Author Topic: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!  (Read 18839 times)

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Offline BeaminTopic starter

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info.cern.ch

That was way before my time by about 5 years. The internet I remember when we first got it through my dads work over a terminal, that I thought was the coolest thing ever because it was like a computer the size of a DVD player and had PCMA slots instead of floppy disks, was much different. I used to use webcrawler and altavista, this was when the internet had too little info on it. A few years later it was in the goldie locks zone where you got what you needed and could look at almost every thing not like now where its page 1 of 134,635,678. Who goes past page two? Seriously is there a bar graph that shows how many people go past page one? If you have a business and you type in a key word and city or zip and youre not on page one you dont exist.
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2021, 08:23:53 pm »
That is about the world wide web, not the internet.

I suggest you change the title.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2021, 09:49:05 pm »
That was way before my time by about 5 years.

I sent my first email in 1984 :)
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2021, 09:53:55 pm »
That was way before my time by about 5 years.

I sent my first email in 1984 :)

Using "bang addressing" I presume.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2021, 10:45:47 pm »
I remember it was complicated (you had to string addresses together) and the addresses were backwards (e.g., co.ac.bris@fred). I was sending emails to a friend at a different university in the UK using JANET and a Multics mainframe.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2021, 11:04:36 pm »
You frequently had to have several attempts to get an email to the destination machine. Conversations like "bugger; natovax doesn't know a route to kremvax; let's see if ucbvax has a a clue" were common.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline S. Petrukhin

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2021, 11:28:12 am »
And I think the search queries "XXX" and "porno" have made the Internet popular...  ;D
And sorry for my English.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #7 on: February 13, 2021, 01:52:03 am »
That is about the world wide web, not the internet.

I suggest you change the title.

No it not, its about the Information Superhighway.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #8 on: February 13, 2021, 01:54:17 am »
I started using Internet back in 1986 at IBM.
 

Online ebastler

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #9 on: February 13, 2021, 08:55:05 am »
That is about the world wide web, not the internet.

I suggest you change the title.

No it not, its about the Information Superhighway.

No, I think tggzzz is correct.

(a) The CERN website linked in the initial post discusses the birth of the World Wide Web at CERN, i.e. the idea of a "web" of pages which refer to each other by links. It does not discuss the internet, i.e. the underlying network for information exchange, on which various protocols can be used to exchange information. (Some of which were already in use when Tim Berners-Lee came up with the "web" concept.)

(b) I don't think anybody at CERN used the stupid "superhighway" term for either of these concepts.
 

Offline CJay

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #10 on: February 13, 2021, 09:25:34 am »
Agree with TGzzz, the web isn't the internet though it's become a catch all term and so much of the 'net can be reached from the web.

I too date back to having to send emails from a shell, my first was sent to a friend at DEC, I used a comapny called The Direct Connection for shell access to the 'net, prior to that I was using the local dial in port for JANET at Manchester Uni (despite not being a student or even authorised to, I took it as permission to continue when a sysadmin 'chatted' to me, asked me who I was, how I'd got on and told me he'd kick my arse if I broke anything then left me alone to play).

Prior to that I was using various BBS around the local area, there were a few which were living rent free on various mainframes in large businesses and run as a hobby by the sysadmins.
 

Offline jhalar

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #11 on: February 13, 2021, 09:48:04 am »
Back in 1989 I was doing my EE degree at uni. The EE and computer science departments were connected to ACSNet in Australia, no internet yet.

Email and file transfers only using the UUCP protocol.





Electronics and Network Engineer. Working in both worlds.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #12 on: February 13, 2021, 11:52:48 am »
Back in 1989 I was doing my EE degree at uni. The EE and computer science departments were connected to ACSNet in Australia, no internet yet.

Email and file transfers only using the UUCP protocol.

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)
« Last Edit: February 13, 2021, 11:59:04 am by tggzzz »
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline CJay

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #13 on: February 13, 2021, 01:17:00 pm »
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.

FTP and UUCP protocols were used on distributed publicly accessible Unix networks that weren't necessarily ARPAnet connected (but many were later) so if we accept that the modern internet 'began' out of ARPANet then that's contentious
 

Offline themadhippy

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #14 on: February 13, 2021, 01:32:21 pm »
Quote
search queries "XXX" and "porno"
if you want to see the way technology is going. follow the porn industry.
 

Offline TomS_

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #15 on: February 13, 2021, 01:57:35 pm »
As a network engineer I also disagree with using "the internet" to refer to any specific use case of it, like the world wide web.

But it's also hard to change the general publics perception that they are one in the same. I mean, when is the last time anyone saw an advertisement that said "buy your internet access from us and get access to the world wide web"? That sounds like something you'd probably have seen in the 90s. 😂

Sky in the UK are probably the closest to doing this with some of their recent ads where they list a whole bunch of things you can do, but "world wide web" isn't one of them (and is also a bit of a mouthful), probably because "internet" is the generic term to refer to same.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #16 on: February 13, 2021, 02:58:18 pm »
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.

FTP and UUCP protocols were used on distributed publicly accessible Unix networks that weren't necessarily ARPAnet connected (but many were later) so if we accept that the modern internet 'began' out of ARPANet then that's contentious

Strictly true, but early purely internal networks ran all sorts of protocols which didn't support UUCP/FTP.

By 1989, as in the post I was responding to, the internet was well established and TCP/IP was completely dominant (except for places where politics dictated the x400 family).
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #17 on: February 13, 2021, 02:59:53 pm »
As a network engineer I also disagree with using "the internet" to refer to any specific use case of it, like the world wide web.

But it's also hard to change the general publics perception that they are one in the same. I mean, when is the last time anyone saw an advertisement that said "buy your internet access from us and get access to the world wide web"? That sounds like something you'd probably have seen in the 90s. 😂

Sky in the UK are probably the closest to doing this with some of their recent ads where they list a whole bunch of things you can do, but "world wide web" isn't one of them (and is also a bit of a mouthful), probably because "internet" is the generic term to refer to same.

Oh yes indeed - but we aren't the general public! A techy forum ought to get the basics right :)

I also dislike people measuring time in Siemens, e.g. mS.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 
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Offline TomS_

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #18 on: February 13, 2021, 05:16:06 pm »
A techy forum ought to get the basics right :)

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.  ^-^
 

Offline coppice

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2021, 05:19:27 pm »
A techy forum ought to get the basics right :)

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.  ^-^
Not really. Many technically correct things are highly misleading. The best way to lie is by telling the truth in ways that mislead. Nobody can catch you out for telling a lie that way.
 

Offline Labrat101

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2021, 07:53:14 pm »
Hi ,
Reading this interesting subject reminded me of the Days in the late 80s When I worked for Intel.
 So I had all the state of art in my office .. DLS unix system that monitored the entire Building .
a VAX terminal just loved that Green screen , And a pentium 386 with a 19inch EGA . (16 colour)
Running windows 3.11 .. I had Mozilla 0.9 browser  . There was no Google .. most of the searching
via a look up system that Intel had . From the main computer Room that had a Link over to the USA
via cable system & Dish . I was blessed that I worked mainly night shifts . So I spent many hours
 exploring via the VAX . all was manual typed in the whole ip's and links .
 every time you made an error . Syntax Error  :palm:
 Windows 3. sate of the art but Mozilla was good . well that's is all we had .
 And to access other worldly systems was not hard . Most systems had ether no passwords or
 qwerty worked on most . :-DD The  world was not so paranoid over hackers . etc etc.
 There was always the BD search long and slow . as to days standards .
 There was many times I ran though the NASA  terminal . Till I got chucked out .   :scared:


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Offline EasyGoing1

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #21 on: February 27, 2021, 03:14:45 pm »
Technically there was no Internet in 1989. We have the Internet today because Al Gore introduced legislation into Congress around 1992 I believe. The bill was called "The Information Super Highway Act" - I remember because when I heard my electronics instructor talking about it in class one day, I actually wrote Al Gores office asking about it, because it was always a fantasy of mine to interconnect computers at high speeds. They actually sent me a copy of the bill with a nice letter thanking me for being interested in it. The bill was HUGE ... hundreds of pages ... mostly legalese, but the summary at the beginning I remember some of ... the argument that Al Gore used to justify getting the money to create this new Information Super Highway was something along the lines of "As we did after world war II when we beefed up infrastructure such as building more highways, etc. so that we could more effectively move around the country, we need to once again invest in the "Information Super Highway" so that people can efficiently gain access to information that they now cannot access at all because there is no existing means from which to do so.

Now, I can't say, because I don't know, exactly HOW our government brought that into existence, or what that money was actually spent on because the Internet was simply an extension of ARPANET and other networks that only government buildings and higher education facilities had access to. And it seems that the gatekeepers of the newly formed Internet belonged to the telephone companies. So it seems to me that the bill, once it got funded, merely subsidized the cost of bringing all of those existing networks onto a backbone and that each major telco was given a tax-funded point of access to that network. And I'm sure ONE of the big telco companies retained ownership of that backbone or maybe it was divided up amongst them I'm not sure.

My first exposure to high-speed Internet was in the early / mid-'90s when I worked as a tech at Edwards AFB in California and some of their computers still had text-based web browsers - Mozilla I believe - And Netscape was the only graphical browser and it ran on Windows 3.11. But right around that time was when the Internet spread like wildfire! Suddenly if you had AOL, you could access the Internet, same with Compuserve ... then soon after that, the phone company was selling internet connections and there was a fast push to get modems working as fast as possible which brought about the 56k modern into the affordable price range ... then Europe brought ISDN which had wider adoption out there than it did here because we went to DSL pretty quickly ... then once cable modems came into their own and the telcos invested heavily into citywide fiber networks ... we now all have the blazing speeds that we have.

 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #22 on: February 27, 2021, 04:08:09 pm »
"Internet" was introduced in 1974, not by Al Gore.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc675
 

Offline CJay

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #23 on: February 27, 2021, 04:37:25 pm »
Technically there was no Internet in 1989. We have the Internet today because Al Gore introduced legislation into Congress around 1992 I believe. The bill was called "The Information Super Highway Act" - I remember because when I heard my electronics instructor talking about it in class one day, I actually wrote Al Gores office asking about it, because it was always a fantasy of mine to interconnect computers at high speeds. They actually sent me a copy of the bill with a nice letter thanking me for being interested in it. The bill was HUGE ... hundreds of pages ... mostly legalese, but the summary at the beginning I remember some of ... the argument that Al Gore used to justify getting the money to create this new Information Super Highway was something along the lines of "As we did after world war II when we beefed up infrastructure such as building more highways, etc. so that we could more effectively move around the country, we need to once again invest in the "Information Super Highway" so that people can efficiently gain access to information that they now cannot access at all because there is no existing means from which to do so.

Now, I can't say, because I don't know, exactly HOW our government brought that into existence, or what that money was actually spent on because the Internet was simply an extension of ARPANET and other networks that only government buildings and higher education facilities had access to. And it seems that the gatekeepers of the newly formed Internet belonged to the telephone companies. So it seems to me that the bill, once it got funded, merely subsidized the cost of bringing all of those existing networks onto a backbone and that each major telco was given a tax-funded point of access to that network. And I'm sure ONE of the big telco companies retained ownership of that backbone or maybe it was divided up amongst them I'm not sure.

My first exposure to high-speed Internet was in the early / mid-'90s when I worked as a tech at Edwards AFB in California and some of their computers still had text-based web browsers - Mozilla I believe - And Netscape was the only graphical browser and it ran on Windows 3.11. But right around that time was when the Internet spread like wildfire! Suddenly if you had AOL, you could access the Internet, same with Compuserve ... then soon after that, the phone company was selling internet connections and there was a fast push to get modems working as fast as possible which brought about the 56k modern into the affordable price range ... then Europe brought ISDN which had wider adoption out there than it did here because we went to DSL pretty quickly ... then once cable modems came into their own and the telcos invested heavily into citywide fiber networks ... we now all have the blazing speeds that we have.



Oh bless your heart, you really are clueless aren't you.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: What was the internet like in 1989, heres a reproduction you can navigate!
« Reply #24 on: February 27, 2021, 05:06:26 pm »
LMAO some crazy shit in here.

Edit: Most of the “core internet companies” came from the private sector and we’re already offering bridging services to things like Usenet or were high risk startups at the time. The whole thing was a bunch of fairly informal peering agreements and that’s pretty much the same now. The US gov managed to do absolutely fuck all other than talk about it and spend money on nothing. In fact there has always been a bit of an “us and them” thing with government involvement as they are meddlesome bastards. As for the telcos, they mostly rented pairs out and got in the way until they realised there was money in it and started buying everything out before they died.

As for Europe, at least in the UK, we mostly had dialup here into PIPEX at the start (aforementioned risky start up later merged with UUNET) which was a conscious choice to switch to from Compuserve and university terminal servers (which were on the internet) via SLIP. Dialup lasted until the late 1990s when we got ADSL and locally installed cable (NTL). ISDN was actually fairly low take up other than for commercial voice here. I only ever saw one data installation.

The only thing that allowed the internet to grow was semi ubiquitous standardised computing rather than the fragmented mess of the 80s, the rise of packet switching hardware and commercial interest.

Al Gore and the US gov were a fart in the wind compared to the above.

My first internet usage was sitting on sun3 workstations at university and this was email without bang paths in it. The www wasn’t even around then. And when it did turn up everyone turned their noses up for a bit and carried on using gopher.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2021, 05:32:59 pm by bd139 »
 
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