<< Before this:
From about 1975 to 1995, computers became more accessible much faster than computer networks. First in the United States, and then in other rich countries, computers became commonplace for wealthy households, and appeared in almost all institutions. However, if the users of these computers had a desire to combine their machines - to exchange e-mail, download programs, find communities to discuss their favorite hobbies - they did not have much opportunity. Home users could connect to services such as CompuServe. However, until the services introduced a fixed monthly fee in the late 1980s, the connection cost was paid per hour, and tariffs were not affordable to everyone. Some university students and faculty could connect to packet-switched networks, but most could not. By 1981, only 280 computers had access to the ARPANET. CSNET and BITNET would eventually include hundreds of computers, but they didn't start operating until the early 1980s. And at that time there were more than 3000 institutions in the United States where students received higher education, and almost all of them had several computers, from large mainframes to small workstations.
Unconnected communities, home craftsmen and scientists turned to the same technical solutions that allowed them to communicate with each other. They hacked into the good old telephone system, the Bell network, turning it into something like a telegraph, transmitting digital messages instead of voices, and based on them, messages from computer to computer throughout the country and around the world.
All articles in the series:
- History of the relay
- History of electronic computers
- History of the transistor
- Internet history
- Era of Fragmentation
These were some of the earliest decentralized [peer-to-peer, p2p] computer networks. Unlike CompuServe and other centralized systems that connected computers to them and sucked information from them like calves sucked milk, information was distributed through decentralized networks in the manner of water circles. It could start anywhere and go anywhere. And yet they sparked heated debates about politics and power. When the Internet came to the attention of the community in the 1990s, many believed that it would equalize social and economic ties. By allowing everyone to communicate with everyone, the middlemen and bureaucrats that have dominated our lives will be cut off. A new era of direct democracy and open markets will dawn, where everyone will have equal voices and equal access. Such prophets might have refrained from making such promises after examining the fate of Usenet and Fidonet in the 1980s. Their technical structure was very flat, but any computer network is only a part of the human community. And human communities, no matter how you stir and roll them, still remain full of lumps.
Usenet
In the summer of 1979, Tom Truscott's life was like the dream of any young computer lover. He recently graduated in computer science from Duke University, was interested in chess, and did an internship at Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey. It was there that he had a chance to interact with the creators of Unix, the latest craze that has swept the world of scientific computing.
The origins of Unix, like the Internet itself, lie in the shadow of American telecommunications politics. ΠΈ from Bell Labs decided in the late 1960s to create a more flexible and stripped-down version of the massive MIT Multics system that they had contributed to as programmers. The new OS quickly became a hit in the labs, gaining popularity both for its modest hardware requirements (which allowed it to run even on inexpensive machines) and for its high flexibility. However, AT&T could not capitalize on this success. Under a 1956 agreement with the US Department of Justice, AT&T was required to license all non-telephony technology at reasonable prices and not engage in any other business other than providing communications.
So AT&T began licensing Unix to universities for academic use at very favorable terms. The first licensees to gain access to the source code began to build and sell their own flavors of Unix, notably the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix, built on the flagship campus of the University of California. The new OS quickly overwhelmed the academic community. Unlike other popular operating systems such as DEC TENEX / TOPS-20, it could run on hardware from various manufacturers, and many of these computers were very inexpensive. Berkeley distributed the program at a negligible price, in addition to the modest cost of a license from AT&T. Unfortunately, I could not find exact numbers.
It seemed to Truscott that he was at the source of all things. He spent the summer as an intern at Ken Thompson's, starting each day with a few volleyball matches, then working at midday, sharing a pizza dinner with his idols, and then sitting up late writing Unix C code. internship, he didn't want to lose touch with the world, so as soon as he returned to Duke University in the fall, he figured out how to connect a PDP 11/70 computer from the computer science department to the Murray Hill mother ship using a program written by his former colleague , Mike Lesk. The program was called uucp - Unix to Unix copy - and was one of a set of "uu" programs included in the recently released Unix operating system version 7. The program allowed one Unix system to communicate with another by modem. Specifically, uucp allowed files to be copied between two dial-up computers, allowing Truscott to exchange emails with Thompson and Ritchie.
