[ih] Commercial ISPs (Re: Some Questions over IPv4 Ownership)

[Craig Partridge]

Don't forget the UUCP gateway via SEISMO (run by Rick Adams) before UUNET
Technologies.

At one point, I think CSNET's and SEISMO's were the two most used
IMP port on ARPANET (wish I had the old traffic reports...).

I do distinctly remember that shortly after 5pm Eastern, CSNET and
SEISMO would light up the ARPANET with traffic -- in the old days,
5pm was when telephone rates dropped and they could dial out to get
email.  And if SEISMO's IMP had trouble, it meant a call to a CSNET
techie (e.g. yours truly) in the middle of the night because the CSNET
disks would begin to overflow with traffic for SEISMO.

This is c. 1986.

Thanks!

Craig



> 
> On Oct 12, 2010, at 3:45 PM, Scott Brim wrote:
> 
> > On 10/12/2010 15:00 EDT, Ofer Inbar wrote:
> >> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 08:03:49PM -0700,
> >> jfh <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
> >>> Somewhere along the line, commercial ISPs popped into being.  I'm
> >>> not sure who was first, but my recollection is that this happened as
> >>> spinoffs from NSFNet and/or CSNet.  Again, there must have been some
> >>> kind of agreements between those commercial entities and a piece of
> >>> the government, detailing the rules about ownership.  These first
> >>> ISPs were different because they were not research collaborators.
> >>> They were in business simply to make money selling Internet service.
> >> 
> >> Software Tool & Die's (aka "the World") was the first commercial
> >> consumer ISP, and UUNET was the first commercial IP network provider -
> >> who sold IP service to STD.
> > 
> > The way I remember it:
> > 
> > STD provided Internet services but they were not a network.
> > 
> > UUNET was a non-profit exchange, not a network, until 1990 (?)
> 
> More accurately, UUNET Communication Services was started by USENIX 
> to provide paid UUCP and USENET news service for those that
> couldn't find a friendly neighbor site for a UUCP connection.  UUNET
> became a major UUCP hub for email and news.
> 
> Sometime later, UUNET Technologies, Inc. was started as a separate
> enterprise, picking up the customers of the previous entity (and
> paying a royalty back to the original company for some period of time)
> that helped fund various good works.  It also started a commercial
> IP backbone service, and then later sought venture funding to expand
> the IP part of the business.  That was about the time that I joined
> in 1995; the nascent backbone was already running by then.
> 
> It was a bit later that along with PSI and others, started an early
> multi-party Internet exchange operated by MFS Datanet.  UUNET was a
> customer of that exchange and it certainly wasn't non-profit as far
> as MFS was concerned.
> 
> For quite some time, UUNET was a major email gateway interconnect
> between UUCP-based email and the Internet; as well for USENET news
> via UUCP and over the Internet with NNTP.
> 
> Louis Mamakos
********************
Craig Partridge
Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com
Phone: +1 517 324 3425