Information Wanted on Tymnet
kendall shaw
There was a company called Tymnet who offered a service which was
popular with computer users, whereby you would call in and then
be able to call out to internet service providers or other services.
I think it was an X.25 network.
What has become of that? I thought it became Sprintnet, but when I
called sprintnet they said they have no such service and they were
never Tymnet.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Beginning about 1970 or maybe in the
late 1960's, GTE offered a data network which was quite large called
'Telenet' which should not be confused with the Unix feature 'telnet'
(without the /e/ in the middle). The customers were large computer
systems in the 'military/industrial complex' and universities. Each
comptuer site had a six digit address of the form 312567 where the
first three digits were the telephone area code and the last three
digits were the site identifier. Computers could connect to this
network and call each other. There were also gateways to the data
networks in other countries including Canada. Calls over the network
were charged to the computer originating the connection however there
were provisions to call 'collect' just as in the voice telephone
network. Telenet was in fact quite huge; it was to computers what
AT&T was/is to voice traffic; i.e. a big central switching system
and network. There were numerous 'dialups' or numbers on the voice
telephone network which connected to the data network for the early
users of modems with computers at home, etc. Those calls were always
'collect' or charged to the site receiving the connection since Telenet
had no way of knowing who the originating party was.
When you connected with the network either via a telephone 'dialup'
or a fixed circuit located at your premises, Telenet answered with
this symbol '@' which was essentially analogous to 'computer dial
tone'. You then typed in your connection instructions and waited for
a response from the system you were calling. Response messages might
be that you were connected, or that the other end did not respond, or
that the other end was 'busy', i.e. its circuits all in use.
A competitive service started around 1970-75 called 'Tymnet' pronounced
'Time Net'. It operated much the same way and it came down basically
to a 'do you prefer MCI, Sprint or AT&T' sort of thing. Either one
you picked had about the same rates; each served a few slightly differ-
points than the other when you got out in the boondocks, etc.
Both the services were used heavily in the day, and seldom at night or
weekends. They both offered email; in Telenet's case at the @ sign the
command @C MAIL (meaning connect to mail) got you into a combination
electronic bulletin board/email area. Telnet got the idea of selling
their excess capacity all night long and on weekends to 'home computer
enthusiasts' as we were sometimes called back about 1980-81. They knew
they were getting hacked all night long anyway by people with modems
who were just fooling around, so what they were selling all day long for
$4-5 per hour to large computer sites they decided to sell for $25 per
month for unlimited usage to 'home computer users' via the dialups at
night and on weekends. They called their program 'PC Pursuit'. You were
specifically NOT authorized to connect with of the large mainframes;
their daytime customers got pretty antzy about that. You were only
authorized to call through the network to other dialups, which when
used from the network side were called 'dialouts'. So if you wanted
to call a BBS in Chicago from New York, you called the New York City
dialups with your modem and did @C 312 or some similar command. You
then reached a modem over here which let you do ATD and the desired
local number. For only $25 per month for unlimited use between 6:00 PM
and 6:00 AM daily plus all day Saturday and Sunday, it was an excellent
deal. Some people literally stayed connected from 6:00 PM Friday
through 6:00 AM Monday and because of the extreme amount of use the
personal PC users gave Telenet's 'PC Pursuit' program, eventually the
rates were changed and the terms were changed.
At some point, Tymnet jumped into it with an offering of their own
which was quite competitive. I do not recall which company owned
Tymnet, although I beleive there are some very old files in the
Archives which discusses it and makes a comparison study between it
and Telenet's PC Pursuit. Eventually, Sprint bought Telenet from GTE
and renamed it SprintNet. They continued to operate the PC Pursuit
program for a couple years after that, but the immense popularity
of the program led to its downfall. It became so popular the network
suffered from extremely slow connections and transmission. The night
and weekend thing toward the end had thousands of customers where the
original service for which the network was configured and had been
in operation for many years never had more than a few hundred large
corporate accounts.
At some point Tynmet either went out of business or changed its name
our was bought out. I know the very same phone numnbers from the Tymnet
days are still in service as dialups, and to a large extent by AOL.
