitrary files from machine to machine.
As I understand it, first there was "A News", then later came
"B-News", which was used for sometime, and eventually that
turned into "C-News". INN, of course, does much of the same
things, but is intended to transmit news over the internet, and
as such is different from C-News.
> Johnny
>
David E. Fox
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
"David E. Fox" <df...@belvdere.vip.best.com> writes:
> What OSes (if any) would have been better suited ca. 1970? Multics,
> maybe. IBM 360 OS? One wonders.
note the internal (360-based) corporate network was larger than the
arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime around
mid-80s (change in large part because of the introduction of
workstation & pc based tcp/ip nodes).
misc. refs:
http://www.garlic.com/97.html#26
http://www.garlic.com/99.html#39
http://www.garlic.com/99.html#112
http://www.garlic.com/99.html#113
http://www.garlic.com/2000.html#74
http://www.garlic.com/internet.htm
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> http://www.garlic.com/97.html#26
> http://www.garlic.com/99.html#39
> http://www.garlic.com/99.html#112
> http://www.garlic.com/99.html#113
> http://www.garlic.com/2000.html#74
> http://www.garlic.com/internet.htm
oops ... that needs a ~lynn
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#26
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#39
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#113
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#74
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm
Mike Meredith at home
> fact that Unix started in 1970, and the ARPANET in (I think) 1969?
Because when ARPAnet started, Unix didn't run on the kind of
machines that would have been connected (i.e. *large* machines). Unix
machines were first connected in the late 1970's(?).
> What OSes (if any) would have been better suited ca. 1970? Multics,
> maybe. IBM 360 OS? One wonders.
The first four machines were (according to my info) :-
* An SDS Sigma 7 running SEX (UCLA)
* An XDS-940 running Genie (SRI)
* An IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT (UCSB)
* PDP-10 running TWENEX (Utah)
> I don't see UUCP as being an ancestor to the Internet, either. Surely, the
> Internet is derived from the ARPANET, and of course there was UUCP, but
> it existed alongside the ARPANET (Internet), and not as such a progenitor
> of it. Surely there were networks (of a sort) besides the Internet -- even up to
Sure --- even in the national/international networking area.
Such as JANET (UK academic network) and BITNET (mainframe based
networking for those who couldn't get ARPAnet access).
> Unix did have 'mail' from about the
> very beginning -- obviously there had to be a way to transmit that mail from
> machine to machine.
Unix may or may not have had mail from the very beginning, but it
certainly didn't have a way to move mail from machine to machine
--- that was one of the reasons why UUCP was written (and I don't
think it was the main reason either).
Jim Thomas
Lynn> "David E. Fox" <df...@belvdere.vip.best.com> writes:
>> What OSes (if any) would have been better suited ca. 1970? Multics,
>> maybe. IBM 360 OS? One wonders.
TOPS-10 of course :-)
Lynn> note the internal (360-based) corporate network was larger than
Lynn> the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime
Lynn> around mid-80s (change in large part because of the introduction
Lynn> of workstation & pc based tcp/ip nodes).
As was the DEC internal DECnet network after it got going :-)
But the original question had "" around "internet". Does that allow
earlier RJE services to qualify?
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Jim Thomas <tho...@atlas.cfht.hawaii.edu> writes:
> But the original question had "" around "internet". Does that allow
> earlier RJE services to qualify?
the internal corporate network was primarily email, file transfer &
remote terminal simulation for online interactive users (on CP, VM,
CMS, etc) ... very little RJE & (JES2) NJE/NJI.
misc. ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#26
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#39
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#113
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#74
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm
The internal corporate network exceeded 2000 hosts about the same time
the "internet" exceeded 1000 hosts ... but the internet saw very
rapid growth in the '84 to '87 timeframe.
also from
http://www.pbs.org/internet/timeline/
1974 - 1981
The general public gets its first vague hint of how networked computers can
be used in daily life as the commercial version of the ARPANET goes
online. The ARPANET starts to move away from its military/research roots.
1974 - Bolt, Beranek & Newman opens Telenet, the first commercial version
of the ARPANET.
