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Barry Shein Founded the First Dialup ISP (Video)
Back in the dawn of prehistory, only universities, government agencies, and a few big corporations could get on the Internet. The rest of us either had computers connected to nothing (except maybe an electric outlet), Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL or another service or possibly to an online bulletin board service (BBS). And then, one day in 1989, Barry Shein hooked a server and some modems to an Internet node he managed for a corporate/academic wholesale Internet provider -- and started selling dialup accounts for $20 per month to individuals, small companies, and just about anyone else who came along. Barry called his ISP The World, which is still out there with a retro home page ("Page last modified April 27, 2006"), still selling shell accounts. We may run a second interview with Barry next week, so please stay tuned. (Alternate Video Link)
I want to say "First", but I also want to say that I knew Barry back when he started this whole thing. Congrats on your staying power!
IIRC, AOL didn't offer actual internet access until pretty late in the game.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It looks like he is still using dialup.
The company I worked for was dialing into UUNET back in 1987/88. Why aren't they considered the first?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Think again. AOL, prodigy, compuserve were all proprietary, isolated systems. They did not provide internet access. It wasn't until 89/90 that there email services could even talk to each other (via the internet).
Source: old enough to have listed compuserve "forums" and AOL "keywords" on my business cards...
This was pretty sweet back in the day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... (Not to be confused with Telnet)
Just had a good laugh with my wife. We got our first dialup account with The World back in the early 90's. Wrote my first scripts because of that account (and the usenet).
damn those were heady days. Substantive discussions. Thoughtful comments. My how things have degraded in just about any forum you care to pick.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The September that never ended. I think Green Day wrote a song about it.
Dialing into a BBS, bouncing into a schools system and then access the net not considered the first dialup isp?
Something I did in '83.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Before I got a Sysop account at Compuserve, I paid $9.95 if memory serves.
All the companies were there to download updates from, you could download libraries, utilities, examples, FAQs and Howtos, talk with the programmers, whine to the quality assurance people, you could buy books, jeans and coffee an some other stuff, play multiplayer games (all text) send email to the world, read usenet newsgroups, get email newsletters (tweets with no limit, for the young whippersnappers amongst you) and later also use the web.
Why would people pay the double for what exactly? :-)
Do I have to RTFA for that?
It even took 30 seconds for the TheWorld.com web page to load, just like a real dialup line!
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
I don't know who really can make that claim but Intelecom Data Systems in Rhode Island was offering dialup Internet access to the public in 1987, including SLIP (and later PPP.)
Except fidonet nodes could talk to each other. I ran a node for only mail relay in Southern Ontario from 92-96(from the time I was in middle school to the time I was nearly finished high school), because a bunch of BBS's in the area were choking the only provider at the time for mail requests. By the time late '96 had come around most people had moved to ISP's and BBS's around here were dying. Oh BRE, FRE, and LORD how I do miss you at times.
Om, nomnomnom...
Add $5.00/month for unlimited* dial-up.
* Unlimited does not mean 24 by 7 connectivity. It means unmetered, interactive usage. Sessions inactive for more than 20 minutes are subject to disconnection. Attempts to defeat inactivity detection may result in additional charges or termination of service.
IF IT'S FUCKING LIMITED, DON'T FUCKING CALL IT UNLIMITED!
How hard is it to just say "Add $5.00/month for unmetered, interactive usage" without an asterisk and a bunch of bullshit between "Add $5" and the description of what you actually get for your five bucks?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Ok, this guy in my post here is not Barry Shein. Posting anonymously just in case someone can figure out who it is...
Anyway I was a sysadmin on some Unix and VMS machines at one work site. At one point I hooked into Usenet via another department within the company, but was always a bit nervous about it as this was a large defense contractor that was paranoid about any outside network connections. I only wanted the technical newsgroups and some access to external email but I did allow a few choice non-tech sites through (local for-sale stuff and the like).
One of the users would ask me, jokingly, if I would add alt.sex.bondage. I would refuse of course, laughing. I had limited disk space and limited dialup bandwidth, and very low seniority. I'd say I would do it if I got a memo from the president of the company, which I knew would never happen. But every month or so John Doe would ask again, could he get alt.sex.bondage. I'd give the same excuses and roll my eyes. After awhile I was not sure if he was just keeping a long running joke going or if he wasn't really joking after all. But I left the company after awhile.
