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

[coppice]

I am not really a pioneer of Internet/WWW/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, but we started talking to other computers since 1992-93 via local BBSs, although the price of the call was prohibitive if connected for too long (in Brasil, a new charge was made every 4 minutes for local calls).

The heyday of BBSes was the 1980s for most people in developed countries, using modems from 300bps to 2400bps. although it was often held back by restrictive practices on the sale and use of modems in many countries.

Call costs were a huge factor in the development of online services. Some of the earliest systems, like Prestel in the UK and Minitel in France, were actually a response by telcos to the question "how can we get subscribers to rack up more per minute local call charges?". In the early 90s, when the Internet started to move, it moved a lot faster in places with free local calls than it did in places with substantial per minute charges. Even in the early days of ADSL, many telcos tried charging for access time, although they couldn't sustain that model for long.

[Syntax Error]

Indeed call costs were high in the mid 90s, but a lot cheaper than at the end of the 80s. I did once use a BBS with my C64, but that was at an 'international' rate call. And the games were still rubbish.

Here in the UK by 95, 'internet over POTS' (modem) was around one penny a minute. Quite a lot over a month for just 'surfing' (a very 90s in-term) over a slow link, but we needed something cool for our Windows 95 computers to do. I moved from AOL to Virgin Net as they had user discounts on Virgin Megastore stuff. I upgraded to a V92 internal modem, which was SO much faster!

Before a 'surfing' session, I trailed a long phone extension lead down the halway and stairs to the phone point. Invariably someone would make this a trip hazard causing a loss of connection. Today people get anxious if their wifi signal is only streaming at 150Mbs. FTTP, VDSL, Wifi and 5G, you have never had it so good.

EEVBlog Kids, an internet joy that you will never know, is this conversation:
"Dad, how long are you going to use the phone?"
"Why son?"
"Because I want to connect to the internet."
"It's my phone, so I will use it for as long as I s****g want!"
-or-
"Get off the internet, your dad needs to use HIS telephone!"

Happy days.

[madires]

The good old times. Back then we started the dial-in service with an Ascend MAX 2000 (1 or 2 PRIs) and soon afterwards we had several racks full of MAX TNTs (16 PRIs and tons of k56flex cards) supporting MPPP (Multilink PPP) across the chassis.

[rsjsouza]

I am not really a pioneer of Internet/WWW/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, but we started talking to other computers since 1992-93 via local BBSs, although the price of the call was prohibitive if connected for too long (in Brasil, a new charge was made every 4 minutes for local calls).

The heyday of BBSes was the 1980s for most people in developed countries, using modems from 300bps to 2400bps. although it was often held back by restrictive practices on the sale and use of modems in many countries.

Call costs were a huge factor in the development of online services. Some of the earliest systems, like Prestel in the UK and Minitel in France, were actually a response by telcos to the question "how can we get subscribers to rack up more per minute local call charges?". In the early 90s, when the Internet started to move, it moved a lot faster in places with free local calls than it did in places with substantial per minute charges. Even in the early days of ADSL, many telcos tried charging for access time, although they couldn't sustain that model for long.

Yes, you are correct; unfortunately for us in Brasil there was a severe import tax of finished goods (150 or 200%, if you were somehow authorized to bring anything) and therefore the restrictions were even worse. Of course, the telcos were state-owned and therefore restrictions were probably way worse.

The other day I got a Hayes 300bps smartmodem and, while studing its history to make a video on my channel, I was somewhat surprised to see how early it started to be sold (1981).

Perhaps to try and bring the country to the modern age, telcos started a teletext/videotext pilot program in the mid 80s that was quite promising, although it never took off for the general public - perhaps they had some trial runs here and there but it never gained mass adoption. Perhaps it was due to the beginning of the hyperinflation that plagued us for almost a decade ("the lost decade" as we usually say). Terrible times.

Indeed call costs were high in the mid 90s, but a lot cheaper than at the end of the 80s. I did once use a BBS with my C64, but that was at an 'international' rate call. And the games were still rubbish.

Yes, call costs became quite high, to which a V.90 or V.92 were a life saviour. Still, the phone company started to promote lower tariffs between midnight and 6AM and they found out the lines started to operate at capacity at these hours and bumped the charges.

Before a 'surfing' session, I trailed a long phone extension lead down the halway and stairs to the phone point. Invariably someone would make this a trip hazard causing a loss of connection.

Not only that, but invariably someone would pick up the line, to which the post mortem message was:

$%@#~*LOST CARRIER

[helius]

Because of local regulations our modems came with some special features, like re-dial limits, and required an approval which made the modems two or three times more expensive than the ones imported from the US. If you had an import modem without approval you could be fined and the modem was confiscated. After the privatization of Deutsche Bundespost things improved.

Was this the period when 23 took place?
It's interesting how divergent different national telephone systems were and are. At a certain time, workstations with built-in ISDN ports had bright yellow warning stickers threatening dire consequences for connecting in Australia. Different countries developed incompatible modular jack designs. And the different sound of ring tones and busy tones.

[coppice]

Because of local regulations our modems came with some special features, like re-dial limits, and required an approval which made the modems two or three times more expensive than the ones imported from the US. If you had an import modem without approval you could be fined and the modem was confiscated. After the privatization of Deutsche Bundespost things improved.

Was this the period when 23 took place?
It's interesting how divergent different national telephone systems were and are. At a certain time, workstations with built-in ISDN ports had bright yellow warning stickers threatening dire consequences for connecting in Australia. Different countries developed incompatible modular jack designs. And the different sound of ring tones and busy tones.

The only really divergent behaviour was in the US. Most countries had comparable rules to Germany, holding back the development of new services.

[helius]

Prior, slower, modems were all designed to work peer to peer, and were used for all sorts of communications which needed symmetric behaviour.

Not quite. The Bell 202 was a 1200 bps asynchronous modem with a reverse channel of 75 bps (sometimes 150 bps). This was also the scheme of the ITU's V.23. Later, the US Robotics' HST and Telebit's PEP also used asymmetric channels. This was all before 1990.

[MIS42N]

Prior, slower, modems were all designed to work peer to peer, and were used for all sorts of communications which needed symmetric behaviour.

Not quite. The Bell 202 was a 1200 bps asynchronous modem with a reverse channel of 75 bps (sometimes 150 bps). This was also the scheme of the ITU's V.23. Later, the US Robotics' HST and Telebit's PEP also used asymmetric channels. This was all before 1990.

I encountered a few 1200/75 modems, they could be configured to be peer to peer. Messy 25 pin connectors with a primary channel and a secondary channel each with a full complement of control signals. The 75 baud channel was designed to handle typed input, so didn't need to be faster. I "butchered" the Commodore 64 operating system to handle a 1200/75 modem thinking it was a 300/300. Worked well.

[madires]

Because of local regulations our modems came with some special features, like re-dial limits, and required an approval which made the modems two or three times more expensive than the ones imported from the US. If you had an import modem without approval you could be fined and the modem was confiscated. After the privatization of Deutsche Bundespost things improved.

Was this the period when 23 took place?

Yes, 23 was second half of the 80s and the privatization of Deutsche Bundespost happened in 1995.

It's interesting how divergent different national telephone systems were and are. At a certain time, workstations with built-in ISDN ports had bright yellow warning stickers threatening dire consequences for connecting in Australia. Different countries developed incompatible modular jack designs. And the different sound of ring tones and busy tones.

... also features, e.g. MWI, or line types, like T1 and E1, and so on.

[madires]

The only really divergent behaviour was in the US. Most countries had comparable rules to Germany, holding back the development of new services.

At that time telephone services were operated by government agencies in most EU countries. They had tons of regulations and were afraid that non-compliant modems could harm the network. Despite being agencies some were quite progressive, for example you could do online banking with BTX in the 80s. And don't forget ISDN, which was much more than just a digital telephone service. That reminds me of the ISDN's short message service. After the introduction of ISDN the standard tariff included a free short message service. Some students designed a terminal adapter to use the short message service as low speed serial connection. It didn't take long until the short message service became a paid option.

[madires]

Not quite. The Bell 202 was a 1200 bps asynchronous modem with a reverse channel of 75 bps (sometimes 150 bps). This was also the scheme of the ITU's V.23. Later, the US Robotics' HST and Telebit's PEP also used asymmetric channels. This was all before 1990.

In the early 90ies the two best modems were the USR Courier HST and ZyXEL U-1486 which many BBSes and early ISPs used. I can't recall USR's HST protocol being asymmetrical. A friend had the Courier HST and I think the transfer rates were the same in both directions. ZyXEL's proprietary high speed protocols were symmetrical. BTW, we did run Amiga based BBSes back then.

[CJay]

It's been a *long* time since I dealt with them, US Robotics Courier HST mode was asymmetric but I seem to remember if was capable of flipping the channels so the side with most data would get the fast one.

[coppice]

Prior, slower, modems were all designed to work peer to peer, and were used for all sorts of communications which needed symmetric behaviour.

Not quite. The Bell 202 was a 1200 bps asynchronous modem with a reverse channel of 75 bps (sometimes 150 bps). This was also the scheme of the ITU's V.23. Later, the US Robotics' HST and Telebit's PEP also used asymmetric channels. This was all before 1990.

Bell 202 and V.23 were actually intended as single directional 1200bps modems, with a reverse control ability. I think Bell 202 was originally specified with only a 5bps back channel, too slow even for a slow typist. The main used of V.23 turned out to be for information services, like Prestel and Minitel, where the 75bps back channel was adequate for sending async serial data from slow typists.

The Telebit Trailblazer PEP (essentially OFDM) modems were designed to be adaptive to both line conditions and data flows. They offered 512 carriers, only using the ones that worked well after line probing on the particular phone line. They allocated the usable carriers dynamically to one or other direction, as the data flow demanded. So they offered symmetric capabilities, but at any instant offered asymmetric flows.

I'm not familiar with the details of the HST modems. I thought they were dynamically symmetric, in a similar way to the Trailblazer modems.

[CJay]

I'm not familiar with the details of the HST modems. I thought they were dynamically symmetric, in a similar way to the Trailblazer modems.

Memory does serve, page 211 of this https://support.usr.com/support/0955/0955-files/0955-unkg-Manual.pdf says the modem with less data was dynamically allocated a 450BPS back channel

[madires]

That would have sucked very badly with the Hydra transfer protocol when polling FTS networks. Still got my old U-1496EG+.

[EasyGoing1]

BTW, I was there. I missed the 1984 kremvax hoax, but was using the internet before going to do research on the internet from 1987 onwards.

You were using the Internet in 1987? Which country / state did you live in? Who was your Internet Service Provider?  Because if it was AOL or Compuserve or a similar type of service, that was NOT "The Internet" - that would have been a closed network that offered resources that you used to do research. THE INTERNET - meaning the ability to purchase a connection that connected you directly into the Internet itself was not possible for home users (at least in the United States) until the low / mid 1990s.

[EasyGoing1]

I'm done with you, you're trolling.

You're the one accusing me of being wrong without citing anything specific that I said while explaining why what I said was wrong ... and *I'm* trolling?

You're a joke! You offer nothing of value or substance to the conversation other than baseless accusations.

[JohnnyMalaria]

BTW, I was there. I missed the 1984 kremvax hoax, but was using the internet before going to do research on the internet from 1987 onwards.

You were using the Internet in 1987?

Yup. University of Bristol via JANET.

[CJay]

That would have sucked very badly with the Hydra transfer protocol when polling FTS networks. Still got my old U-1496EG+.

I rather regret chucking out most of the old modems I had but they're of very little or no practical use these days, about the only thing I have needed an analogue modem for in the past 5 years or so was to send a fax to a government department and I managed that with an all in one printer.

I did once upon a time have the V22 BIS negotiation tones as a text message alert but even that has gone by the wayside now, very few people I work with have ever used dialup. 

[madires]

You were using the Internet in 1987?

Yup. University of Bristol via JANET.

Be careful with the old university/research networks. Many weren't connected to ARPANET and X.25 was commonly used. JANET started with X.25 and switched to IP in 1991. The first CSNET node in Germany was installed at university Karlsruhe in 1984, while the first IP link to NYSERNet came in 1989. The CS faculty of university Karlsruhe founded also one of the first ISPs (XLINK).

[Syntax Error]

... And don't forget ISDN...

You know, I almost had. In the 80s and 90s, it was at the backbone of B2B communication. Having a leased line meant your business had arrived. Especially if there was a video conferencing suite to justify the crippling bandwidth tarrif. As a roaming tech support guy, I would often be stressing over some client comms issue, only to find their ISDN was out. Not my problemo, call Telecom.

I recall some businesses had dedicated "Megastream" lines, but I'm not sure if this was ISDN in a different wrapper?

For anyone playing @home: ISDN https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Network

Remarkably, you can still find ISDN hardware listed on ebay. So someone must still be making calls to the last century?

[coppice]

Be careful with the old university/research networks. Many weren't connected to ARPANET and X.25 was commonly used. JANET started with X.25 and switched to IP in 1991.

I think a lot of people confuse the old CCITT/ITU based academic networks with the modern Internet. In some ways we might eventually be moving back there. IPv6 could be considered to have more in common with the CCITT protocols than with IPv4.

[EasyGoing1]

Anyway I don’t think I’ve seen a single post relating to the OSI model being referenced which is probably the most complete definition of internetworking.

The OSI model is also not the definition of "The Internet" nor is it the definition of "internetworking". The OSI model is the model of ALL computer networking and it describes what networking actually is inside any hardware that can network.

Tha physical layer is most known by people as the Ethernet port and the patch cables. In Wifi, it would be like BNC connectors and antennas

Datalink layer is the layer that we can observe when we see the connection light on those ethernet jacks. In Wifi, it's most often displayed with software - some indication that you're physically connected to the network which would only happen if you accurately provided the security credentials. Having layers 1 and 2 working does not mean you can send and receive packets yet from your software...

The Newtork Layer would be best understood as that function within the hardware the provides the means of maintaining a connection from one node to another (one ethernet port to the ethernet port that it is directly connected to) - in Wifi this is virtualized, and it would include the MAC address of the port in that function.

Tht Tansport layer is the function within the hardware the defines the structure of the packets that traverse between nodes. It would also include error correction methods etc.

The session layer now begins to reach up beyond the hardware and is a function of the operating system at a low level. It is defined within the protocols being used. TCP/IP and UDP for example would have distinct and different ways of implementing the session layer.

Then there are the presentation and application layers, the presentation layer being the layer that brings packets to your applications like Chrome etc. and the Application layer being your apps themselves.

The OSI model describes what is happening inside a computer, or a router, or a switch or any other device that can operate on a network.

THE INTERNET happens in layer 3 mostly because layer 3 is where ROUTING between different networks happen.

But by no means, is the OSI model a definition of the Internet.  The Internet exists within the context of the OSI model as does ANY network.

But the Internet is literally defined as the Inter-connection of otherwise disconnected, independent networks.

So if say you have three companies and they each exist in three different buildings and those buildings are geographically dispersed either throughout a city where their distance apart is such that they don't exist on the same property. When you CONNECT those three buildings so that any of the buildings can talk to any of the other buildings, you have now created an INTER-NETWORK ( a network of networks) and "THE INTERNET" is the label given to the Inter-network that exists that connects countless other networks which exist all over the planet. And we access the Internet via layer 3 of the OSI model which is provided to us by an Internet Service Provide by some means such as an Ethernet handoff or a fiber handoff maybe through a multiplexer, or a modulator of some kind ... cable modems etc. Some ISPs sell Internet through WiFi access points over large distances often called terrestrial networks or "last mile" networks, and there is also Satellite connections into the Internet, even point-to-point laser is one means of offering a connection into an internetwork or the Internet ...

