[ih] Bell System packet networks

[John Day]

I always considered X.25, Frame Relay, ATM, etc. as phone company attempts to do something like packet switching without really embracing it. They were all a bit kludgy. Although, I have to admit the target use was very different. Any of them could have been a cleaner design.

John

> On Apr 27, 2026, at 18:29, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> 
> Leonard Kleinrock wrote:
>> Finally, in 1983 (14 years after the launch of the Arpanet that
>> demonstrated the viability of packet switching), AT&T finally launched
>> their premier data networking service called Net 1000! However, it was
>> too little too late and worse, it offered it as a full service
>> offering that not only provided data transmission, but also offered
>> storage and computation to the Fortune 500 companies, two things that
>> those companies certainly not need - they closed down Net 1000 in 1984
>> at a loss in the range of $1 billion!
> 
> How does Frame Relay fit into the picture?
> 
> It was from Bell and it moved packets.  But mostly on "permanent virtual
> circuits" that were set up once and never changeable.  Wikipedia says it
> was a simplified version of X.25, and was deployed in the 1990s.  Our
> early ISP, The Little Garden, offered service over 56k Frame Relay in
> late 1994, as an alternative to dialups or leased lines.  It had the
> advantage of being flat-rate no matter where in the Pacific Bell LATA
> the customer was -- anywhere between Monterey and the Oregon border.
> 
> 	John
>