Reminiscing our first internet connections (WAS) Re: akamai yesterday - what in the world was that

[list-nanog2 at dragon.net (Paul Ebersman)]

wsimpson> When we first designed PPP in the late '80s to replace SLIP
wsimpson> and SLFP, it was expected to run at 300 bps and scale up, so
wsimpson> the timeouts reflected that.  When I designed PPP over ISDN,
wsimpson> added language to allow faster retransmission.

SLIP and PPP were quite... robust. Some UCB folks managed to get SLIP
over tin can and string. Two acoustic coupler 150b modems, 2 8oz V8 cans
and waxed cotton thread.

wsimpson> Like many of you, I started an ISP in 1994 with a 56 kbps
wsimpson> uplink, and only 6 local customers....  The routers were in a
wsimpson> bathroom over the garage.

Our first CA hub was in the janitor's closet at a now defunct computer
company. We initially had problems with the janitors unplugging the
router on weekends to plug in their floor buffers.

Ah, the good old days.