Reminiscing our first internet connections (WAS) Re: akamai yesterday - what in the world was that

Tue Jan 28 08:43:37 UTC 2020

On 1/27/20 3:06 PM, bzs at theworld.com wrote:
> 
> I remember going from 300b to 1200b and thinking wow, this is it,
> we're done, I cannot read text scrolling on the screen at 1200b.
> 
Other than the 75 and 110 baud teletypes that only did text, my first
TCP/IP connection was 300b, back when we had to rent the modems (1979).

I had to write my own TCP/IP stacks, on both the Interdata 7/16 at the
office and my first personal computer: a 2 MHz Z80 S-100 bus.  Built my
own serial device too, with a rather large switch on the back to change
speeds.  (Still have it, just carried it out of the garage over the
weekend, haven't turned it on in years as the special floppies have died.)

Eventually, got my own 300b Hayes Micromodem!

It took a long time to upgrade to 1200b, as the modems were thousands of
dollars each.  Roughly $18,000 each in today's dollars.  Only used between
major sites.

Racal-Vadic triple modems were a big step (circa 1986).

When we first designed PPP in the late '80s to replace SLIP and SLFP, it was
expected to run at 300 bps and scale up, so the timeouts reflected that.
When I designed PPP over ISDN, added language to allow faster retransmission.

When we designed IP/PPP/CDMA (IS-99) for cell phones, I was seriously
concerned that it would not be competitive, as it only allowed 14.4 kbps
when 28.8 kbps modems were becoming available.  Turned out to be several
times faster than ATT's CDPD offering....

Like many of you, I started an ISP in 1994 with a 56 kbps uplink, and
only 6 local customers....  The routers were in a bathroom over the garage.