A few years later one of my friends mentioned that John Doe started his own company. It was one of the larger ISPs around at the time for people who wanted dialup access to their school or company's mainframes, access to Usenet, a shell account, and so forth. This was in 1988 or 1989, with actual dialup. Later when the web started taking off they provided early access and get very large. So this really was a big pioneer of "the internet" you might say.
So in hindsight one of the things I've been wondering ever since, is whether or not my refusal to supply alt.sex.bondage was a key motivator to kicking off the internet revolution. Me and Al Gore, we should be buddies.
Yeah, not the first. There were multiple public ISPs in Portland in 1989. PDxs, agora, Teleport...
One is still around, nearly 30 years later - Raindrop Laboratories http://www.rdrop.com/ still has its "vintage" mid '90s web page, too. (It has been around since 1985.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Portland had "agora" in 1985. PDxs and Teleport joined in 1987.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I was dialing up to Freenets back in 1988, paying for 'privileged' access (though they were non-profit) and was using email, archie, gopher, IRC, etc... Wouldn't this be considered an ISP?
It's better to burn out than to fade away
As someone who moved away from BBS's to the Internet before there was such a thing as a "web site", I feel qualified to say that, No, AOL was not the first.
Back then there was no Firefox. We used gopher.
There was no Google. We used archie.
Even Mosaic wasn't around yet.
There was no "click here to download". We used ftp from the command line. And there goddamn sure as fuck weren't any Viagra ads.
You could freely post your email address online for the whole world to see, with no worries of getting on a spam list. It was a beautiful time.
Not only was AOL not the first, I feel comfortable and confident in saying that, by far, the darkest day the Internet has ever seen was the day that AOL unleashed its hordes.
IIRC, AOL didn't offer actual internet access until pretty late in the game.
VERY late in the game.
And when it finally happened, that's the day that the Internet transformed from something great into the ghetto of spam, scams, and ads that it is today.
And, yes... GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!
Don't forget about FidoNet :)
FidoNet was something different.
I'm not saying it's irrelevant to the conversation. Not by any means. It holds a very important place in history. But it was it's own, separate thing. It wasn't the Internet, and it wasn't the commercial online services.
In a way, it was the first "common man's" global network. Sure, the Internet existed, and ARPAnet before that, but for many years they were only available to the privileged few.
Fido Net was a way for a regular guy to use his computer to communicate with people outside of his home town.
Seems like nothing today. Back then it was a HUGE deal.
I had raw IP dialup in 1989 in Tucson, Arizona. It's so long ago, that I don't recall the name of the company, but they were not new in 1989. And, there were other options.
@_jeff_nelson +jeffnelsonjeffnelson
Yeah, not the first. There were multiple public ISPs in Portland in 1989. PDxs, agora, Teleport...
One is still around, nearly 30 years later - Raindrop Laboratories http://www.rdrop.com/ still has its "vintage" mid '90s web page, too. (It has been around since 1985.)
If you follow the "Alan Batie" link from RainDrop's home page, and then follow his "agora" link from "I work at Peak Internet, a local ISP in Corvallis, Oregon. I also run a small ISP in Portland, Oregon, called RainDrop Laboratories. It started in 1985 as a public access system called Agora, while I was working at Intel.", it speaks of agora's RainNet Internet access starting in 1990 - "Now that our subject had SVR4, with TCP/IP and all, and there being several other hacker sorts around town who'd been eyeing the Internet with envy for sometime, it was time to see if something could be done locally. RAINet was thus born in the fall of 1990, and its first connection was a 2400 bps SLIP link between agora and parsely (another local public access system, owned by Tod Oace at the time)."
(Remember, unless you actually Provide a Service that lets you send IP packets onto the Internet, you're not an Internet Service Provider. Dialup BBSes don't count, UUCP doesn't count, only SLIP/PPP/bridged Ethernet/PPPoEoAoDSL/PPPoAoDSL/DOCSIS/etc. so that you can splat out one of these things - or one of these things - onto the Internet counts.)
I don't know who was first but I was on Wetware Diversions, a dial-up ISP in San Francisco connected to the Internet in as early as 1987 and it was up before then ...