1976 - Queen Elizabeth goes online with the first royal email message.
1979 - Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, two grad students at Duke University,
and Steve Bellovin at the University of North Carolina establish the first
USENET newsgroups. Users from all over the world join these discussion
groups to talk about the net, politics, religion and thousands of other
subjects.
1981 - ARPANET has 213 hosts. A new host is added approximately once
every 20 days.
1982 - 1987
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf are key members of a team which creates TCP/IP,
the common language of all Internet computers. For the first time the loose
collection of networks which made up the ARPANET is seen as an
"internet", and the Internet as we know it today is born. The mid-80s marks
a boom in the personal computer and super-minicomputer industries. The
combination of inexpensive desktop machines and powerful, network-ready
servers allows many companies to join the Internet for the first time.
Corporations begin to use the Internet to communicate with each other and
with their customers.
1982 - The term "Internet" is used for the first time.
1984 - William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace" in his novel
"Neuromancer." The number of Internet hosts exceeds 1,000.
1986 - Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio creates the
first "Freenet" for the Society for Public Access Computing.
1987 - The number of Internet hosts exceeds 10,000.
David Wragg
> directly descend from UUCP as such, but it certainly was inspired
> by it (in the sense that things like irc and ftp etc. were "inspired' by
> TCP/IP).
FTP existed for many years before TCP/IP.
> IOW, the transport existed, and there (I suppose) needed to
> be something to transport files around. Mail existed, certainly, and you
> could transmit arbitrary files from machine to machine.
>
> As I understand it, first there was "A News", then later came
> "B-News", which was used for sometime, and eventually that
> turned into "C-News". INN, of course, does much of the same
> things, but is intended to transmit news over the internet, and
> as such is different from C-News.
But C-News did operate by transmitting news over the internet. The
first posts archived in HISTORY file included with INN describe its
performance advantages over the well established C-News/NNTP combo
(where NNTP is the add-on program to C-News that implements the NNTP
protocol). Those earliest posts are from the end of 1990; since the
NNTP RFC is dated February 1986, it appears that NNTP is almost 5
years older than a pure NNTP news implementation (unless any others
preceded INN -- did they?).
David Wragg
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> But the original question had "" around "internet". Does that allow
> earlier RJE services to qualify?
the interactive online work, virtual machines, the internal network,
as well as GML (precursor to SGML, HTML, etc) and other stuff went on
at 545 tech. sq (mostly floors 2 & 4, same building as multics). Both
groups (corporate stuff & multics) had people that had worked on CTSS.
One of the applications that was developed on this platfrom was HONE
(for hands-on network envrionment) that provided online support mostly
to salesman and customer support ("field") people.
In 1977, the various US HONE sites were consolicated to Palo Alto onto
eight SMP processors (network id, NONE1, HONE2, ..., HONE8) and a
large disk farm. At that time of the consolidation, Palo Alto HONE
supported something like 40,000 people (total accounts, not logged on
simultaneously). One of the major applications (besides email,
document preperation, word processing, GML document printing, etc) was
called configurator. Starting with the 370/125 (in the early '70s), it
was no longer possible to order a processor straight from the sales
manual w/o the salesman running the order thru the configurator so
that all feature codes were specified correctly (configurator also
could supply lot of boiler plate for customer contract).
There were other HONE sites in europe, canada, japan, etc (I did
initial hone installs in Europe and Japan in the early '70s). HONE in
Palo Alto was for US support.
The Palo ALto complex also supported a large terminal and network
front-end that included single system image and load balancing
(i.e. if processor complex went down, things were automatically
configured and login was routed to available processors, email and
network activity had a lot of transparency).
The Palo Alto HONE complex was then replicated in Dallas (hone20,
hone21, hone22, etc) to handle things like disastrous earthquake in
Cal. (sites operated concurrently but either could "fall-over" to the
other). Later this was extended to three sites: Palo Alto, Dallas,
and Boulder.
misc. refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#47
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#23
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#4
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#16
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#23
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#38
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#149
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#150
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#8
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#75
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#82
rap...@research.canon.com.au
Johnny Billquist <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> writes:
>Interesting question: Can UUCP be seen as the origin of news? I think more
>of UUCP as a way of transporting whatever data you wanted to between sites.