Tom Truscott
Jim Ellis, another graduate student at the Truscott Institute, installed a new version of Unix 7 on a Duke University computer. However, the update brought not only pluses, but also minuses. Distributed by the Unix user group, the USENIX program, designed to send news to all users of a particular Unix system, has stopped working in the new version. Truscott and Ellis decided to replace it with a new 7th system compatible program of their own, give it more interesting features, and return the improved version to the user community in exchange for prestige and honor.
At the same time, Truscott was using uucp to communicate with a Unix machine at the University of North Carolina, 15 km southwest, in Chapel Hill, and talking to a student there, Steve Belovin.
It is not known how Truscott and Belovin met, but it is possible that they became close on the basis of chess. Both of them participated in the annual Computer Systems Association chess tournament, although not at the same time.
Belovin also made his own news distribution program, which, interestingly, had the concept of newsgroups, broken down by topics that you could subscribe to - instead of one channel that dumped all the news. Belovin, Truscott, and Ellis decided to join forces and write a network news system with newsgroups that would use uucp to distribute news to different computers. They wanted to spread Unix-related news to USENIX users, which is why they called their system Usenet.
Duke University was to serve as a central clearinghouse, and use autodial and uucp to connect to all nodes in the network at regular intervals, pick up news updates, and give news to other members of the network. Belovin wrote the original code, but it ran on shell scripts, so it was very slow. Then Stephen Daniel, another graduate student at Duke University, rewrote the program in C. Daniel's version became known as A News. Ellis advertised this program in January 1980 at the Usenix conference in Boulder, Colorado, and gave away all eighty copies of it he brought with him. By the next Usenix conference in the summer, its organizers had already included A News in the software package distributed to all participants.
The creators described this system as "ARPANET for the poor." You may not consider Duke University to be some kind of second-rate, but at that time it did not have such influence in the world of computer science that would allow it to connect to this premium American computer network. But access to Usenet didn't require permissionβonly a Unix system, a modem, and the ability to pay phone bills for regular news broadcasts. By the early 1980s, these requirements could be met by almost all institutions that provided higher education.
Private companies also joined Usenet, which helped accelerate the spread of the network. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) has agreed to act as an intermediary between Duke University and the University of California at Berkeley, reducing the cost of long distance calls and data transfers between coasts. As a result, Berkeley on the west coast became the second Usenet node, and connected the network to the University of California at San Francisco and San Diego, as well as other institutions, including Sytek, one of the first companies in the LAN business. Berkeley also hosted an ARPANET node, allowing for a connection between Usenet and the ARPANET (after Mark Horton and Matt Glickman rewrote the news exchange program, calling it B News). ARPANET nodes began to recruit content from Usenet and vice versa, even though ARPA rules strictly speaking prohibited contacting other networks. The network grew rapidly, from fifteen nodes processing ten posts a day in 1980 to 600 nodes and 120 posts in 1983, and then 5000 nodes and 1000 posts in 1987.
Initially, its creators saw Usenet as a way for members of the Unix user community to communicate and discuss the development of this operating system. To do this, they created two groups, net.general and net.v7bugs (the latter discussed issues with the newest version). However, they left the system free to expand. Anyone could create a new group in the "net" hierarchy, and users quickly began adding non-technical topics like net.jokes. Just like anyone could send anything, recipients could ignore groups of their choice. For example, the system could connect to Usenet and request data only on the net.v7bugs group, ignoring the rest of the content. Unlike the carefully planned ARPANET, Usenet organized itself, and grew in an anarchic fashion without oversight from above.
However, in this artificially democratic environment, a hierarchical order quickly emerged. A certain set of nodes with a large number of connections and high traffic began to be considered the "backbone" [backbone] of the system. This process developed naturally. Since each transfer of data from one node to another added a delay in communications, each new node that connected to the network wanted to contact a node that already had a large number of connections in order to minimize the number of "hops" required to propagate its messages across the network. Among the nodes of the backbone were both educational and corporate organizations, and usually each local computer was run by some wayward person who volunteered to take on the thankless task of administering everything that passed through the computer. These were Gary Murakami of Bell Labs in Indian Hills, Illinois, or Jean Spafford of Georgia Institute of Technology.
The most significant exercise of power by site administrators from this backbone occurred in 1987, when they pushed through a reorganization of the newsgroup namespace, introducing seven new first-level partitions. There were such sections as comp for computer topics, and rec for entertainment. The subsections were hierarchically organized under the "big seven" - for example, the group comp.lang.c for discussion of the C language, and rec.games.board for discussion of board games. A group of rebels who considered this change a coup organized by the "Spine Cabal" created their own offshoot from the hierarchy, whose head directory was alt, and their own parallel spine. It included topics that were considered indecent for the big seven - for example, sex and soft drugs (alt.sex.pictures), as well as all sorts of bizarre communities that admins did not like for some reason (for example, alt.gourmand; admins preferred a harmless group rec.food.recipes).
By then, Usenet-enabled software had expanded beyond plain text to support binary files (so named because they contained arbitrary binary digits). Most often among the files were pirated computer games, pornographic pictures and films, bootleg recordings from concerts and other illegal material. Groups in the alt.binaries hierarchy were among the most frequently blocked on Usenet servers due to their combination of high cost (pictures and videos took up much more traffic and storage space than text) and controversial legal status.
But despite all this controversy, by the late 1980s, Usenet had become a place where computer experts could find international communities of like-minded people. In 1991 alone, Tim Berners-Lee announced the creation of the World Wide Web in the alt.hypertext group; Linus Torvalds asked for feedback on his new little Linux project on the comp.os.minix group; Peter Adkison, through a story he posted about his game company to the rec.games.design group, met Richard Garfield. Their collaboration led to the creation of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering.
Fidonet
However, despite the fact that the ARPANET for the poor was gradually spreading around the globe, microcomputer hobbyists, who had far less resources than the most seedy college, were mostly cut off from electronic communications. Unix, which by academic standards was a cheap and mean option, was out of reach for owners of computers with 8-bit microprocessors running CP/M, which could do little more than provide disk handling. However, they soon began their own simple experiment to create a very cheap decentralized network, and it all started with the creation of "bulletin boards" bulletin boards.
It is possible that due to the simplicity of the idea and the huge number of computer enthusiasts that existed at that time, (BBS) could have been invented several times. But by tradition, the championship is recognized for the project ΠΈ from Chicago they launched during . Christensen and Seuness were computer enthusiasts, both in their 30s, and both went to a local computer club. They had long planned to create their own server in the computer club, where club members could upload news articles using the dial-up file transfer software that Christensen had written for CP/M, the home equivalent of uucp. But the blizzard, which kept them at home for several days, gave them the necessary incentive to start working on it. Christensen did most of the software, and Sewess did the hardware. In particular, Seuness developed a scheme that automatically rebooted the computer into BBS mode every time it detected an incoming call. This hack was necessary to make sure the system was in a suitable state to receive this call - such was the precarious state of home hardware and software at that time. They called their invention CBBS, a computerized bulletin board, but later most system operators (or sysops) omitted C for short, and called their service simply BBS. At first, BBS were also called RCP / M, that is, remote CP / M (remote CP / M). They described the details of their offspring in the popular magazine for computer scientists Byte, and soon a crowd of imitators followed them.
Fertilized blooming scene BBS new device - Hayes Modem. Dennis Hayes was another computer lover, and he really wanted to connect a modem to his new machine. But the commercial units that were on sale fell into just two categories: devices intended for business buyers, and therefore too expensive for home hobbyists, and . To contact someone on an acoustic modem, you first needed to get through to someone on the phone or answer a call, and then hang up the modem so that he could talk to the modem on the other end. It was not possible to automate an outgoing or incoming call in this way. So in 1977, Hayes designed, made, and began selling his own 300-bit-per-second modem that you could plug into your computer. In their BBS, Christensen and Sewess used one of these early models of the Hayesian modem. However, Hayes' first breakthrough product was the 1981 Smartmodem, which came in a separate case with its own microprocessor and connected to a computer via a serial port. It sold for $299, which was quite affordable for hobbyists who usually spent several hundred dollars on their home computers.
Hayes Smartmodem on 300
One of them was , and it was he who started the project that became something like Usenet for BBS. He worked as a programmer for Phoenix Software in San Francisco, and in 1983 he decided to write his own program for the BBS, not for CP/M, but for the newest and best microcomputer OS, Microsoft DOS. He named it Fido [a typical dog name], after the computer he used at work, so named because it was a horrendous hodgepodge of different components. John Madil, a salesperson at ComputerLand in Baltimore, heard about Fido and called Jennings across the country to ask for his help in modifying his software to run on his DEC Rainbow 100 computer. he was joined by another Rainbow fan, Ben Baker from St. Louis. The trio spent a significant amount of money on long distance calls while they entered each other's cars at night to chat on chat rooms.
In the course of all these negotiations on different BBSs, an idea began to emerge in Jennings's head - he could create a whole network of BBSs that would exchange messages at night when the cost of long-distance communication was low. This idea was not new - many hobbyists have been imagining BBS-to-BBS messaging ever since the Byte article by Christensen and Sewess. However, they usually assumed that in order for this scheme to work, one must first achieve a very high BBS density and build complex routing rules so that all calls remain local, that is, inexpensive, even when sending messages from one coast to another. However, Jennings did some quick calculations and realized that with the increased speed of modems (amateur modems were already running at 1200 bps) and decreasing long-distance rates, such tricks were no longer needed. Even with a significant increase in message traffic, it was possible to transfer texts between systems for only a few bucks a night.
Tom Jennings, still from a 2002 documentary
Then he added another program to Fido. From one to two in the morning, Fido closed and FidoNet started up. She checked the list of outgoing messages in the host list file. Each outgoing message had a node number, and each element of the list represented a network node - Fido BBS - which had a phone number next to it. If there were outgoing messages, FidoNet dialed the numbers of the corresponding BBSs from the list of nodes in turn and passed them to the FidoNet program, which was waiting for a call from that side. Suddenly, Madill, Jennings, and Baker were able to work together easily and simply, albeit at the cost of delayed response. They did not receive messages during the day, the transmission of messages went on at night.
Prior to this, amateurs rarely contacted other amateurs who lived in other areas, as they mostly called local BBSs for free. But if this BBS was connected to FidoNet, then users would suddenly be able to exchange e-mails with other people all over the country. The scheme immediately proved incredibly popular, and the number of FidoNet users began to grow rapidly, reaching 200 in a year. In this regard, Jennings was increasingly unable to maintain his own node. So during the first FidoCon meeting in St. Louis, Jennings and Baker met with Ken Kaplan, another DEC Rainbow fan who would soon take on an important leadership role in FidoNet. They came up with a new scheme that divides North America into subnets, each of which consists of local nodes. On each of the subnets, one administrative node took charge of managing the local list of nodes, accepted incoming traffic for its subnet, and forwarded messages to the appropriate local nodes. Above the subnet layer were zones that covered the entire continent. At the same time, the system still maintained one global list of nodes containing the phone numbers of all computers connected to FidoNet in the world, so in theory any node could directly call any other to deliver messages.
