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YOUR TURN! Share YOUR Early Internet Memories Here!

Guestbook and Web Memories Scrapbook

From the lens The History of the Internet.

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When did you first log on, and what was the internet like back then? What were your earliest memories?

If you've been on the web for quite a while -- or on the internet before the web -- how has it changed, and how has it changed your life?

  • mycalculadora Jan 12, 2012 @ 8:47 am | delete
    a really great read, thanks! makes me remember the first time i used Google and introduced it to friends in the late nineties - amazing just how omnipresent it is now :)
  • phoenix-arizona-friends Jul 18, 2011 @ 11:27 pm | delete
    Very cool lens.
  • johnnyvnt4 Jan 26, 2011 @ 2:38 pm | delete
    Have you had ever wondered why there is a gap in the history of the early IP Internet days?
    One omission in the Internet History Timeline is when the first dial-up access occurred to the Internet.

    I know because I was there when it happened (and I don’t remember seeing Al Gore!).
    It occurred in mid 1985 at an AT&T Bell Labs Data Center in Morristown, NJ.

    In 1985 I was involved with engineering the first dial-up access to the then existing IP Internet.
    This event was un-official back room project that was spearheaded by AT&T Bell Labs
    Morristown NJ Data Center Supervisor; James Kelly. The test times were masked as scheduled maintenance events and had taken three tries to succeed in making the connection. Having worked closely with James for number of years, he was confident I could engineer a connection through my company’s FEP. Jim Kelly was a friend of one of the Software Engineers at BELCORE (Bell Communications Research) at the Piscataway NJ site that was working on the SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) communication protocol component of Bell Labs official project of trying to turn the company’s 3B20 General Purpose Computer System into a viable Communications Processor. I can only imagine this was an attempt at trying to save AT&T money by replacing the NCR Comten FEPs with the 3B20s.

    The event occurred in mid 1985 at an AT&T Bell Laboratories site in Morristown New Jersey. Up to that time public internets were BBS access points for members to dial into which gave them limited access to the organizations data archive hosted on the private network. The driving force for this type of dial-up access within AT&T was for managers and engineers to be able to access their work files from home without having to have a leased line connection, which at that time was @ $18,000 a month for a 19.2kbps connection. This sort of puts today’s ISP fees in perspective! This was the only remote connection option because of data security directives that prohibited attaching a BBS to the main frame based Internet.

    The connection was made through an AT&T 6300 PC with a 1200 kbps modem to a phone in the data center patched via an 300 baud acoustic coupler into a MIME 300 baud port in an NCR Comten 3695 FEP channel connected to their IBM System/360 mainframes. Due to some coding errors in the then version of SLIP it had taken three scheduled test events for me to identify the errors and to work around them to successfully make the connection. By this time the un-sanctioned project was getting noticed by Bell Labs upper management, especially since after the second failed attempt I had identified the error and told Jim the next test shot would be successful.

    At the third attempt upper management were present and upon the successful completion of the test the champagne corks were figuratively flying! In all honesty I didn’t have a clue at that time what all of the hullabaloo was all about.

    Unfortunately AT&T didn’t see the real marketing future of this event either, only the savings in corporate budget charges for dial-up access. My employer, NCR Comten had even less of an understanding, which presented itself as a ‘deer in the headlights’ look from management when I presented the results and even more befuddlement as to why AT&T Communications Headquarters directed the company to appoint me to the AT&T Account Specialist position.

    This promotion tasked me with managing AT&T Communications (Long Lines) 35 FEPs and three Comten Data Communication Field Engineers through the two and a half years of the U.S. District Court directed divestiture of AT&T Corporation.

    NCR Comten was THE Data Communications Company of the day. Comten pioneered mainframe data communications by off-loading the NCP (Network Communication Protocol) from the mainframe and into the FEP (front-end processor). This saved large companies that used IBM mainframes millions of dollars a year since at that time IBM charged by the MIPS used (Millions of Instructions Per Second), and when communication processing was decoupled from the mainframe this cut into IBM’s profits and allowed the customers to get a better ROI on their mainframe investment/overhead.