>In this view, news isn't really related to UUCP, it just happened to be
>the way to transport the messages. No alternative existed back then.
Given that there's a bang path in the header of your news articles,
even when it's run over INN, I think the answer would be yes. The UUCP
design influenced the USENET news design. The ACSNET or MHSNET in
Australia (now .oz.au addresses) was domain addressed & didn't use bang
paths but had them in the news headers just like the Internet does.
Rodney Joffe
> also from
>
> http://www.pbs.org/internet/timeline/
1991 - 1993
+ Corporations wishing to use the Internet face a serious problem:
+ commercial network traffic is banned from the National Science
+ Foundation's NSFNET, the backbone of the Internet. In 1991 the NSF
+ lifts the restriction on commercial use, clearing the way for the
+ age of electronic commerce.
In 1991, when we were faced with the ultimatum from the NSF, a group of
the regional networks got together, and formed a non-profit
organization, specifically to manage the interconnection of all of the
regional networks to each, and thereby avoid the NSF backbone, which was
a whopping T3 at the time. That organization was called CIX, or the
Commercial Internet Exchange, and the membership fee of $2,500 a year
went towards a Cisco router (an AGS+ I think) that was placed in the
PacBell CO in Santa Clara. Paul Vixie was hired to manage it, and it
became the center of the Internet. It was the one and only peering point
for commercial traffic. The group included UUNet, PSI, NEARNet, BARRNet,
SURANet, Bolt Beranak and Newman, Netcom, Pipex from the UK, JVNCnet who
ran a circuit from Tokyo, IBM, AT&T, ANS, MCI. At the time when the
"door" was closed to new direct connects, in 1994, there were 22 of us
who had ports on the CIX router, and about 90 other ISPs who connected
through us. This when when Billy Gates had started MSN, and realized he
had to connect to the Internet. We told him to pound sand, and he ended
up buying 15% of Rick Adam's UUNet for $45m iirc! What a period!
Anyway... a great book that covers the history pretty accurately is
"Where wizards stay up late" by Katie Hafner and Matt Lyon.
--
Rodney Joffe
CenterGate Research Group, LLC.
http://www.centergate.com
"Technology so advanced, even we don't understand it!"(SM)
Morten Reistad
Power Hungry Fluffazoid of Perversion <supe...@india.com> wrote:
>Johnny Billquist <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
>> of UUCP as a way of transporting whatever data you wanted to between sites.
>> In this view, news isn't really related to UUCP, it just happened to be
>> the way to transport the messages. No alternative existed back then.
Just some timepoints, as seen from here up north.
The Arpanet came into existance sometime in late 1969. The first
link came up in september, but it probably took most of that year
for something resembling a network to be operational.
The Arpanet extended out to Britain in 1971, and onwards to Norway
in late 1972. This was an academic network funded by the
'military-industry-complex'(sp?) as Eisenhower used to call them.
Until march 1 1983; that is. This was the big D-day for de-militarization
of the Internet. It split up in several parts, milnet kept to itself;
and NSFnet took the civilian/academic part.
That left a void, and uunet was formed sometime 1981 to provide
pure, commercial service in the US. April 1982 saw the founding
of EUnet in Paris, but it took until late autumn to actually see
an operational network.
Until the 1983 deadline a content-provider as such would have
been banned by the rules existing then. Even by the 1987-1989
timeframe it would have been a squeeze.
You see, the academic network would not communicate with all
of the commercial network, only the parts that couls sign an
'acceptable use' policy. The Internet was therefore somewhat
balkanized. There was a fight, the 'CIX wars' in 1990-1992; which
established the internet as we know it today.
Only by then was a commercial content provider feasible.
The web originated in Switzerland in this timeframe, originally
designed to keep track of all of CERN's documents. The
web was actually 'officially launced' on Paris interop in 1993.
