[ih] AOL in perspective

[John Day]

There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too popular.

> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
> 
> I had forgotten about that!
> 
> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> Vint Cerf
> Google, LLC
> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
> Reston, VA 20190
> +1 (571) 213 1346
> 
> 
> until further notice
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>> 
>> Take care,
>> John
>> 
>> > On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
>> > previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along with
>> > Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>> > program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
>> > told me this:
>> > 
>> >  "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
>> >  ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
>> >  every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>> >  sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
>> >  few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>> >  than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
>> >  minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
>> >  paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
>> >  been torn to shreds!"
>> > 
>> > They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
>> > ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
>> > 
>> > Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
>> > Tech Sq building.)
>> > -- 
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