The new architecture allowed the system to continue to grow, and by 1986 it had grown to 1000 nodes, and by 1989 to 5000. Each of these nodes (which was a BBS) had an average of 100 active users. Two of the most popular applications were a simple mail exchange, which Jennings built into FidoNet, and Echomail, created by Geoff Rush, a Dallas BBS sysop. Echomail was the functional equivalent of Usenet newsgroups, and allowed thousands of FidoNet users to conduct public discussions on various topics. Ehi, as individual groups were called, had single names, in contrast to the hierarchical system of Usenet, from AD&D to MILHISTORY and ZYMURGY (brewing beer at home).
Jennings' philosophical views tended towards anarchy, and he wanted to create a neutral platform that would be governed only by technical standards:
I told the users that they can do whatever they want. I've been that way for eight years now and I've never had a problem with BBS support. Only people with fascist tendencies who want to keep everything under control have problems. I believe that if it is clearly stated that the rules are enforced by the callers - I hate to even talk about this - if the callers determine the content, then they will be able to fight back any goats.
However, as with Usenet, FidoNet's hierarchical structure has given some sysops more power than others, and rumors have spread that a powerful cabal (this time based in St. Louis) is emerging to take control of the network from the people. Many feared that Kaplan or others close to him would try to commercialize the system and start charging money for using FidoNet. Particularly suspicious were the International FidoNet Association (IFNA), a non-profit association that Kaplan founded to pay for a portion of the system's maintenance costs (especially long distance calls). In 1989, these suspicions seemed to be realized when a group of IFNA leaders pushed through a referendum to make every FidoNet sysop a member of IFNA, and make the association the official organization that governs the network and is responsible for all of its rules and regulations. The idea failed and IFNA disappeared. Of course, the absence of a symbolic governing structure did not mean that there was no real power in the network; administrators of regional host lists introduced their own arbitrary rules.
The shadow of the internet
From the late 1980s onwards, FidoNet and Usenet gradually began to overshadow the Internet's shadow. By the second half of the next decade, they were completely absorbed by it.
Usenet became intertwined with Internet websites through the creation of the NNTP protocol - a network news transfer protocol - in early 1986. It was conceived by a couple of students at the University of California (one from the San Diego branch, the other from Berkeley). NNTP allowed hosts on the TCP/IP network on the Internet to create news servers compatible with Usenet. For several years, most Usenet traffic was already going through these nodes, and not through uucp over the good old telephone network. The independent uucp network slowly withered away, and Usenet became just another application running on top of TCP/IP. The incredible flexibility of the Internet's layered architecture made it easy for it to absorb networks tailored for a single application.
Although there were several gateways between FidoNet and the Internet in the early 1990s that allowed networks to exchange messages, FidoNet was not the only application, so its traffic did not migrate to the Internet in the way that Usenet did. Instead, when people outside of academia first began to explore Internet access in the second half of the 1990s, BBSs were gradually either absorbed into the Internet or became obsolete. Commercial BBSs have gradually fallen into the first category. These mini-copies of CompuServes offered BBS access for a monthly fee to thousands of users, and they had multiple modems to handle multiple incoming calls at the same time. With the advent of commercial Internet access, these businesses connected their BBS to a nearby part of the Internet and began offering access to it to their customers as part of a subscription. As more sites and services appeared on the burgeoning World Wide Web, fewer users subscribed to the services of specific BBSs, and so these commercial BBSs gradually evolved into mere Internet service providers, ISPs. Much of the amateur BBS turned into ghost towns as users who wanted to go online turned to local ISPs as well as affiliates of larger organizations like America Online.
All this is great, but how did the Internet get such a dominant position? How did an obscure academic system that had been spreading through elite universities for years, while systems like Minitel, CompuServe and Usenet were attracting millions of users, suddenly burst to the fore and spread like a weed, consuming everything that came before it? How did the Internet become the force that ended the era of fragmentation?
What else to read and see
- Ronda Hauben and Michael Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, (online 1994, print 1997)
- Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community (1993)
- Peter H. Salus, Casting the Net (1995)
- Jason Scott, BBS: The Documentary (2005)
Source: habr.com