I would therefore venture to say the first ISP was uunet, the
second EUnet, the first content provider was CERN.
>
>Yeah, it's pretty closely tied in. Most obvious is that we still use
>bang paths to tell where an article came from, but also more
>fundamental stuff like the store-and-forward, flood-fill distribution
>mechanism waas designed with short, intermittent connections in mind.
>Even UUCP itself hasn't really been relegated to history; run it over
>IP, and it can move articles over the wires much more efficiently than
>NNTP (assuming a mostly text feed).
usenet was a different affair. Until the cix wars left the
internet 'safe for democracy' the usenet had to be kept separate.
>
>[...]
>
>> I guess that depends on what you mean by commercial. If you are talking
>> about companies selling access and acting as go-betweens for others
>> utilising the Internet, then Unix has been there since the beginning, but
>> then we're just talking about since 1992 or so.
>
>Right, but that's the kind of thing the original poster ws asking
>about -- "in the context of a commercial organisation specifically
>created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
>an access provider like UUNET)"
You assume that these roles were separate. They were not.
An 1992 ISP was mix of access provider, infrastructure provider,
content provider, hosting/housing company, usenet feed and the like. The
separation of roles came with the portals, approx 1995 until present.
>> However, ARPAnet had to be maintained, upgraded and so on before that.
>> This involved companies, who made money from it, and did pretty much
>> the same thing they do today. It's just the customers that have
>> changed.
>
>But they weren't information providers. BBN, DEC, IBM, Xerox et al
>built the stuff that made it all work, but it was for others to
>exploit the medium as a channel for commerce. Of course, that sort of
>thing wasn't even really allowed on the Internet until the past decade
>when the NSF backbone was moved into the private sector; even that far
>back, there wasn't much one could *buy* in the way of information,
>except maybe for something like a telnet session to Delphi (and those
>online services don't fit the mold either, since they began as
>independent networks).
You forget cisco. There were no decent routers before they
came along. Oh, yeah, IMPs.
>For businesses started specifically to make a quatloo or three by
>selling information using the Internet, there isn't much to look for
>before Mosaic and the influx of the masses.
-- Morten Reistad
EUnet founder
writing on an acient vt100 from one of the core telecom rooms of
the Internet. Core routers from 7 ISPs are within 10 feet of me.
Morten Reistad
In article <393be69a$0$29...@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
David E. Fox <df...@belvdere.vip.best.com> wrote:
>In article <393B4E4F...@netinsight.se>, Johnny Billquist
><Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
>>
>> I have no idea what the first company might be, but one thing bothers me
>> here. UUCP was the Unix way of passing mail (and whatever) around in the
>> "early" days, since Unix was/is braindamaged. The Internet (or rather
>
>fact that Unix started in 1970, and the ARPANET in (I think) 1969?
>
>maybe. IBM 360 OS? One wonders.
Unix is kind of a late-comer. Remember tops-20 anyone?
When DEC killed off the 20-series in 198(4-6) everyone scrambled
to un*x, or those who were cought (by DEC) got VAXen.
>
>I don't see UUCP as being an ancestor to the Internet, either. Surely, the
>Internet is derived from the ARPANET, and of course there was UUCP, but
>it existed alongside the ARPANET (Internet), and not as such a progenitor
>of it. Surely there were networks (of a sort) besides the Internet -- even up to
>the 1990s (PC Board, anyone?) :) In this context, UUCP was just another way
>to transmit mail, and not a bad way either. Unix did have 'mail' from about the
>very beginning -- obviously there had to be a way to transmit that mail from
>machine to machine.
Remember OSI and X.25 anyone?
>
>
>> Johnny
>
>
>
Johnny Billquist
>
> In article <393B4E4F...@netinsight.se>, Johnny Billquist
> <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
> >
> > I have no idea what the first company might be, but one thing bothers me
> > here. UUCP was the Unix way of passing mail (and whatever) around in the
> > "early" days, since Unix was/is braindamaged. The Internet (or rather
>
> How can Unix be considered a "late-coming player", considering the
> fact that Unix started in 1970, and the ARPANET in (I think) 1969?
