The internet turns 40

[kinetic]

Interesting short article about the origins of the internet
at Arpa..

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26258726-5005962,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32618474

Steve

[Jen]

:eyepop:wow has it really been around for that long :)

[Robh]

Interesting. Thanks for posting!
The proliferation of the home computer accelerated the growth of the Internet.
In 1995, there were about 16 million users or 0.4% of world population.
In 2000, there were around 360 million users or 6% of world population.
In 2005, there were around one billion users or 15% of world population.
Today, there is about 1.7 billion users or 25% of world population.

Regards, Rob.

[mithrandir]

Used to be one of the 0.4%, now merely one of 25%.

[gary]

Before the Internet in Australia, there will be those of us who remember
using ACSnet which grew out of the work of people like Bob Kummerfeld
and Piers Lauder at Sydney Uni and which connected a handful of Australian
universities that were running UNIX at the time, mainly on PDP-11's and later VAX's.
UNSW, The University of Wollongong and Sydney University all played instrumental
parts in the early development and adoption of UNIX with close ties to Bell Labs
in New Jersey.

ACSnet was a store and forward messaging system and though we could email
colleagues at Sydney from UNSW, email arrived in bulk a few times a day.
Some time around the early 80's we got the first links to the U.S. and initially it was
a big deal that we could exchange email with academic colleagues in the States.
I still had one of the old .oz.au email addresses up until the mid 90's.

Some time during the mid 80's I recollect a microwave link being set up between
Sydney Uni and UNSW and gradually the connections became faster and more
sophisticated.

I vividly remember being a helping hand helping pull the first UNSW Ethernet cable
through the false ceiling of the third floor of the School of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science at UNSW. It was the original "thick" style coax,
with blue sheathing as I recollect and I remember Peter Ivanov who administered
the computer room showing me one of the line terminators and saying something
like "do you believe they charge 100 bucks for these things". I remember
the Ethernet card installed in the VAX was this physically huge thing,
I remember it as something that looked like 12 inches square!

I'd be curious as to how many others on IIS were early users of ACSnet in the
70's and 80's?

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Mt Kuring-Gai

[mithrandir]

I had access to an oz.au account. It wasn't mine, but the owner had no problem with me using it.

[MrB]

I was too young back then to have access to anything like that, but pretty sure I was reading about it in the 80's electronics magazines like EA, ETI and AEM.

[Omaroo]

I was using the IBM RETAIN/370 network for email-type messaging, as well as it's originally-intended use as a technical information repository, back in the late 70's and early 80's at IBM. IBM could have done wonders with the network architecture behind it, but decided to keep it in-house.

[lacad01]

I worked for an energy utility in the mid 80's to 90's and we had an IBM SNA network but no public access to the "net" until the mid 90's. Was an interesting time replacing all the old green-screen 3270 terminals with PC's, having to learn IP over SNA/VTAM and replacing the terminal cluster controllers with IP routers :)

[Omaroo]

Ah yes Adam - the wondrous days of SDLC. :thumbsup:

Were you ever privileged enough to have to learn BSC (Bisync) too? :)

[lacad01]

No, when I started there it was all SDLC.
We thought it was the bee's knees to load the newer controllers (3174) with 5 1/4" floppies instead of the clunky 3274 8" floppy :)

[Omaroo]

LOL! I remember IPL'ing 3274's with those too. I also remember thinking "how small can these floppies get?"... and then they came out in, as you say, 5 1/4" form. Blew me away! :rofl:

[cfranks]

I used the RETAIN system from the mid 70's in my role as PSR (Software Support Weenie) and have never found a better Search Engine since.

Charles

[Omaroo]

Wow! Another ex-user! :) RETAIN (REmote Technical Assistance Information Network) was brilliant. I remember so well being in the middle of machine problems and being able to turn to RETAIN to help me find a known instance of the problem elsewhere - and what they did to fix it in the form of a RETAIN "Tip". Yes the search engine was tuned to the task and was brilliantly simple and fast.

[mithrandir]

I never had to write code for SDLC or BSC. Did have to write SNA stuff, LU1 and LU2, but at least we always had VTAM - not FTAM.

[leon]

Probably about time they turned it off, it cost us lots of heart ache, when we lost 9 grand through scum bag pricks :mad2: :mad2: who stole our money.:mad2:

It will cause so much damage in the next few years. :shrug:

Leon :thumbsup: