[LINK] Happy birthday .au

[steve jenkin]

Tom Koltai wrote on 5/06/11 8:37 AM:
> Harumph!!!
> If we say that there were 36 universities and 18 of them were connected
> via UUCP in 1982 and ANSTO and CSIRO were also connected then 
> there were more far internet accounts outside of universities than
> inside... About 200 Corporations who had their own connections (See
> AUUGN org newsletter below for a partial list).

Maltby (UNSW) and Lauder (USYD) created the first Unix dial-up link in
Australia was just after the first Johns Lions Unix kernel course. Well
before UUCP v1 and the HoneyDanBer rewrite that became ubiquitous.

This link supported at least email and I'd expect file transfer. I'd
presume it was a 24-hr/day "local call", so popular at the time that by
late 1986 Telecom/Telstra with the rollout of Ericsson "AXE" exchanges
supporting ISDN, implemented auto-disconnect of long calls.

"local call areas" played a big part in the network due to unlimited
fixed-price calls.

The "Sydney University Network" (SUN) software led directly to ACSnet
and was free. MHSnet wasn't free for commercial use and spun-out in a
commercial company.

The first dedicated/private link on ACSnet was 1200bps synchronous
between USYD and UMEL. Early 80's, IIRC.

The importance of the Geoff Houston ACSnet to VAX/VMS gateway was
linking the informal/organic/unfunded ACSnet with the large

There was *very* little UUCP used in Australia, it was almost all ACSnet
because of its advanced auto-routing, self-healing, multiplexed
channels, bi-directional transmission (cf UUCP) and configurable drivers
(routing & network, email, file transfer, ...) meant it could be
integrated with any other network by writing a single driver - and there
was no need for central naming/numbering.
The driver architecture meant network upgrades were easy as it was
automatically backwards compatible.

One of the major MHSnet was breaking the nexus between the physical
links and logical network:
 AT&T/Olivetti were able to have multiple nodes on ACSnet
 connected to local hubs, but all seen as a single (private) domain.
 Internal-use-only international gateways were a simple by-product.

By the late 80's, there were many individuals & companies participating
in this "self-funded" store-and-forward network. It might be called
peer-peer today. It wasn't just a few Alumni. Many AUUG members obtained
accounts through Universities they'd never attended, like ADFA.

CSIROnet was definitely involved. In 1986 they gave one of their
'supernodes' to Softway to implement an ACSnet gateway.

Some companies generously bought hi-speed modems (2400 (v.22bis) &
19,200 'trailblazers') and made daily STD calls between "local call
zones" (cities).


<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACSnet>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHSnet>
<http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/OzIHist.html>


-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin