On 7/12/2014 5:19 PM, Barry Shein wrote:

On July 12, 2014 at 12:08 randy@psg.com (Randy Bush) wrote:

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And, for the record, it's pretty widely acknowledge that "The World" (Barry Shein) was the world's first commercial ISP - offering shell access in 1989, and at some point started offering PPP dial-up services. As I recall, they were a UUnet POP.

yep. and uunet and psi were hallucinations. can we please not rewrite well-known history?

or are you equating shell access with isp? that would be novel. unix shell != internet.

You mean when you sat at a unix shell using a dumb terminal on a machine attached to the internet in, say, 1986 you didn't think you were "on the internet"?

The shell machines were connected to the internet. You could FTP, email, telnet, etc etc etc.

Back in 1989 that was "on the internet".

Heck, in 2014 it means on the internet.

Right this minute I'm in a shell on a Linux machine connected to the internet and I'm pretty sure I have access to the internet.

Consider the difference if you unplug that shell machine from the internet.

Internet Service Provider. You got internet services.

What hair are you trying to split? That you were using a shared address? Are people behind a NAT wall not on the internet?

This must be the silliest recurring thread-topic on NANOG since the "Spam is NOT an Operational issue" (or "DDOSes are not [ditto]") days. For the Subject: line -- when my provider stops providing what I want at a price I want to pay, I'll start looking for another one and as an end user I am not remotely interested in the nasties they have to through to GET what I want delivered. For the current thread position -- At this precise moment I am using Thunderbird (a messaging client with shell aspirations) under Windows XP (a shell with OS pretensions) talking to the network I developed, installed, pay for and maintain (could be called my ISP and separately my wife's ISP, and the ISP for invited and uninvited guests--could be but won't be because it conveys no useful information to anybody). That network is connected to a company's cable, which company is my ISP, my POTSP, and my TVP. Who and what they connect to to get th4e stuff I want delivered is only of academic interest. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)