CDR: Re: I created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story
Tim May
tcmay at got.net
Wed Oct 18 20:05:28 PDT 2000
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.
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