The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well.
re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#81 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#83 IBM-MAIN longevity some old VMSHARE related email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare lsoft's listserv history: http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp#bitnet from above: BITNET In 1985, BITNET was THE academic network. The Internet did not exist yet, and its ancestor, the ARPAnet, was still mostly a defense network. A few US universities were connected to the ARPAnet, but in Europe the only large, non dial-up network was BITNET. BITNET had a Network Information Centre, called BITNIC or just "the NIC". Like most BITNET sites at the time, the NIC was using an IBM mainframe running VM/CMS. ... snip ... some old email exchanged with the person responsible for setting up EARN (we also exchanged offspring one summer): http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320 in this post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#65 UUCP email misc. past posts mentioning bitnet and/or earn (european bitnet): http://www/garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet BITNET wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET various BITNET archive files: http://nethistory.dumbentia.com/archive.html the arpanet great cutover to tcp/ip was on 1/1/83 ... at the time arpanet was somewhere between 100 and 255 nodes (depending on how accounted for) ... while the internal network was starting to push 1000 nodes (which it reached later in 1983). there was csnet and then various regional networks running tcp/ip (and other protocols). the internal network (using technology similar to bitnet & earn) was larger than arpanet/csnet/internet/etc from just about the beginning until summer of 85 (the internal network was accounted for separately from bitnet & earn). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet one of the reasons why internal network lagged behind in numbers was that there were starting to be deployed increasing numbers of workstations and PCs as nodes with TCP/IP ... while internal networking remained mainframes with workstations and PCs interfacing via various terminal emulations mechanisms http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation NSF then announced RFP for T1 "high speed" backbone ... that was utilized to interconnect some of the regional academic (tcp/ip) networks. tcp/ip was technology basis for the modern internet, nsfnet was operational basis for the modern internet, and CIX was the busines/commercial basis for the modern internet. http://www.cix.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Internet_eXchange misc. past posts mentioning nsfnet http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet and old nsfnet related email from the period http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet old reference to getting corporate csnet connection in '82 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#email821022 in this post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#59 Ok Computer old reference to internal network announcement of the 1000th node in '83 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