    NCR Comten was on the cutting edge of data communications through the 1980’s but didn’t survive the transition of high priced data comm equipment (a moderately optioned NCR Comten 3690 FEP was @ $1,000,000.00) to more reasonably priced client server routers. In the late 1980’s NCR Comten had taken on a struggling start-up network company as a low end network product and was the installer of their products. Comten corporate executives had the option to buy the struggling start-up company but passed on the opportunity because they felt they were small players in their view of the grand scheme in the world of mainframe networking. They might have looked more closely if they weren’t distracted with the efforts of AT&T buying the parent company NCR, but they didn’t and Comten ended being an AT&T product line before fading into technology history.

    I had been involved in data communications since 1976 while an Electronics Technician in the U.S. Navy serving on Fast Attack Submarines, and then with NCR Comten from 1982 through 1989 as an Data Communication Field Engineer. This involvement was a great lesson in humility for me. It taught me that having the best product or solution doesn’t guarantee indefinite success. An organization has to keep an open view on new technologies and be positioned for major changes as the evolution of technology continues to march forward.

    This event went under the radar since I had a serious NJ divorce in 89-92 and the first IT industry slowdown during the same time that radically changed my focus and direction. My interest in bringing this bit of history to light is to bring attention to the efforts by James Kelly to make this happen. I was just a willing tool to his direction and insight. I have lost touch with James Kelly after my departure from NCR Comten before the take over by AT&T, but I had learned that James suffered from Muscular Dystrophy and might not be able to realize his hand in that historic moment.

    Respectfully
    John S. Vincenti
    P.S. By the way, that struggling start-up network company is Cisco systems.
  • Greekgeek Feb 26, 2011 @ 10:43 am | delete
    Wow! I'm sorry I had my guestbook set to auto-approve; I totally missed your wonderful, fascinating story!

    Thank you so much for telling us "state secrets," so to speak! I'm afraid I had never heard of NCR Comten-- this was all when I was a tot, at the "Merlin is so cool!" stage (the toy, not the wizard).

    And as usual, the one left standing is not the one you'd think would be the winner during the early part of the race: Cisco. See also: Altavista losing out to Google (although Altavista has hung on better than some also-rans).

    This page doesn't get seen by enough people, alas. I wonder if there is some other place one could share the story of James Kelly. In every revolution there are some unsung heroes.
  • Greekgeek Mar 20, 2009 @ 12:22 pm | in reply to Kate-Phizackerley | delete
    So was I. Heck, some of my net friends worked there. It took me a while to give in and switch to Google.

    I feel nostalgic when I see Altavista pop up in my "traffic sources" graph on Squidoo stats.
  • Kate-Phizackerley Mar 17, 2009 @ 8:37 pm | delete
    A nice lens

    At least Yahoo is still around. I was a big fan of AltaVista!

    Kate
  • Christene Mar 17, 2009 @ 3:40 pm | delete
    My very first web memory was from high school in 1993. My best friend's father had a modem at their house for work and she used to chat on Bulletin Boards. (I had to ask her what it was called and she said service was called Argus.) The day she first showed me my life changed forever. LOL

    In Sept. 1994 I got my first email address through a Telnet system at college.

    The first time I used Yahoo was 1997 and I still remember laughing at the name when a friend showed me how to use it.
  • Greekgeek Mar 17, 2009 @ 12:13 am | in reply to drifter0658 | delete
    Yahoo in the good ol' days! Poor Yahoo, eaten by corporate needs and costs like the rest of us.
    And ouch. There's a reason it was called AOH-E-double-toothpicks. O.o
    However, if you'd been my spouse I would've understood!
  • drifter0658 Mar 16, 2009 @ 11:03 pm | delete
    I remember having some sort of internet lab in high school, 33 years ago. That's about all I can tell you from that period, other than the school was somehow networked with some California Universities.

    Fast Forward to a time (I know you've read my words on this) when Yahoo touted access to a whopping 30,000 websites. Additionally, Yahoo was unsponsored.

    And then there was the time I got a $286.00 monthly bill from AOL. Okay, not ALL of that $286 was access fees. I did buy a $26 sweatshirt (which I still wear to this day). Man, was my then wife hacked off. :)

by

Greekgeek

Storyteller, former Latin teacher, student of mythology and the ancient world: I've worn many hats, but always I've dabbled in computers and the web.

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