20+ years online

So it just dawned on me I've been online for over 20 years. As a network engineer by trade I thought I would share my full and detailed ISP ratings with you.

Dialup BBS/Fidonet Good
Demon V.32 dialup Good
BT V.34 dialup Bad
Telewest Cable Bad
Pipex ADSL Good
Tiscali ADSL Bad
Talk Talk ADSL [censored]
O2 ADSL Good
Sky ADSL [censored]
ZEN ADSL Good

I still remember my Fidonet address. Them were the days. All fields.

Jase.

19 years for me.

Started with compuserve, plus helped setup and manage the AOL account at school/sixth form.

I can't remember all the connections I've had, but they include madasafish, NTHell, BT Broadband, Telewest, Namesco and Virgin Media.

I did not realize the internet was even available twenty years ago, my exchange only became enabled in 2005, think I started in 2006.

Yes, it was a bit slower back then though.

I had a 28.8 Kbps modem when I first got the internet.

Checkout these pages from Microsoft, their old homepage(s):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/

Microsoft Blog re 20 years

I reckoned we were doing well when on the odd occasion I got to the heady speed of 3kbps. Now awaiting the promised native FTTP connection availability sometime from 31st December 2014 onward. That will be the day!

I thought Bill Gates invented the WWW in 1995? Before that, there was Gopher

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29:

The original Gopher system was released in late spring of 1991 by Mark McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the University of Minnesota in America. Its central goals were, as stated in RFC 1436:

A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users.
A simple syntax.
A system that can be created quickly and inexpensively.
Extending the file system metaphor, such as searches.

The internet has been around since the 1960s, starting in military I believe.

The web came later, circa 20 years ago - invented by Tim Berners-Lee

I believe this event brought about the switch from Gopher to HTTP

In February 1993, the University of Minnesota announced that it would charge licensing fees for the use of its implementation of the Gopher server. As a consequence of this, some users were concerned that a licensing fee would also be charged for independent implementations. Users were scared away from Gopher technology, to the advantage of the Web, which CERN disclaimed ownership of.

Tim Berners-Lee actually invented the WWW in 1989

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid November of that same year.

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Aug-14 21:10:15)

That reminds me, I had been using dial-up from about 1973; and remember being asked to get others in the company to use an early form of e-mail in 1979.

Testing an early MAC in November 1984, complete with GUI, Mouse and WORD; and with the signatures of the Design Team moulded inside the back of the case.

The AMSTRAD PCW 8256 (Joyce) in 1985; and placing an 0n-Line order with MAPLIN about 1989. Using the PCW to dial in to the company machines from home, from 1986 until retiral in 1999.

My first Laptop was a ZENITH Z181, purchased in 1989, for about £250, when it should have been about £2,000!

In combination, the PCW and ZENITH gave me extremely good service. Locoscript and Lotus 123.

"Tak Tent o' Time, Afore Time Taks Tynt!"

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Aug-14 21:21:37)

Early bulletin boards didn't use the Internet at all. They were just dial-up links into modems connected directly to the server. Basically just a terminal session.