DNS wasn't even in use at the time
RFC 882 and RFC 883 were published as early as 1983, so I really doubt that DNS wasn't at use at all in 1987.
I recall as e-mail addresses still needed to use bangs ("!") for routing
That's a UUCP convention, not used on the real Internet. Perhaps the service that you used required bang paths and didn't use DNS, but DNS was most definitely in use by people connected to the Internet (as opposed to people connected to a dialup service that gatewayed email onto the Internet).
I did a quick search for "Wetware Diversions" and came up with this long list of ISPs going back as far as 1988:
http://www.phrack.org/issues/29/4.html
That says
I see nothing about "Internet" there. I see "uucp", "bbs", "Usenet", and "shell access", all of which can be provided as dialup services, and none of which necessarily imply that they support something such as SLIP or PPP over dialup lines and route packets between the host on the other end of the dialup line and the Internet, that being what being an Internet Service Provider indicates that you do.
UUCP (including UUCP mail and USENET), BBS access, and dialup shell access were certainly very useful services at the time, but they aren't sufficient to make you an ISP.
If you're going to quibble that Barry wasn't the first dialup ISP - not the first provider of dialup UUCP or the first provider of dialup BBS access or the first provider of dialup shell services - then talk about earlier ISPs, not earlier providers of dialup UUCP or dialup BBS access or dialup shell services.
Indeed. Somewhere circa 1997(?) -- It was a dark day for the internet: people too stupid to be on the internet were now pooping all over it.
Lots of guys did - Karl Denninger in Chicago and Greg Laskin LA. But they were UUCP not IP connections.
Need Mercedes parts ?
" It holds a very important place in history"
Only in fido-land. It was a pox to the rest of the net.
Q:How do you know when the Fido boys tried to gateway again?
A: there are 300 posts in alt.aquaria. 280 of them are the same.
Every. Friggin. Time.
And no I don't know why your tank is green.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The problem with the Internet is the unusual personalities of the people that built and use.*
Barry literally wrote the book on tcp/ip, and as he says, the net was small back then and we all knew each other.
who the fuck are you?
*This is probably true of Slashdot, too.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I remember reading the Mac System 7 announcements on the Mac listserve (Appletalk?, something like that) about a year before it was released, and then downloading it from ftp.apple.com for free when it was released. In floppy disk image files. Reportedly ftp.apple.com was hosted by a Mac SE/30 running A/UX.
I remember their daily message (msgs) had "Hello, world -- dmr" for the longest time. Also that Barry had very long discussions with NSFNet folks (Steven Wolffe?) about AUP, as the first commercial ISP.
"but they aren't sufficient to make you an ISP."
Of course they were. What does the I in ISP mean? "Internet".
If what you offer can interoperate with the network, you're an ISP. What do you think the ip network looked like before the web? Hint: nobody really used Gopher (other than .ca whois) and 99% of all activity was mail and news. Which came from uucp and was ported to IP. But until the web came along there was simply no reason for a pain in the ass SLIP or PPP connection cause you could do anything important with a uucp connection.
ftp wasn't the only way to move files around. And as a user of the network you couldn't tell if those other people were on uucp or the ip network, it was all transparent to you - Interoperability.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Today's date is Tue Sep 7644 07:32:08 PDT 1993
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Who else are then supposed to pay now that Karl Denninger packed it in?
Need Mercedes parts ?
That's just your aged bias. It was a ghetto of spam, scan and ads before AOL hooked into the internet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I had internet access at work starting in 1986 but since it was work related I stuck to fairly sensible net usage. My first home ISP was through a small startup in rural northern NJ, starting in 1992 or so The local phone service at that time under NJ Bell was pretty terrible. Local calls only serviced half the county, and not even the county seat where AOL and Compuserve's dial-up phone banks were established, so AOL use was a toll call. Recognizing this, two guys set up a dial-up phone bank in an area that serviced this little gap in dial-up access and ran with it for about 5 years. This was a full fledged ISP right from the start with IP addresses, ftp access, mail servers, Usenet, etc. And for the first year or two tech support meant talking to the sysadmin himself. Planet.net was the name of it and as far as I can tell the domain name is up for grabs.