Even though Unix came into existance in about 1970, it didn't start talking
TCP/IP until a lot later. (Nor did it participate much in the protocol
that preceded TCP/IP). In fact, the development of TCP/IP was not
initially made on Unix, instead Unix was a late-comer in the game.
That's what I said, and that's what I meant. :-)
> What OSes (if any) would have been better suited ca. 1970? Multics,
> maybe. IBM 360 OS? One wonders.
Better suited is a question I'll leave unanswered. However, the early
ARPANET consisted of various machines, inclusing IBMs, PDP-10s, DEC-20s
probably some Burroughs, and god knows what.
Bernie Cosell
} I would therefore venture to say the first ISP was uunet, the
} second EUnet, the first content provider was CERN.
AFAIK, world.std.com was the first ISP as we now know the term today. When
World opened shop, UUNET wasn't running dialins, but only acting as a
backbone.
} >Yeah, it's pretty closely tied in. Most obvious is that we still use
} >bang paths to tell where an article came from, but also more
} >fundamental stuff like the store-and-forward, flood-fill distribution
} >mechanism waas designed with short, intermittent connections in mind.
} >Even UUCP itself hasn't really been relegated to history; run it over
} >IP, and it can move articles over the wires much more efficiently than
} >NNTP (assuming a mostly text feed).
}
} usenet was a different affair. Until the cix wars left the
} internet 'safe for democracy' the usenet had to be kept separate.
This isn't quite true. First your timeline [which I edited out] was a
little off -- UUCP appeared in 1977 and usenet was born in 1979. But the
real thing is that usenet *WAS* gated over the ARPAnet. Somehow Rick Adams
[then at BRL, wasn't it?] got permission to act as a server and transmit
usenet across the ARPAnet. It was an amazing thing -- the transit time for
usenet postings when from hours/days/weeks to minutes... [for those of us
on the ARPAnet... I never did learn how that happened [and the fact of
usenet transiting the ARPAnet did seem to me to be not quite legit]...
Anyone know the whole story there??
} You forget cisco. There were no decent routers before they
} came along. Oh, yeah, IMPs.
The IMPS were never 'routers' [other than indirectly when 'logical host
addressing' was added], but before there was cisco, I think that WellFleet
routers were pretty much the standard...
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
ber...@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@adcomsys.net> writes:
> note the internal (360-based) corporate network was larger than the
> arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime around
> mid-80s (change in large part because of the introduction of
> workstation & pc based tcp/ip nodes).
series of (online) status RFCs from the 71-73 period listing arpanet hosts:
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc252.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc266.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc267.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc287.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc293.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc319.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc326.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc330.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc332.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc376.txt
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc597.txt
Tim Shoppa
>
>
> > note the internal (360-based) corporate network was larger than the
> > arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime around
> > mid-80s (change in large part because of the introduction of
> > workstation & pc based tcp/ip nodes).
>
> series of (online) status RFCs from the 71-73 period listing arpanet hosts:
>
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc252.txt
"STATUS or
NETWORK PREDICTIONS"
ADDRESS SITE COMPUTER STATUS or PREDICTION OBTAINED
------- ---- -------- -------------------- -------------
1 UCLA SIGMA-7 Sever Jon Postel
2 SRI (NIC) PDP-10 Server John Melvin
3 UCSB IBM-360/75 Server Jim White
4 UTAH PDP-10 "Soon" Barry Wessler
5 BBN (NCC) DDP-516 Never Alex
6 MIT (Multics) H-645 Server Mike Padlipsky
7 RAND IBM-360/65 User Only Eric Harslem
8 SDC IBM-360/67 "Soon" Bob Long
9 HARVARD PDP-10 Server Bob Sundberg
Wow, folks think they're hot stuff today when they have a
three-letter domain name. That's *nothing* compared to having
a single digit network address!
Tim.
Juergen Nickelsen
> April 1982 saw the founding of EUnet in Paris, but it took until
> late autumn to actually see an operational network.
Could you tell more about the history of EUnet? I only know vaguely
about mcvax (later mcsun, I think), and just a little more about
unido.
