[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

[Dave Crocker]

On 8/18/2025 7:00 AM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> This last one I think doesn’t get enough credit. It is a very small thing, but I think was a major contribution to the success of the ARPANET. It would have worked at 2.4 or 9.6, but been so glacially slow as to have been considered not successful.

For the general, 'shared resources' model, sure.  And from today's 
perspective, OMG you bet!

Howerver...

CSNet gatewayed Arpanet/Internet mail and initially it was dial-up 
300baud or 1200 baud.  It it was effective.  And 2.4K would have been 
luxurious.

(An 'on the other hand' example did arise... One site locked up making 
repeated connections that went for about and hour trying to send the 
same connection but then dropping.  The user was trying to send a 
megabyte attachment and the phone-based transfer protocol did not 
support checkpoint/recovery.  The popular UI for these folks was an MSG 
emulator and a simple Ctl-B and filename attached the file to the 
message.  It was easy and did not take note of the size of the file...)

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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