Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

[Barry Shein <bzs () world std com>]

On July 12, 2014 at 07:16 mfidelman () meetinghouse net (Miles Fidelman) wrote:
> umm what history am I re-writing?
> http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ - is as good a source as 
> any for Internet history, which says this under 1990
> "The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial 
> provider of Internet dial-up access says"
> ok - one can quibble 1989 (what Barry states on World's home page)
>
> PSInet was very late 1989, so there was that, I believe UUnet was 1990

I have ads and price schedules from October 1989 for public access
internet. I could probably even dig up billing data from October or
November.

We actually started by offering shell and uucp access in August 1989
and then became a UUNET POP which put us directly on the internet in
October.

There was a T1 in our offices which back then was a pretty big deal!

It was shared with other UUNET customers. We already had hundreds of
customers using email etc when we became 192.74.137.*.

UUNET and PSI internet wholesale were nearly simultaneous, I don't
know the exact dates but early summer 1989 for internet sales. UUNET
was already in the uucp biz for a year or two before that, we were a
UUNET uucp customer when we started (and some other nodes like Encore,
BU, etc.)

Another reference is RFC2235 (I don't know why they used 1990 but it
was written in 1997 and by then it didn't seem worth correcting) but
there are a bunch of articles, I have most of them linked on my home
page, http://www.TheWorld.com/~bzs

> What I did forget was NEARnet - which embarrasses me, since I was at BBN 
> at the time.  But, at first, NEARnet limited access to the NSFnet 
> backbone to it's non-commercial customers (at least that was the policy 
> - I'm not sure that filtering was ever really turned on in the 
> gateways).  I don't recall whether CSnet had any commercial members.

Apple was a CSNET 56k customer.


> > or are you equating shell access with isp?  that would be novel.  unix
> > shell != internet.
>
> well now we get to rehash to very old definitional distinction between 
> "Internet Access Provider" and "Internet Service Provider"
>
> and yes, if a service provider takes money, to provide access to the 
> Internet in some way, shape, manner, or form, yes - that's providing 
> Internet "access" or "service" - and as soon as dial-up included PPP, 
> then that's a non-issue
> > btw, not do denigrate what barry did.  a commercial unix bbs connected
> > to the real internet was significant.  the left coasties were doing free
> > stuff, the well, community memory, ...  and barry created a viable bbs
> > commercial service which still survives (i presume).  a significant
> > achievement.
>
> The other service Barry provided was pushing the whole issue of 
> commercial access to the backbone.  That was kind of epic.

I agree, that's the real point.

As I said, what I did caused a furor.

> And yes, they're still going strong.  I still maintain an account - it's 
> my backup for the rare case that I need a separate site for diagnosing 
> issues with our cluster.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Miles
>
>
> -- 
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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Software Tool & Die    | Public Access Internet     | SINCE 1989     *oo*