(When we got Internet connectivity at the TU Berlin late in 1989, we
could already connect to unido before the route to 130.149/16 was
distributed to all core routers. I decided to do my first try on
long-distance FTP then, and I retrieved a random file I found on
their FTP server. Its name was jargon.txt, and I was quite amazed
about what a gem I had found by pure luck.)
--
Juergen Nickelsen
Johnny Billquist
>
> series of (online) status RFCs from the 71-73 period listing arpanet hosts:
>
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc252.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc267.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc287.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc293.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc319.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc326.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc330.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc332.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc376.txt
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc597.txt
I note that the PDP-11s showing up later in this series are running
something called "ANTS" or in one instance "RATS". Does anyone know
anything about what this could have been?
jmfb...@aol.com
Bernie Cosell <ber...@fantasyfarm.com> wrote:
>m...@foo.eunet.no (Morten Reistad) wrote:
<snip>
>} You forget cisco. There were no decent routers before they
>} came along. Oh, yeah, IMPs.
>
>The IMPS were never 'routers' [other than indirectly when 'logical host
>addressing' was added], but before there was cisco, I think that WellFleet
>routers were pretty much the standard...
When did Cisco happen?
Brian Inglis
Perversion <supe...@india.com> wrote:
>Johnny Billquist <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
>> Interesting question: Can UUCP be seen as the origin of news? I think more
>> of UUCP as a way of transporting whatever data you wanted to between sites.
>> In this view, news isn't really related to UUCP, it just happened to be
>> the way to transport the messages. No alternative existed back then.
>
>Yeah, it's pretty closely tied in. Most obvious is that we still use
>bang paths to tell where an article came from, but also more
>fundamental stuff like the store-and-forward, flood-fill distribution
>mechanism waas designed with short, intermittent connections in mind.
>Even UUCP itself hasn't really been relegated to history; run it over
>IP, and it can move articles over the wires much more efficiently than
>NNTP (assuming a mostly text feed).
>
>[...]
>
>> I guess that depends on what you mean by commercial. If you are talking
>> about companies selling access and acting as go-betweens for others
>> utilising the Internet, then Unix has been there since the beginning, but
>> then we're just talking about since 1992 or so.
>
>Right, but that's the kind of thing the original poster ws asking
>about -- "in the context of a commercial organisation specifically
>created to supply data over the modern Internet (and not primarily as
>an access provider like UUNET)"
>
>> However, ARPAnet had to be maintained, upgraded and so on before that.
>> This involved companies, who made money from it, and did pretty much
>> the same thing they do today. It's just the customers that have
>> changed.
>
>But they weren't information providers. BBN, DEC, IBM, Xerox et al
>built the stuff that made it all work, but it was for others to
>exploit the medium as a channel for commerce. Of course, that sort of
>thing wasn't even really allowed on the Internet until the past decade
>when the NSF backbone was moved into the private sector; even that far
>back, there wasn't much one could *buy* in the way of information,
>except maybe for something like a telnet session to Delphi (and those
>online services don't fit the mold either, since they began as
>independent networks).
>
>For businesses started specifically to make a quatloo or three by
>selling information using the Internet, there isn't much to look for
>before Mosaic and the influx of the masses.
Before the internet became commercial, information providers like
Dialog and other abstracting and reference services, and Sabre
online reservations were available thru online services such as
Delphi, Genie, the Source, Compuserve.
I wonder if Dialog may have been one of the first on the
Internat?
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--
Brian_...@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
use address above to reply
Greg Skinner
Morten Reistad <m...@foo.eunet.no> wrote:
>Until march 1 1983; that is. This was the big D-day for de-militarization
>of the Internet. It split up in several parts, milnet kept to itself;
>and NSFnet took the civilian/academic part.
Actually, the NSFnet networks didn't appear until 1985 or 1986.
>usenet was a different affair. Until the cix wars left the
>internet 'safe for democracy' the usenet had to be kept separate.
Actually, usenet had been running over the Internet, even in the
pre-privatization days. More on this in a separate message ...