But don't be confused, the OSI model is NOT a definition of "The Internet" just as TCP is also not a definition of "The Internet" ... however, the Internet exists within the OSI model and it does implement TCP as one protocol that computers use to communicate with each other on the Internet. UDP is also used often and operates independently of TCP and is a much more efficient protocol for things like video broadcasting and even large data transfers when it isn't necessary to use the heavy error correction that is built into TCP (making UDP much faster because of lower overhead in the protocol).

Other protocols such as FTP and SFTP and HTTP actually operate on top of TCP and they rely on TCP for packet delivery. They simply "add" to TCP: for example, FTP requires a connection stream to be established after a handshaking process has transpired with success and that process requires a username and password, where as HTTP and HTTPS are just overlays on TCP that are intended to transfer hypertext, HTTPS adding the requirement that the hypertext be encrypted and signed by a trusted certificate authority etc. Those would be presentation layer functions when thinking in terms of OSI model, and there are a lot of them out there... some of the more frequently used presentation layer protocols would include SSH, SFTP, Telnet etc.

But remember ... all of those protocols can be used within the confines of a single computer and do NOT require a computer to be connected to an actual network for them to be used. For example, if you installed a web server on your computer, then used Google Chrome on that same computer to pull up a web page that your computers webserver was offering, you could view those web pages locally without ever being connected to a network, and all seven layers of the OSI model would be satisfied within the context of just that one computer that is NOT on a local network nor is it on the Internet because OSI describes ALL networking, whether its local or wide area, or campus networks, or metropolitan networks, or global networks, the OSI model literally exists within each and every device that is capable of communicating on a network.

Examples of hardware that DO NOT exist within the OSI model would be ...VCRs ... or DVD players that don't have Ethernet ports on them ... or pretty much any TV set before the "Smart TV" ... film projectors, film-based cameras ... any analog telephone that must be connected to a POTs phone line ... if it doesn't have WiFi nor an Ethernet port on it, then it's not part of the OSI model.

If it DOES have an Ethernet port on it, or a WiFi radio in it, then technically it also contains all seven layers of the OSI model whether or not it's connected to The Internet.

The OSI model is just a model ... it's a description of the functions that must exist within a device before that device will be able to communicate on a network.

99% of my need of the OSI model is specifically when I am troubleshooting a problem on a network. The OSI model can be invaluable when you need to understand where a problem exists so that you know how to approach it and fix it.

A good analogy would be to say that in order for human beings to communicate with each other, they would need a body, a brain, and a mechanism from which to transcribe the thoughts in the brain to a tangible representation that could be then interpreted by other human beings who also have a body and a brain, but the body would be layer 1, vocal chords and hands would be like layer 2 (the post office could be seen as layer 3) ... the eyeballs or the ears could be the transport and session layers ... up to the comprehension of data being the application layer ...

again ... its not a model that is unique for the Internet NOR internetworks, nor does it have any specific connection to the Internet other than the Internet existing within layer 3 pretty much exclusively. OSI applies to all digital hardware that is network capable.


Mike

[coppice]

... And don't forget ISDN...

You know, I almost had. In the 80s and 90s, it was at the backbone of B2B communication.

Here's a wacky piece of trivia. In HK all local analogue landline calls have always been free. You just pay a fixed monthly line rental. If you get an old style, pre-ISDN, type of T1 local calls are also free. However, if you get any kind of ISDN connection, BRI or PRI, you pay per minute to make calls. ISDN never really took off in HK. I can't imagine why.

[madires]

I rather regret chucking out most of the old modems I had but they're of very little or no practical use these days, about the only thing I have needed an analogue modem for in the past 5 years or so was to send a fax to a government department and I managed that with an all in one printer.

I had one running until I left Fidonet two years ago. It was used for fax and as last resort for Fidonet nodes which couldn't connect via binkp (FTS IP mailer and protocol). I also have a USR V.everything (the early version sold as Courier V34 which can be easily upgraded via a firmware update). But you're right, they are basically e-junk now besides having some sentimental value.