7 comments:

  1. Great reading/memories! I had a luck to touch these machines too, and the SLON/DECnet with its discussion forums was a great example of social networking even back then. I participated in several groups, and I must say: some of the friends I met virtually then are still my friends - and our relationships tied and moved from the virtual into real environment. I still feel that pioneering spirit of networking.
  2. I love theses types of stories. We in this industry are very luck to have spent time "playing" through the changes.
    My first was Novell Netware on ARC net 1987, remember the netware game snipes? Token Ring in 88 Then pre 10bast-t lattisnet back in 89. By 1990 I was installing and supporting TR, 10Base-T Thin/thicknet and I had a BBS system up running blackbeard bbs sw to host token-ring driver files and chat with customers. 70/80/90s fun network times.
  3. VAX 20 years later... In Russian, but with many print-outs. http://www.phantom.sannata.ru/konkurs/2015/kt1508.shtml
  4. I really, really enjoyed reading this article! Thank you!

    There is probably a mistake and you wanted to say that you heard about Internet in late 1980s instead of late 1990s. I have heard about Internet in 1990, started to use it in 1991 (in Germany, connecting there via X.25, writing DCL scripts which FTPed listed files, split them, uuencode them and sent them to me via email over X.400 and similar odd technologies) and been on native Internet in Slovenia in 1992.

    AFAIK with the advent of the Internet in Slovenia majority of backbone SLON links were replaced with same links used for Internet and "VAX routers/gateways" replaced with dual stacked (IPv4 + DECnet) Cisco routers. Later, due to licence issues many native long distance DECnet links were reconfigured with a bunch of DECnet over IPv4 tunnels which continued to run at least until mid 2000s. I remember some routed (e.g. between many VLANs in a campus) islands of SLON operating at least until late 2000s and reduced to single VLAN at least in 2012.
    Replies
    1. You're absolutely right - Internet started appearing for real around 1990. Fixed.
  5. Unfortunately my first touch with computer was when dial-up connections already existed, but I'm happy that I know even what it is. When I talk with my colleges about historical networking stuff, almost nobody remembers even ISDN or DSL..
  6. Nice reading, refreshing old memories...

    I am able to top this ;-)
    One of the first data networks in Germany was the HMINET1 (developed by the informatic department of the "Hahn-Meitner-Institut" in Berlin). When I was working there as a student, the HMINET2 based on X.25 was put into operation. There was remote terminal access, file transfer, RPC-interface and even a network management interface.
    For the history buffs: https://cds.cern.ch/record/862971/files/p201.pdf

    And yes, the VAX 11/780 mentioned in the PDF had the serial number 6 (if I remember right) and was running initially VMS version 0.8... Later, when I was leading the Process Computer Group we joined HEPNET/SPAN, a worldwide DECNET-Phase IV network. No firewalls included ;-) Germany was late regarding IP-networks.
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