[ih] inter-network communication history

[John Gilmore]

> > When was the first actual inter-network message sent using packet
> > technology?

Telenet began service in August 1975.  This was a public
packet-switching network built by BBN.  See:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet

My employer, Scientific Time Sharing Corporation, was one of the first
users.

There was an undocumented connection between Telenet and the ARPANet
that a Telenet contractor showed me.  (He used it to get to his ARPANet
email, while he worked for months at our site getting our IBM mainframe
properly interfaced to Telenet).  It was apparently just a few
asynchronous ports on a Telenet TAC that were cabled via RS-232 to a few
ports on an ARPANet TIP.  You'd dial in to Telenet, enter a command to
connect to those TAC ports, then you'd be typing to the TIP (@n and @o
34 and etc).  I started using this connection in about 1976 to explore
the ARPANet as an unauthorized guest.  Eventually this led to me getting
an official Tourist account at MIT-AI.  Which ultimately led to me
reading the RFCs and understanding the Internet protocols, which led to
me joining Sun Microsystems in 1981 and eventually co-designing BOOTP
with Bill Croft.

When at some point the Telenet/ARPANet connection wasn't working, and
teenage me reported the problem to the ARPANet NIC, this reportedly led
to a disturbing phone call between somebody at ARPA and the president of
Telenet.  Oops!

I don't think this Telenet/ARPANet connection qualifies as a historic
inter-network link, since it just used ordinary asynchronous serial
ports, not "packet technology".  Anybody know more about it?

	John
	
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