In article <A1F92A0E-98F6-4AC0-AAA3-3FD7739D535E@the-watsons.org>, Brett Watson <brett@the-watsons.org> writes
This goes back a number of years. There was a product that literally was a cardboard box that contained everything one needed to get started on the Internet. Just add a modem and a computer, and you were on your way. No fuss, no "learning curve”.
MCI (way back, original MCI when I worked there) had MCI One that was similar with bundled voice/internet/etc, may be what you’re thinking of or not
There were numerous Internet "in a box" type products available in the 1994-95 timeframe, based largely on the existing Compuserve "in a box". I was responsible for the first one to go on sale in the UK, through a large chain of electronics retailers. The ISP was UK-Online. The commercial reason for the packs was to put the product in front of as many potential customers as possible, and make it easy to buy. Cover-disks on magazines had quite a wide circulation but didn't fully address the financial issues because... ...the corresponding operational reason was to overcome the bootstrapping problem of how do you sign someone up for an account and take a pre-payment if they aren't already online? A cover-disk could solve the problem of pre-installing the software needed, which in those days was generally a paid-for 3rd-party Stack and some kind of bulk-licenced browser (eg Trumpet + Netscape); but involved giving users a certain period of 'free trial', unless you employed the somewhat clumsy option of having them call in with credit card details during the set-up process. What an "in-a-box" product achieved was the ability to get wider distribution, because the retailer was typically receiving a 30% margin on his sale and therefore happy to have it on his shelves, but the ISP was also getting the 70% [less manufacturing cost, obviously] in order to part-fund the first month's access and the licence on the software, after which the person is online and can subscribe fully if they wish to continue. Even back then, there was the secondary effect that having spammers sign up to your service using a succession of "free trial" cover disks wasn't something to be encouraged. How any of this is relevant to IPv6 "in-a-box" I will leave as an exercise for the reader. Although my own inclination is to say it's much more to do with grappling with legacy hardware and operating systems that don't (either happily or at all) support IPv6, than getting a reasonably recent PC/CPE configured automagically via an existing IPv4 connection. -- Roland Perry