[ih] distributed network control: Usenet

[Greg Skinner]

I’m surprised, given how popular the web had become by then.  How was this determined?

> On Jul 25, 2021, at 2:16 PM, Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> When I first joined Packeteer in 1998, Usenet accounted for an overwhelming percentage of the Internet traffic.
> 
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 2:08 PM Greg Skinner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> 
> On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com <mailto:gnu at toad.com>> wrote:
> > The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> > the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> > times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> > NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> > agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> > (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> > wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
> > 
> > Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> > years ago.
> 
> BTW, it’s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/ <https://groups.google.com/>>.  Some newsgroups go back to the early 1980s.
> 
> —gregbo
> 
> 
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