The fastest baud rate you can get on any of those older dialups is
1200. You get to pick that or 300, your choice ... <grin> ... also the
PC Pursuit program allowed those two choices of baud rates. I think
Tymnet may still be around, but you do not connect with them per se ...
you use software from the service you subscribe to which places a call
via the dialups and handles all the login (to Tymnet) details transpar-
ently. SprintNet is still around, and I notice in the Compuserve phone
number listings quite a few of their dialups are shown as ways to
connect with @C 614something, the Columbus, Ohio location of CIS. I
cannot imagine who would use it at 300/1200/2400 baud when there are
now so many other methods of connection at speeds much greater.
So the person you talked to at SprintNet was partly right and partly
wrong. They did have PC Pursuit when they called their network Telenet.
They no longer offer it and have not for a few years. It has nothing to
do with Tymnet, which was a competitor with a similar program for small
PC users, who I have no idea where they went or when, just that they
are not around now. PAT]
Fred R. Goldstein
In article <telecom...@massis.lcs.mit.edu> ks...@plight.lbin.com
(kendall shaw) writes:
> There was a company called Tymnet who offered a service which was
> popular with computer users, whereby you would call in and then
> be able to call out to internet service providers or other services.
> I think it was an X.25 network.
I don't remember Tymnet's offering that; PC Pursuit was Telenet's.
> What has become of that? I thought it became Sprintnet, but when I
> called Sprintnet they said they have no such service and they were
> never Tymnet.
Tymnet is still around. It has gone through a number of owners. It
began in the mid-'70s as an arm of Tymshare, Inc., a computer
time-sharing bureau. Back in those pre-PC days, time-sharing was the
only way for little guys to use a computer. Tymnet connected remote
terminals to Tymshare's mainframes. The time-sharing business changed
and most of the old players went away, the notable exception being
CompuServe, which repositioned itself with new services geared to PC
users. Tymnet became part of McDonnell-Douglas by the early '80s, was
later purchased by British Telecom (and operated as "BT Tymnet"), and
a couple of years ago went to MCI as part of the BT-MCI semi-merger
(sort of a keiretsu deal). It's still widely used for corporate
remote access, credit-card validation terminals, on-line service
access, etc. They have numbers in all sorts of little burgs, probably
the biggest Foreign Exchange collection in the USA.
Then, TELECOM Digest Editor added his two cents:
> Eventually, Sprint bought Telenet from GTE and renamed it SprintNet.
> They continued to operate the PC Pursuit program for a couple years
> after that, but the immense popularity of the program led to its
> downfall.
There were three big packet-switched network operators in the USA in
the late '70s. Telenet was founded by BBN (we invented all sorts of
packet-switching technology), but ran independently with minority
partner ownership before being acquired by GTE in 1980 or so. They
called it "GTE Telenet". GTE bought Sprint from the Southern Pacific
and put the two together. Then GTE sold part of Sprint and Telenet to
United Telecom ("US Sprint"), and finally the rest of them. Now the
former United Telecom uses the name Sprint Corp., calls Telenet
"Sprintnet", and operates both the "United" and "Centel" (a more
recent acquisition) telephone companies.
The third of the big three was Graphnet, run by Graphic Scanning Inc.
It seemed to fade away by the early '80s. AT&T's X.25 efforts
("Accunet", I think, though they use that name on lots of things) were
never huge. Some Bells also bought in during the mid 80s, never to
dominate.
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgold...@bbn.com
BBN Corp., Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850
Stefano Cazzani
> What has become of that? I thought it became Sprintnet, but when I
> called Sprintnet they said they have no such service and they were
> never Tymnet.
I believe Tymnet was bought by BT (British Telecom) a few years ago.
They marketd their X.25 network in Europe as BT-Tymnet for a while. I
think it is now part of their Concert (BT-MCI alliance) offering.
Regards,
Stefano Cazzani
Milano, Italy
Joel M Snyder
In article <telecom1...@massis.lcs.mit.edu>, fgold...@bbn.com
(Fred R. Goldstein) writes:
> There were three big packet-switched network operators in the USA in
> the late '70s. Telenet ... Tymnet...
> The third of the big three was Graphnet, run by Graphic Scanning Inc.
The big three were actually two: Telenet (now Sprint) and Tymnet (now
MCI), which dominated the industry. Then came a host of smaller
networks: Uninet (which got bought by one of the big two), CompuServe
(which is still around and big), ADP Autonet (which is still around),
and AT&T (which marketed it's network under about five different names.
I would not put Graphnet in the running, personally.
Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Phone: +1 520 324 0494 (voice) +1 520 324 0495 (FAX)
j...@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms Opus One
Steve Coleman
On 29 Apr 1996, Kendall Shaw wrote:
> There was a company called Tymnet who offered a service which was
> popular with computer users, whereby you would call in and then
> be able to call out to internet service providers or other services.
> I think it was an X.25 network.
> What has become of that? I thought it became Sprintnet, but when I
> called sprintnet they said they have no such service and they were
> never Tymnet.
Tymnet was purchased by BT and become part of their Packet Switching
portfolio in the early 1990's. Outside of the UK, BT's asychronous
dial service retained the name Tymdial and surprise, surprise operated
over the purchased Tymnet nodes. In the UK a similar offering was
marketed as Dialplus and ran over Telenet equipment. The charges for
this asynch' service were usage based and the maximum speed offered
was 2400bps. A dedicated option was also available.
Around 93/94 the access speed was increased to 9600bps and the product
renamed BT GNS Dial. GNS (Global Network Services) held
responsibility for the companies packet switching products together
with fast packet services like Frame Relay. This group are now part
of the BT/MCI global alliance called Concert. A call to your local
MCI rep' should move you a step closer to finding the products current
status in the US.
I have a sneaky feeling that the network was originally owned by
MacDonald Douglas. However my old product notes do not appear to
support this hunch. Hope this helps you though.
Steve Coleman
University of North London
http://idun.unl.ac.uk/~hfa9colemas
Tom Reynolds
> A competitive service started around 1970-75 called 'Tymnet' pronounced
> 'Time Net'. It operated much the same way and it came down basically
> to a 'do you prefer MCI, Sprint or AT&T' sort of thing. Either one
> you picked had about the same rates; each served a few slightly differ-
> points than the other when you got out in the boondocks, etc.
The spelling was because the founder was named LeRoy Tymes.
Funny the flavor comparison, Tymnet is now a part of MCI.
> At some point, Tymnet jumped into it with an offering of their own
> which was quite competitive. I do not recall which company owned
> Tymnet, although I beleive there are some very old files in the
> Archives which discusses it and makes a comparison study between it
> and Telenet's PC Pursuit.
Actually, we olny sold directly to corporate accounts. The mass
market edition was a company reselling the service. (Sorry, the name
of the company escapes me.)
> At some point Tynmet either went out of business or changed its name
> or was bought out.
Three times ... MacDonnald Douglas had already bought the company when
I came on board eight years ago. They sold us to British Telecom, who
changed the name of the company three times in one year.
BT sold the portion of the network in the Americas to MCI. It's still
a global network; BT operates much of the world, MCI operates the
Americas. Customers may be from BT, MCI, or the global joint venture,
Concert.
>I know the very same phone numnbers from the Tymnet
> days are still in service as dialups, and to a large extent by AOL.
> The fastest baud rate you can get on any of those older dialups is
> 1200. You get to pick that or 300, your choice ... <grin> ... also the
We have higher speeds, typically it's the online service that chooses
to limit their customers to our lower speed numbers. You see,
something happened to the old model of how access was sold. The
online services grew much larger and much faster than most of the
"experts" predicted. Instead of selling surplus access at night and
on weekends, online services started driving modem deploymnet. When
you aren't selling surplus, you have to charge more. (This also
explains why AOL is building their own network, and CIS is expanding
theirs.)
> I cannot imagine who would use it at 300/1200/2400 baud when there are
> now so many other methods of connection at speeds much greater.
LOTS of old PCs out there, with old applications. They just keep on
going, till one day someone buys a new one, and they experience a
shock as they try to configure the fast new PC with Win95 and a fast
modem to do what the old slow DOS PC did. Also, lots of credit card
terminals that still only do 300. (Fast ones rolling off the line
today do 2400.
> It has nothing to
> do with Tymnet, which was a competitor with a similar program for small
> PC users, who I have no idea where they went or when, just that they
> are not around now. PAT]
We're still around, and bigger than ever. We're the XStream product
line of MCI Data Services, the Concert Packet Network, and the Concert
Frame Relay Network.
Tom Reynolds MCI Data Services
Dial Access Network Operations Center