🚀 go-pugleaf

bogus address wrote:

> 
>>> I'd love to see you explain this bit:
>>> "I've been on the Internet in the UK since 1983."
>> According to the Jargon File, it began in 1969, started
>> TCP/IP in 82 and DNS in 83, so why is this so odd?
> 
> What site in the UK could access it that early?  JANET couldn't.
> Some services (like Usenet or email) could run via gateways to
> the ARPANET (precursor of the Internet), but that was all.
> 
> Some time in the late 1980s?  1987 maybe?  A few UK sites got on the
> ARPANET before the Internet as such was set up.
> 
> 
> : I was using the Internet for FTP long before I used it for mail and
> : news.
> 
> FTP doesn't need an Internet connection either - it originated with the
> ARPANET and was one of the protocols the Internet was developed to
> support.  I'm pretty sure I was using it via a gateway before there was
> any DNS service in the UK.  And I suspect you still can do it via MILNET
> between sites whose sysadmins would face court martial for linking to
> the Internet.

DNS does not an internet make. An internet is only an interconnected 
collection of more than one network. RFC 675, Specification of Internet 
Transmission Control Program, is dated Dec-01-1974. Jon Postel's RFC 753 of 
1979 makes it clear that (at least in Jon's mind) an Internet did not imply 
a collection of networks all of which ran the same protocol families. Are 
you going to argue with him?[1] 'The Internet' of course is a special 
usage, but as soon as it was possible to gateway mail from a machine on 
JANet to one on (for example) ARPANET that was an internet application. And 
while I would not claim to have used The Internet until 1985, I was using 
internet applications (from home, no less[2]) in 1983.

Cheers

Simon

[1] You can't of course, because he's dead. Shame: a really nice guy.
[2] Over a modem which was switchable between 300 baud and the very 
wonderful 1200/75.

-- 
simon@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

        ;; I'll have a proper rant later, when I get the time.