[cynwoody]

My first Internet access was back around 1985 or so, using dial-up access from NY to CA through "the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link," The WELL.

I thought the WELL was just a famous bulletin board system (BBS), accessible via dial-up, but not connected to the internet, at least not until long after 1985.

The WELL was similar to CompuServe, which got started in 1969 as a provider of dial-up time-sharing service (on the DEC PDP-10). In 1989, CompuServe was the first of the dial-up services to offer internet access, but the connectivity was limited to providing access to internet email addresses.

It wasn't until 1991, when the NSF lifted restrictions on commercial use, that the internet was opened up to the public.

1991

T3 bandwidth is 44.7Mb/s.

[MarkL]

At the time, it was a BBS, however it did have direct access to the newsgroups, like "comp.lang.c". This was way before "FidoNet," but I believe it was a pre-cursor of it, for getting access to the Internet. Then in 1987, I got a job as a computer TA in the electrical engineering department at SUNY @ Stony Brook, and had full access to email, ftp, and all the news groups. SimTel at White Sands AFB was a terrific repository of software back then.

Mark

[MarkL]

I remember CIS too, and as a "Novell guy," that was the place to get all the Novell patches for a very long time. I LOVED their tiered access plan. Higher speed access cost $$$! I remember connecting @ 1200bps to see what new patches were avaiable, then downloading them at 9600bps, using Omen's Ymodem-G or Zmodem (I can't recall which). Kermit SUCKED!

Mark