[ih] History of Tier 1 Networks

[Bill Woodcock]

The original PCH IXP, also in 1994, had a frame relay side facing a lot of The Little Garden’s members, and an Ethernet side facing MAE-West and FIX-West at Ames. 

And Zocalo, the ISP I ran at the time, had frame relay customers from Guam and Hawaii in the west to the Czech Republic and the UK in the east. Frame was great. Also, our provisioning manager was the daughter of PAC Bell’s night-shift NOC manager, which was, uh, helpful in resolving problems.  :-)
    
                -Bill


> On Apr 28, 2026, at 11:09, Leonard Kleinrock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Yes indeed, Sandy Fraser’s work at Bell Labs was ground-breaking in data networking.  Kudo’s to him.
> Len
> 
>> On Apr 27, 2026, at 6:13 AM, Anthony Martin <ality at pbrane.org> wrote:
>> 
>> John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> once said:
>>>> I would agree. In the US, AT&T showed little interest in packet
>>>> switching until very late in the game.
>> 
>> Leonard Kleinrock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> once said:
>>> Early on, AT&T argued that packet switching would not work, and
>>> even if it did, they wanted nothing to do with it (notwithstanding
>>> the fact that their scientists did do some worthwhile mathematical
>>> modeling of it).
>> 
>> That isn't the whole story.
>> 
>> Sandy Fraser's work on packet switching at AT&T Bell Labs is notable.
>> Spider started in the early 70s. This led to Datakit in the early 80s
>> and commercialized by AT&T. It was still in use up to the early 2010s
>> supported by Datatek Corp. Many of Fraser's papers have at least one
>> reference to a Kleinrock paper.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Anthony
> 
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