>You forget cisco. There were no decent routers before they
>came along. Oh, yeah, IMPs.
Matter of opinion. Other companies were developing routers, such as
Proteon, Bridge Communications, IBM, etc. Not to mention you could
run a Sun or VAX workstation as a router. BBN had routers (that were
not IMPs) as well.
--gregbo
gds at best.com
Greg Skinner
>Somehow Rick Adams [then at BRL, wasn't it?]
He was at the Center for Seismic Studies.
>got permission to act as a server and transmit usenet across the
>ARPAnet. It was an amazing thing -- the transit time for usenet
>postings when from hours/days/weeks to minutes... [for those of us
>on the ARPAnet... I never did learn how that happened [and the fact of
>usenet transiting the ARPAnet did seem to me to be not quite legit]...
>Anyone know the whole story there??
There is a long story that can probably be more accurately told by
people who were very intimately involved, such as Peter Lapsley, Brian
Kantor, Erik Fair, and a few others. The short version is that people
were running usenet over the Internet long before the privatization of
the early 1990s. Some of it was done in ad hoc means (e.g. remote
execution of inews) until the initial NNTP implementation was deployed
around 1986.
There was a lot of controversy and several rumors floating around
about what might happen if DCA discovered that the Internet was being
used to transmit usenet around, since the Internet was not at that
time supposed to be used as a transit provider for non-USG sponsored
research. As far as I know, no one who ran an NNTP server and
exchanged news was ever flagged for doing this.
>The IMPS were never 'routers' [other than indirectly when 'logical host
>addressing' was added], but before there was cisco, I think that WellFleet
>routers were pretty much the standard...
I don't think so. BBN had routers before Wellfleet. Other computers
such as Suns and VAXes could run as routers.
--gregbo
gds at best.com
Dennis Ritchie
Greg Skinner wrote about usenet over arpanet (I snip enormously):
>
> There is a long story that can probably be more accurately told by
> people who were very intimately involved, such as Peter Lapsley, Brian
> Kantor, Erik Fair, and a few others. The short version is that people
> were running usenet over the Internet long before the privatization of
> the early 1990s. Some of it was done in ad hoc means (e.g. remote
> execution of inews) until the initial NNTP implementation was deployed
> around 1986.
One resource is a partial archive (for about a year) of Usenet posts
kept at
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/
Of relevance here is
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/NET.news.directory/82.01.20_cbosgd.1983_net.news.directory.html
which is a textual listing of Usenet sites, mostly dating from 1981-2. One of
the questionnaire entries involves Arpanet access. (The immediately above
link is to the NET.news.directory entry on the A-News page.)
In brief, some netnews was flowing over the Arpanet by the early 1980s.
Dennis
Bernie Cosell
} In article <ii1qjs4gse8dc4rmg...@news.supernews.com>,
} Bernie Cosell <ber...@fantasyfarm.com> wrote:
} >But the real thing is that usenet *WAS* gated over the ARPAnet.
} >Somehow Rick Adams [then at BRL, wasn't it?]
}
} He was at the Center for Seismic Studies.
Right. "seismo".. how could I have fogotten..:o)... almost as familiar as
ihnp4... I _think that seismo<->brl was the first actual over-the-ARPAnet
usenet hop, done informally [or with not-really-understanding partial
permission]
} >The IMPS were never 'routers' [other than indirectly when 'logical host
} >addressing' was added], but before there was cisco, I think that WellFleet
} >routers were pretty much the standard...
}
} I don't think so. BBN had routers before Wellfleet. Other computers
} such as Suns and VAXes could run as routers.
BBN could be said to have 'invented' routers [as the standalong boxes as we
think of them today]. We (BBN), indeed, used our VAXen as 'routers'. But
the routers BBN developed were under gov't contract and were [IMO, I know
other BBNers will skewer me for saying this] overpriced and
'idiosyncratic'. I knew that the router-projects were doomed (as even a
pretense of a commercial venture) when BBN bought WellFleet routers for
*its*own* internal LAN [also we used DEC LANBridges].
