What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!

[Leo Bodnar]

I have used UUCP extensively over dial-up in 1980's and when I had to verify that the network was alive I would use what I called a "human ping."

My UUCP provider had an email gateway to the TELEX network. After using it for awhile I have found that TELEX network also had a gateway to the postal system.

When I thought there was a problem somewhere I would send a [usually stupid] uucp email to the TELEX number of the postal gateway that would send a high priority (flash? rush? - can't remember...) telegram to my postal address where I sat.  If UUCP network connectivity was good, in 10-15 minutes local postman was running to my door to deliver the telegram and get the signature.  The delivery requirement for high priority telegram was 15 minutes at the time.

Telegram charges are per word (as some would remember!) so my ping contents was usually "SPIDERMAN==" or suchlike.  Because it went through few gateways the sender name was also obfuscated. God knows what postmen thought of me and all this business.

The TELEX and telegram are... oh, never mind.

Leo

FTP and UUCP (and HTTP) are protocols that run on top of TCP/IP, which is the key part of the internet. If you were using any of those then you were using the internet.
HTTP was not widely distributed until 1993 or so. The NCSA Mosaic browser was the key enabler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)

[rfclown]

Did you never catch on to the OSI model being developed as a joke? It actually describes no system ever developed. They started with 7, because Dante said that was the number of layers in hell, [...]

Nine. In Dante's Inferno hell is depicted as nine concentric circles.

Yeah, but it gets messy when you reach layer 7, as they all have subdivisions after that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe OSI was based on the Taco Bell 7 layer burrito.

A great comeback. Unfortunately Google tells me that the 7 layer burrito came out in 1993, long after Al made the internet what it is, and LONG after Hubert coughed up OSI in 1978.

[nigelwright7557]

I even remember pre internet/www days with Prestel.
It was teletext type service over the phone lines.

Looking back I dont know how I worked without the internet.
Had to wait for posted data sheets and post it component orders !
Used Maplin quite a bit then and you had to fill in order sheet from catalogue codes and post it off.
3 days later you would get your order often with a few things missing !

I bought Microsoft Visual Studio and it came on 26 floppy discs !

[DiTBho]

I am using a kind of radio-link coupled with a modem.
2Kbit/s, it's somehow like the old BBS

[coppice]

I even remember pre internet/www days with Prestel.
It was teletext type service over the phone lines.

I worked on Prestel systems in 1979, when it was called ViewData (I think it went through other names, too). It was a really sad experience. Everything was done in such a half hearted way it had no chance of taking off. There was lots of enthusiasm among the people developing systems and applications, but very little management buy in to provide the resources to do a good job. The best money was doing contract work for government departments, investigating its potential in a number of applications areas.

I bought Microsoft Visual Studio and it came on 26 floppy discs !

Installing Unix from a large pile of 3.5" floppy disks was a real PITA.

[madires]

I am using a kind of radio-link coupled with a modem.
2Kbit/s, it's somehow like the old BBS

Before WiFi I had a 128kbps wireless link based on DECT with the neighboring house. The DECT TAs had a RS232 interface for connecting to the PCs, and for IP I put a PPP link on top. That setup did work quite well.

[MIS42N]

A company I worked for had 64kbit backbone connecting sites. One time a colleague and I went to a site about 200km from home base, then found we needed a bit of software that we hadn't bought with us (on magnetic tapes IIRC). We calculated it would take 5 hours to download, or 5 hours to drive back, collect it, and return. We organised the download and had a ... really ... long ... lunch. Fortunately the wet piece of string that connected the sites remained moist for the duration and the download was error free. We were home before midnight (just).

[tggzzz]

The first equipment I had at home in the late 80s was an 80*24 terminal and ISDN at 2.4kb/s.

It was useful for email and usenet. It took a couple of seconds to refresh the screen.

(Better than the first computer I used: 5cps 5channel paper tape)

[madires]

Did you mean V.110? ISDN's digital throughput is 64kbps (US and some other countries 56kbps) per data channel.

[tggzzz]

Definitely not 64kb/s, so you are probably right.

My company installed, so I don't remember the details. What I do remember is that BT presumed such equipment was turned on all the time. When I, and others, turned it off overnight, the exchange automatically de-provisioned it.

After having to "manually" reconnect it several times, they managed to find the relevant config parameter

[Phil_G]

I'm a BT lifer, retired now but when I moved to the BT Networks group, maybe 1987 ish? they were starting to build the UK backbone which ultimately became the UK www, fortunately I dont remember any of it apart from endless hours spent cabling & racking,  7 days a week, no time off till it was done!  The upside was our group was the first in the company to have email addresses!
After using topic-specific dial-up BBS's for years, Usenet was a revelation - so much variety of topics, you'd waste hours just checking out the weird ones!
Later I moved into Network Design & Security, still within BT, and at the time the UK government wanted a free system to give everyone in the UK an email address.  The result was a web-based email system called Talk21 which was my very first project in the new job.  Though the platform is long gone, and I'm long retired, my talk21 address is still my main email :-)

[donlisms]

Late to the party... this thread brought back all kinds of memories.  I was at SGI during most of this.  I remember in the very early days Bob always pushing us to get some usenet connectivity, because that's where the fun was.  Newsgroups -- something beyond just email back and forth with UUCP.  Conversations.

I remember years later overhearing hallway conversations as folks were trying to get this new horribly flaky browser code to run somewhat stabily on our early machines.  I'm pretty sure Brendan E was involved in that, and I think Kipp had a hand, and others.  (The elite group that got the fun stuff.)  I remember the conversation going "Yes, well, but for it to get popular, it's going to have to be easy and fun, and the browser is really important.  Nobody's going to do all that command-line stuff; they want to click and get visible results and such."  And then somebody saying "Bandwidth.  Goling to have to get bandwidth for everybody."  And I remember other conversations...  "Oh, Netscape is a new startup; a bunch of folks are going to go over there and take a chance on this new browser thing."

I remember developers having this vision about hyperlinks being a much more normal part of your flow while browsing; that you would manually click on the link for a sub-topic that you were interested in, read all about it, and then return to where you were to continue the main article.  You can do that these days, but it's not really the major element that we thought it would be.  It's more page-level than "little block of content", and the links are pretty well hidden most of the time, because they're really not all that fun.

Hm.  I think those folks were right about browsers being important; and in spite of all the technical stuff that was necessary to make it happen, a reasonable GUI browser was the core of making people WANT to get connected and start doing stuff.  So Brendan took off with some other folks and we ended up with Javascript.  And Google appeared from nowhere a while later, at first a non-descript little building on some street in Mountain View that I often drove past on the way to lunch... who would have guessed they would take over the world?  I just remember thinking "What a silly name!  Where we gonna go for lunch?"

Anyway, technology doesn't necessarily drive people's desires for more, more, more, unless it's interesting and accessible and all that.  And it's the user-facing stuff that matters to most folks; what's underneath, arguing about protocols and terminology and such didn't have anything to do with making "the thing" popular.  The technology makes it possible, that's all.

It's all very simple... just get people to say "Ooh!  That's neat!  I want THAT!" and the technology will be made available with better performance and features for less money.  Or a variation on the theme; I think in some cases in more recent years, people have pushed that desire from the technological side, and sorta persuade people through peer pressure that this is the thing they're supposed to want now.  Which is sad.

[nigelwright7557]

I remember Prestel which came way before the internet.
I was working on Prestel adaptors in 1981 onwards.
It was the same display as Teletext but data came from a Prestel computer on  telephone line.
Baud rates were 1200 receive and 75 transmit.