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

Tue Jan 28 17:27:34 UTC 2020

> On Jan 28, 2020, at 10:53 AM, Paul Ebersman <list-nanog2 at dragon.net> wrote:
> 
> wsimpson> When we first designed PPP in the late '80s to replace SLIP
> wsimpson> and SLFP, it was expected to run at 300 bps and scale up, so
> wsimpson> the timeouts reflected that.  When I designed PPP over ISDN,
> wsimpson> added language to allow faster retransmission.
> 
> SLIP and PPP were quite... robust. Some UCB folks managed to get SLIP
> over tin can and string. Two acoustic coupler 150b modems, 2 8oz V8 cans
> and waxed cotton thread.

I remember a bit of those days as well. Not working with them but seeing acoustic coupler modems in action. In the late 80s when my grandfather was mayor of a small town in Minnesota, he had some kind of little terminal in his basement with an acoustic coupler modem. It was so he could add messages to a city TV station in his official mayoral capacity. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time. My brother and I thought it was really, really cool when he showed us how it worked by putting our names on TV. He put some little “welcome to my grandkids from Nebraska” message that, to a 9 year old in the 1980s was awesome to see.

-Andy