Just wondering what was the internet like when it was in its infancy?
Was it a quiet and lonely place?
I,m a relative new comer to all this,(had access for about 5yrs)
be interested to hear the accounts of people who have been on line since the early days.

I've beeb online since Christmas Day 1997.... Back then the Internet wasn't as fast as it is now, cos everyone was on either 33.6 or 56k dial up as broadband hadn't been invented yet.

The net wasn't as secure in those days either so internet shopping wasn't as widespread as it is now thanks to new secuirty measures in place on the likes of Amazon and Supermarket shopping sites like Tesco.com etc.

Also there was no Kazaa et al so downloading wasn't the thing it is now, and as mentioned everyone was on dial up which as I'm sure you know ain't much cop for mass downloading.

So basically, although the net was good in the early days, as technology has evolved to almost Star Trek proportions, the way and how fast we connect to the net has also evolved alongside it.

And there was a much higher proportion of geeks among the on line community in the early days!

i think it was hmm summer 97' i remember logging on to the words - 'welcome to compuserve' used to luv that voice - whatever happened to compuserve?

Hi all,

I first got online in 1983, using a 1200 baud modem to various dial up bulletin boards - each one had it's own phone number and you dialled in to them..... I was also an early information provider to Prestel (through my job).

Later on in the 1980s I used a US based BBS called The Well (horrendous connection charges - eventually started connecting via BT's Packet Switch Network - which provided soem access to the very young internet. Many academics, no businesses to speak of, no WWW, e-mail was on a wing and a prayer. Much of the focus was on USENET news groups and services accesses through soemthing called TELNET. (Not Telenet - that was a comms network).

In the UK was a system called CIX - still around today - and from there in the 1990s came the 'tenner a month' Internet Access club which went on to become Demon. To actually dial in to teh internet was quite a feat - you had to install your own TCP/IP stack and dialler and all other software. It was....emotional. :-)

Used Compuerve as well, then moved over to full time internet rather than 'sheltered access' in the mid 1990s - Mosaic Web Browsers, Pegasus e-mail, Microsoft's first and well ropey TCP/IP stack in Windows....

Up until the mid 1990s you stood a chance of knowing lots about what was on the Net. After the WWW really took off, you didn't! Anyone remember GOPHER and WAIS? These were hypertext tools that predated the WWW - pure text based but very useful.

It's easier to do stuff today, but I think the signal to noise ratio of the Net as a whole is a darn sight worse!

Joe

Yeah, I remember bulletin boards and 1200 baud modems. Started working in computers in '86 with BT and we used the BTGold messaging and mail system. Everything was dial-up and so slow.
The graphics were blocky and low-res (that's if you got graphics at all) and probably comparable to the kind of thing you get on teletext nowadays.
This was around the time that the IBM PC compatibles started appearing with a 10meg hard drive. Before that they were 720k dual floppies. I remember servers having a huge 40meg HDD's and 640k mem. I remember the first versions of windows and before Bill Gates we had CPM and MPM operating systems.
Back to the subject. The original internet was developed for the military way back in the 60's but until the early 90's it was mainly used by the academic world, enabling the university world to share info. After '93-'94 the computer companies (Cisco, 3com etc) started moving away from bulletin boards and onto the internet and the exponential growth started.
Ah, memories.......

You can browse the web of yester-year at http://www.archive.org

It even has this site, back in it's infancy: http://web.archive.org/web/20021213114112/http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/

Joe and Cols I think you guys are due to retire now ;)

I been online for about 9 years but never really knew the tech behind it untill 33.6k modems were around, used uncles work machine and it was slow!
I can rememeber speed progression for me;
33.6k then a spanky fast 56k modem! :o
then ISDN 64/128k but to pricey for consumer when BT first released it expecting people to get home highway.
Then getting a finger in the pie with ATM and SDH tech for backbones, now playing with xDSL and MPLS and fibre rollout.

Only ever used usenet, www and ftp, email of course.
Did use napster etc.. when they first popped up but now i see what network traffic they cause I am more select in my useage :rolleyes: :D

/me gets anorak

Joe and Cols I thnk you guys are due to retire now.....

If there's anyone willing to fund my lifestyle I would willingly hang up my RJ45 cable.

1997/8...we first got a PC in 1997, and the internet the following years. We had so many probs with that BT one, LineOne, and Virgin internet, Compuserve....all of them. Now on Telewest Broadband and glad!

I used to spend far too much time talking to middle aged Floridean women about ferrets in Yahoo! Chatrooms....lol

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First AoheLL free trials (on and off from 1999-2003) Freeserve July 2003-March 2004) Virgin which didn't actually work - (56k) nor the broadband it kept mucking up. Late March 2004-date PlusNet 512k.

Alex


I Pasted that from other Forum I am with.

Anyways, if I remember rightly, the pages looked very ametuer and simple.

And only at speeds of 33.6Kbps and 56k If I remember Correctly.

Originally posted by amhudson119


I Pasted that from other Forum I am with.

Digital Spy by per chance?

Yes.
You with them?

And there was a much higher proportion of geeks among the on line community in the early days!

the geeks are still here, and if it wasent for all the geeks, the internet wouldent be the place it is today.
(i dont know if thats a good thing or not ):rolleyes:

i first started with computers in 1994, when win95 was first released, my computer was a 486dx2 66 and it had 4mb ram and an 80mb hard drive, ooh not forgetting the 2x cd rom drive:P
the internet conection was 28k and cost an arm and a leg (aprox £20 month) admitedly if you wasent a geek back then you would not have had much use for the internet, most of the info was computer/games/tech/hacking/cracking/virus
related and there wasent the vast amount of companys with web sites like there is today or nearly half as much spam mail/popups, as there is today and no spyware to worry about, just nasty viruses:(
i supose some things will never change