Greg Skinner
Greg Skinner <g...@nospam.best.com> wrote:
>There is a long story that can probably be more accurately told by
>people who were very intimately involved, such as Peter Lapsley, Brian
>Kantor, Erik Fair, and a few others. The short version is that people
>were running usenet over the Internet long before the privatization of
>the early 1990s. Some of it was done in ad hoc means (e.g. remote
>execution of inews) until the initial NNTP implementation was deployed
>around 1986.
My mistake; should be Phil Lapsley.
--gregbo
gds at best.com
Mike Meredith at home
be...@krustbustr.benzone.org (Ben Clifford) writes:
> On Mon, 5 Jun 2000 21:15:52 +0100, Mike Meredith at home <h...@port.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>The first four machines were (according to my info) :-
>>
>>* An SDS Sigma 7 running SEX (UCLA)
>>* An XDS-940 running Genie (SRI)
>>* An IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT (UCSB)
>>* PDP-10 running TWENEX (Utah)
>
> UCSB on them - at least not by any name that I can associate with UCSB.
Well I was going to throw my hands in the air and humbly admit
defeat, but then I had a look as I'm sure I wouldn't have been
that careless when writing a document (the following *isn't*
written by me, but reads similar to the source material I used) :-
http://www.forthnet.gr/forthnet/isoc/how.internet.came.to.be.cerf
Note that 1979 isn't 1971, and there could be various reasons why
an organisation may not have a connection after it did ---
perhaps UCSB were connected via some other network at that time,
or less fortunately had lost funding for the link. (real data
would be interesting)
Lars Poulsen
> Note that 1979 isn't 1971, and there could be various reasons why
> an organisation may not have a connection after it did ---
> perhaps UCSB were connected via some other network at that time,
> or less fortunately had lost funding for the link. (real data
> would be interesting)
UCSB disconnected itself from DoD funded research. The "Surfing
Branch" of UC was quite radical ... at one point students burned
down the local branch of Bank of America as part of an anti-war
riot. When the USAF sponsored ACC to get connected in 1982, we
had to get a VDH link into El Segundo AFB, 100 miles away, which
was at that time the nearest IMP to Santa Barbara. After the
ARPAnet/MILNET split, we were thus on the MILNET side.
--
/ Lars Poulsen - http://www.cmc.com/lars - la...@cmc.com
125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277
rober...@bonomi.com
Johnny Billquist <Johnny.B...@netinsight.se> wrote:
>
[ snip ]
>One of the first companies I heard of, selling access to just about
>anyone was the Well. How about that, then?
>
There was an entire _industry_ out there, in the 'old days', providing
remote access to "other peoples" computer systems. This industry well-
ESTAblished in the late 70's -- when I was first exposed to several of the
players named below. I dunno just _how_ far back it goes -- an ill-informed
guesstimate is _at_least_ circa 1973.
Companies like TYMENET, TELENET, AUTONET, etc.
The noticable difference is that these were _private_ networks. to 'talk to'
a given host machine, you had to be _on_ the network they were using. No
cross-network connections, or 'inter-network' stuff.
Many big time-share service providers had connections on _more_than_one_
of those private networks, so as to give their users a 'choice' for access.
UUnet was founded with the intent of making access to an "Internet gateway"
'easily available'. Essentially a "file transfer service", they employed
UUCP-based transport for mail, and incidentally, news. And an FTP-by-email
proxy for 'indirect' access to data available for automated retrieval on
other peoples systems.
One could make a fair case that UUnet fostered, or at least led, the entire
"Internet" popularization ground-swell. Suddenly you could just go out and
'buy' something that had previously required private negotiation on the 'one
of the club' level.
If that wasn't 'revolutionary' enough, they implemented a *private* backbone
in parallel with the Arpanet, specifically intended for _commercial_ traffic.
No NSF "acceptable use" requirement, etc.
Then, to add insult to injury, they implemented that private backbone, using
_presisely_ the same technology that ARPAnet used. Thus allowing immediate,
and essentialy 'development/testing cost'-free "commercial purposes" use by
those familiar with ARPAnet.