[ih] Bell System packet networks

[Bob Purvy]

It was largely because of frame relay that people bought Packet Shapers
(Packeteer, where I worked). They paid a lot of money for their wide area
network, and they didn't want it consumed with UseNet and Napster.

Different times.

On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 4:10 PM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> 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
> >
>
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