Re: Tell us about AT&T and DEC in the early days.

henry@zoo.toronto.edu
Wed, 25 Nov 92 11:36:08 EST

>I'd like to know of how big a role AT&T and DEC played in the
>early days of the Net. I've seen passing references that they
>were major contributors to distribution of News. Is this true?

Yes, mostly because major sites at both companies served as big distribution
points for quite a while. "decvax" and "ihnp4" (this cryptic name comes
from AT&T internal naming conventions) shipped a lot of bytes around, and
swallowed some big phone bills, for several years early in Usenet's history.
(Actually, a number of AT&T sites other than ihnp4 were prominently involved
too. I think decvax was most of DEC's role.) Here too, mind you, a small
number of individuals -- the sysadmins at those sites -- played important
roles, promoting such usage and defending it as worthwhile for the company.

>(I take it AT&T did start it all by distributing UUCP with Unix.
>Was this at a point in time when Unix was easily available?

Academically, yes. Commercially, no.

Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry

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