On Jun 16, 2014, at 12:11 AM, RussellMc wrote: > In 1983, the ARPANET was split with U.S. military sites on their own > Military Network (MILNET ) for > unclassified defense department communications. In theory, you still needed a DARPA contract/connection to use the non-MilN= et side of things. But the (internet) technology was a lot better at relaying packets around t= han anything was at preventing such relaying, and so a university or compan= y with valid ARPANet access "somewhere" frequently somehow managed to propa= gate access (at least via eMail) quite widely. Of course, LAN technology w= as practically non-existent, and TCP/IP didn't run on much of anything much= smaller than a VAX780, so most early "access" was low-speed dialup from a = dumb terminal to a timesharing mainframe of some kind. The earliest online fingerprint I can find of myself is from 1979. I generally count the beginning of "The Internet as we know it now" as coin= ciding with the release of Windows-95. That was the first time a consumer = PC came with networking software installed and ready to use. You could add= TCP/IP to both Macs and PCs long before that (back to DOS days, when your = ethernet card cost more than todays laptops), but it meant tracking down TC= P from here, web browser from there, and a lot of effort to put it all toge= ther. BillW --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .