50 yrs. ago today

[allison]

On 10/30/19 10:18 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 at 03:34, allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>> The whole story of what was going on was far more complex and interesting.
> 
> Conceded.
> 
>> Funny thing was DECnet was in 1983 the largest world wide network
>> period.  By then is was well over 300 nodes and climbing fast.
>> And none of it used IP or NCP
> 
> That's the _point_ here though, isn't it?

I may be a but US centric but hey I lived her all my life...
its what I know.  Clearly if it was happening here it was
world wide.

I was fortunate to be an early Compuserve user and BBS user
and I also remember packet radio (amateur).

That that network was interconnected to Arpanet at that time (81 as I
remember and likely earlier) is significant.  I really liked that I
could email to Valbone or Galway plants or just as easily the east coast
and Japan facilities.  And still be present on the bitnet, news, and
other services and places as well.

It was one of the few large backbone networks that had mixed traffic.
at that time the interconnect and transport was mostly private but
included portals.

> Yes, old hands like list members here know that there were
> inter-computer networks before the ARPAnet.
> 
> Yes, there were big WANs of DEC kit and IBM kit using DEC proprietary
> protocols and IBM proprietary protocols. There were also long-distance
> dial-up connections of all sorts but just carrying terminal traffic.
> They weren't network connections, computer-to-computer. They were
> terminal connections. All they carried was a single datastream.
> 
> That is not the significance being discussed here, even if it's being
> discussed with the wrong terms.

Not so, the whole of Arpanet was my computer calls your computer a few
times a day and exchanges info/news/email as The "NETWORK" if any was
telco or lease lines.

That was [all of the above and more] before there was and significant
backbone to "hook up to".  The backbone is the internet as we know it.

> 
> And yes, granted:
> 
>> The network wars were warming up about then (1982ish) and it
>> would take till the late 80s early 90s for IP to win that war.
>> The big explosion was WWW.
> 
> But the core point here is that the WWW does not equal the Internet,
> and the Internet does not equal the WWW.

True but the point was WWW made the need for the network connectivity
"The Internet" became a commodity thing not unlike the interstate highways.

> The WWW is a 1990s thing, mid-1990s for most people outside academia,
> post-turn-of-the-century for public broadband.
> 
> And to 99% of the world, even where I work in a technical company, the
> WWW *is the Internet*. My colleagues are all in their 20s and 30s and
> they do not distinguish the 2. The thought that there is a distinction
> is quite confusing to them.

WWW is not the internet it is a good reason for one and maybe the
worst utilization for one (opine).   However it forced more
connectivity which is what the internet is.

Hence my usage... it can be found ON the internet, not in.

> So they honestly believe that the Internet did not exist until the
> mid-1990s and it's about 25 years old. Their age.

It was  around far longer before that as my first contact was in the
late 70s.

> But the real Internet is twice as old as that, and it dates to the end
> of the 1960s. The internet is roughly contemporaneous with people
> walking on the Moon.

It is but access for the nonacademic or small company was much later
in the 80s.  Back then I investigate getting connected and was basically
you needed to know someone at a Uni and get UUCP going.  It was around
then the SOURCE and Compuserve became visible and BBS started to be
interconnected likely by dialup.

> Bickering about there being WANs before that, or larger proprietary
> networks, or how to define "the Internet" is counter-productive.

True as the first WAN was telco!  Much of what came later either relied
on telco tech (ESS and T1 lines any one remember them?) or built on it.
 For many here in the use the Carterphone decision made interconnecting
easier and competitive for products and other services.

Back before the 80s I used to provide UHF repeater service and
I remember using leased lines ("copper pairs" without equalization)
for interconnect (analog) and the cost was not trivial and the available
interconnect length was limited (miles).    Those Arpanet and the like
users had the finances to have leased lines or even privately installed
lines to connect points in their reach.  it was a driver to have a
common network for traffic and of course rules for how the traffic was
formed and routed.

> It's not about networks. It's about one particular network, the first
> one that wasn't a proprietary single-vendor effort.
> 
>> Other names or routable networks, Banyan vines, and IPX come
>> to mind besides DECNET Phase III and IV.
> 
> Absolutely yes. I deployed or worked with all of these and I prefer at
> least 1 of them to TCP/IP even now, working for a company that until
> very recently owned one of the 3 technologies in that list and owned
> my employers too.

Why I mentioned them.  There were other some very limited like
(M$)LANman, ad a bit of PTP stuff.  I left out IBM by omission but
they were also one of the big technology contributors of the day
for backbone hardware and software.

> But it's not germane. We're not talking about corporate proprietary
> stuff, or we shouldn't be.

We should as they were existent and ideas grew from them and for periods
even depended on them.  As a result a more open set of specifications
emerged.  That was a contrast to the Telcos(PTT) and private companies.

Like I said far more complex and very interesting.  Its why "first"
has to be specific as its at most a snapshot of one place and time.
Its also a result of something or many somethings that came before.
Without the context it is just a nice but largely incomplete picture
that invites the question, there must be more?  With the bigger picture
the wow factor is not diluted but enhanced.  After all like most
technologies how we got to that point is often a good story to tell.
and where it leads to after that as well.

To think, it all grew from people on hills with flags, mirrors, or
fires trying to send messages faster and further than physical means
like runners and horses.


Allison