[ih] History from 1960s to 2025

[John Day]

And some of us thought, it was the continuation of building a resource-sharing network.  ;-)

(Although I have heard some say that it was patterned after the PSTN, but I don’t believe it.)

> On Dec 18, 2025, at 15:02, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 18-Dec-25 23:29, Elmar K. Bins via Internet-history wrote:
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org (Vint Cerf via Internet-history) wrote:
>>> Jack's summary and others seem to neglect the impact of the Web, but
>>> perhaps the intentional focus was only on the network layers (TCP/IP,
>>> QUIC/UDP)? It would be hard to explain the success of the Internet without
>>> the HTTP addition in the early 1990s.
>> Exactly, which in turn allowed the user base to change dramatically (from
>> technically interested fellows inventing things to the public at large,
>> doomscrolling). No "normal" Internet user cares at all about how this
>> functions, as long as it does. (See IPv6 adoption.)
> 
> At one point I started referring to the Web as "the fluff on top of the
> Internet", especially when I wanted to catch the attention of
> Tim Berners-Lee while we worked in the same building at CERN. There
> really is a difference between the Internet viewed as a plumbing system
> and the Internet viewed as an information infrastructure. And that is
> fundamentally why we have the W3C as well as the IETF.
> 
> This list is mainly inhabited by plumbers.
> 
>    Brian
> 
>> The users' focus is on applications (well, it actually isn't, but speaking
>> technically), not protocols. And the applications change, too (email anyone?)
>> The focus of the IETF and other inventors is on making those applications work
>> smoothly, and that is where protocol progress originates from.
>> Well, except for the exceptions where nerds get excited ;-)
>> E.
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