At 10:45 PM -0400 10/18/00, David Honig wrote:
At 03:29 PM 10/18/00 -0400, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Its quite simple. In 1995 MS released a version of Windoze which included a TCP/IP stack by default. Previously you had to acquire one and figure out how to install it. While fortunes were made on this, the collection of routers known as the Net was unavailable to Joe Sixpack until then.
I don't buy this at all. Maybe there is some subtlety I am missing completely. As a Mac user, PPP and similar protocols were bundled early on. In 1993-4 the first talk of Mosaic was appearing. In 1994-5, Mosaic and its successor were readily available. Which caused which, a default TCP/IP stack in Windows 95 or Netscape 1.0? (By the way, friends of mine are happily surfing with Windows 3.1 and whatever MS- or aftermarket-based TCP/IP tools are needed. Most of them don't even know what a "TCP/IP stack" is...they simply download what the ISP tells them is needed, or they insert the CD-ROM and click to start.) As a Mac user, it was the availability of Mosaic and Netscape which altered the landscape. The TCP/IP stack junk was just behind the scenes machinery which various vendors were then racing to provide. Saying the modern Net age started when Microsoft provided a TCP/IP stack seems overly wonkish. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.