41–50 of 58 posts
>The history of the internet is repeatedly reduced to the story of the singular Arpanet. But BBSs were just as important—if not more. I mean, even the sub-heading feels wrong to me. Arpanet and BBSs are both a key part of the history of the internet. I'm 35 and both have been discussed, in a historical context, ad nauseam my entire life.
I'm 36 and I've only ever known the Arpanet story, and I'm techy enough to be here.
No it is not.
The BBS community pioneered some of the services that later become popular on Internet, but not at scale, and with very different motivation. It was never the origin story of Internet. At the prime of the BBS area, still years before Internet became commercially available, I remember a friend showing me experimental C code for his BBS for "email", via gateway to Internet.
I used to run a multi-user BBS in Norway with a pool of phone-modems, running under an early (pirated) version of QNX on a 8086 PC. The software, CrCs, was homegrown, written in C, mostly at night, while I worked several day jobs to pay for my BBS hobby. Eventually coding and software design became my profession.
Author seems to miss one major point that many tech-journalists seem to miss these days which is the internet is different than the web. I had actually bookmarked the book before but now it doesn't seem very interesting to read. PS: What the hell is the point of writing a title as aggravating as this? It's almost as if they go out of their way to be insulting! Sheesh!
When I see such a title, I always look at the comments first, as I don't want to rewards this behaviour with a click unless the rest of the article is really worthwhile.
This is a major point of the article, more key than whether or not the history of BBSs was important in the construction of today's technology.
Current major participation platforms define how information is disseminated in our open societies, which has affected our democratic processes. Returning to a structure of self-managed online communities could help us regain control of what information flows you want to follow in your social group, rather than ceding that control to large companies seeking to maximize attention.
Literally none of us were going around thinking we were the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a brief period where BBSs also offered various gateway services into the Internet a long with the normal BBS services like doors. I received my first ever email address from a huge local BBS back in the early early 90s by paying a token fee every month. I had nobody I knew with email addresses until a few years later so it was kind of pointless, but it did work. On a larger scale, when AOL started offering…
Big networks were gated in and out of the Internet, such as UUCP and BITNET. (UUCP for Unix systems, BITNET for IBM mainframes.) This had interesting effects on email addresses: http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/the_hideous_name/ Make sense of this one: research!ucbvax!@cmu-cs-pt.arpa:@CMU-ITC-LINUS:dave%CMU-ITC-LINUS@CMU-CS-PT Sourceforge still has Ifmail, an Internet to Fidonet email gateway: http://ifmail.sourceforge…
There are other aspects of the origin story that seem to be myth. For instance, the idea that the Internet was designed to route around damage, and could also treat censorship as a form of damage, and therefore it was resistant to censorship. I once spent a long weekend reading through the early RFCs. What I found was the obvious recognition of the fact that AT&T, which at the time had a monopoly on telephone service…
A packet-switched network is less necessarily centralized than a circuit-switched network. This is not actually true. The AT&T Long Lines network was originally very decentralized. When it was first fully automated, there was no central control point. There were 10 regional control centers, but they were not essential to most calls. Eventually there was central control, out of Bedminster, Pennsylvania. Originally all…
To that extent, the packet-switched network is more resilient, and this was a conscious design consideration, as can be seen in Paul Baran's original packet-switched networking documents:
Simulation results are shown to indicate that highly efficient routing can be performed by local control without the necessity for any central—and therefore vulnerable—control point.
The ten-part series starts here:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html
The series as a whole is desribed and linked here:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
maybe all the arpanet design docs are not public?
Well, a lot of the early RFCs have been lost.
Checking manually, I found many of the low-numbered RFCs are present, though there are some higher in range which turn up 404.
E.g., RFC 1 is online: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1
But here's a list of missing HTML pages from the first 1024 RFCs:
8, 9, 14, 26, 51, 92, 159, 201, 220, 244, 248, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 272, 275, 277, 279, 284, 337, 341, 358, 375, 380, 383, 397, 418, 424, 427, 428, 444, 465, 481, 484, 502, 507, 517, 530, 536, 540, 541, 554, 558, 564, 572, 575, 583, 598, 605, 639, 641, 646, 648, 649, 650, 664, 665, 668, 670, 673, 676, 682, 693, 709, 710, 711, 715, 723, and 853.
For anyone who wants to verify:
wget --spider --force-html $(
for i in {1..1024};
do
echo "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc${i}";
done ) 2>&1 |
egrep '(https.*rfc|awaiting response)' |
grep -B1 '404 Not Found' |
grep -v '404 Not Found'
8, 9, 14, 26, 51, 92, 159, 201, 220, 244, 248, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 272, 275, 277, 279, 284, 337, 341, 358, 375, 380, 383, 397, 418, 424, 427, 428, 444, 465, 481, 484, 502, 507, 517, 530, 536, 540, 541, 554, 558, 564, 572, 575, 583, 598, 605, 639, 641, 646, 648, 649, 650, 664, 665, 668, 670, 673, 676, 682, 693, 709, 710, 711, 715, 723, 853, 1061, 1182, 1260, 1839, 1840, 3100, 3200, 3223, 3328, 3333, 3350, 3399, 3400, 3500, 3699, 3799, 3800, 3889, 3899, 3900, 3907, 3908, 3999, 4000, 4099, 4100, 4199, 4200, 4232, 4299, 4300, 4399, 4400, 4499, 4500, 4599, 4600, 4637, 4658, and 4699.