[ih] History from 1960s to 2025

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 27-Dec-25 04:57, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:

<snip>
  
> The exemplar customer was... ISO.  I chatted with their IT manager
> who was the customer and asked whether he got much push-back for
> this choice.  He snapped that they got to tell him what services they
> needed, not how to provide them.

Was he called something like Steve Gneiss? But even if it wasn't
him, yes, that was reality. The ITU was in a similar situation, or
worse. I signed off on the ITU's first "Internet" account, which was
actually a login to CERNVAX, a VMS machine running Wollongong. The
approval form was signed on December 10, 1991** so I guess the ITU
got Internet access for Christmas. They were ituosg at cernvax.cern.ch
(OSG = Office of the Secretary General). The human behind the name
was Guy Girardet, an ITU official who had his eyes open.

** I should clarify that this was some months after Tony Rutkowski
and Carl Malamud had campaigned for ITU standards to be available
on-line, but when they had accessed the Internet from ITU offices
it hadn't been official. For that story, see Carl's book "Exploring
the Internet."

Regards
     Brian