"Barry literally wrote the book on tcp/ip"
Applemen, not Shein. Since the conversation is ABOUT a guy named Barry, you should clarify when talking about a different Barry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And when it finally happened, that's the day that the Internet transformed from something great into the ghetto of spam, scams, and ads that it is today.
Another great invention for the masses ruined by the masses.
Dark Reflection
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Is this working?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
alt.binaries.pictures.midget.blonde That is all.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Fuck. How I would love a Gopher like interface to most of the content on the web now. Blazing through using arrow keys. It was fast and got me info.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
(as I was going to say of course /. is immune from such pettiness...)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"but they aren't sufficient to make you an ISP."
Of course they were. What does the I in ISP mean? "Internet".
If what you offer can interoperate with the network, you're an ISP.
If you can route packets from clients to the Internet, you're an ISP.
If you can only route mail messages and Usenet mail postings to the Internet, with your clients using UUCP to send them and receive them, and perhaps provide the ability to download and upload files using UUCP and maybe other uux-based services, you're a UUCP service provider, not an ISP.
Although certainly not the first ISP, I think Delphi was one of the first commercial online services to offer internet access (maybe late 1992, definitely by 93). Delphi was totally text based, but if I recall, it only cost $20/month for 20 hours while AOL, though snazzier, was something like $3/hr. The one good thing about AOL discs in the very early 90s, was coming bundled with a version of GeoWorks that ran on DOS.
Anyway, I finally got actual internet through a dial-up ISP in late 1994, then DSL in 1999. And now, I toy with the idea of cutting the cord completely from time to time, as I get too tired to cuss at the punks on my lawn.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The best thing about AOL was that for several years, I never had to buy floppy disks. I could count on a reliable stream of free ones showing up in my mail box on a regular basis. Sometimes 2 or 3 in a day.
I was quite perturbed when they switched to sending their shit out on CD.....
Based on first-hand information, and belief, The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link - The WELL, a product of Whole Earth Access - was first to offer dialup Internet accounts to paying customers.
Dialup accounts where you'd run SLIP over the dialup line, and IP packets you sent over the line got routed to arbitrary Internet hosts, and those hosts could route packets back to your machine which would receive them over the SLIP line?
If not, that's not a dialup Internet account. It might be a dialup shell account, or a dialup UUCP account, but it's not a dialup shell account. Barry's not saying he was the first to offer dialup shell accounts or dialup UUCP accounts, he's saying he was the first to offer dialup Internet accounts, letting your home machine directly connect to the Internet.
I signed up for a World account in the first days of his operation, and still maintain my account there. It remains my main email account of last resort, even though I have two email domains now. The interviewer and Barry perhaps didn't know about the dialup BBSing that went on before there was a commodity internet available. As a note, I dialed up to his system in Boston for about 2 or 3 bucks an hour, so it wasn't cheap, but it didn't break the bank either. (From Irvine, Ca.). Later a company here in Irvine, network intensive started to offer a dialin locally and the cost went to a flat 10 or 20 bucks a month to get a PPP dialin connection, which could be left up on a phone line, sort of like todays connection. In fact it was about 1/3 the speed of DSL if anyone cares. Back to the main topic, the BBS craze was hot from the late 70s to 89 and was as big as anything around. You would get large grouped networks of BBSs and you could dial into a local one, and they would all sync with each other in various ways. I see the Tomcat package now, and recall one package that was huge back then. There were also Mustang BBS's. Many small fortunes were made into nothing with the craze as some companies (I think Mustang was one of them) went to revenue, and you would pay thousands to get a system to run on a big bank of PC hardware and inbound modems. This all went into the tank overnight when World and then several other companies came on the scene. As to what did you do? He didn't mention Gopher and FTP. The main use of dialups later on was to trade software, some legal, some not so much. The Internet was a trove of such stuff and a utility much like Google, called Gopher was out there. It didn't offer anything but indexing and file name searching, but was far better than the BBS scene where there were indexes of various quality available, and you would have to call and register to get things on distant BBSs. The email was interesting, but newcommers like me from the land of BBS didn't have a lot of use for it, though as various people started to use Usenet and that grew you could make friends and use it more. As he mentioned if you were laid off, you had contacts you lost, and that world didn't intersect much with the BBS directly.