I recently discovered that I have a pile of duplicate issues of a publication called On Campus stashed at home. (This is where I got the recent piece on Norman Hackerman and his adventures with bicycle locks from a couple of weeks ago.) This is an absolutely fascinating newsletter, easily the best source I’ve encountered for the true history of Rice in the early to mid-80s. It was published twice a month on the first and third Fridays and the articles, which seem to have been submitted by people all over campus, document the daily details of life at Rice in that era. This is real nuts and bolts stuff, much of it is actually useful information and nothing in it that I’ve seen so far has the canned feeling of many university publications. I’m having a great time reading these.
What caught my eye this morning was what seems to be the advent of email at Rice, recorded in a short bit from the October 2-15, 1982 issue:
I have no clear sense of what this actually entailed or how it worked without any substantial investment. Any help is appreciated. I’d also note that the development of this technology creates significant problems for archival collection. The issue of saving materials that are born digital is still a live one.
Bonus: One of the things I love about On Campus is that it didn’t ignore the staff.
Extra Bonus: We have a December commencement now.
I can’t say that I was ever familiar with this Mailnet. If I recall correctly, somewhat earlier Rice started participating in UUNET, a network with unix to unix connections. That allowed for exchange of mail messages among users of the unix computers on campus, and through a nightly dial up connection, to others in the outside world.
On that network in that era, users didn’t just specify the end recipient of each mail message, but instead the complete route that each message needed to take along the way to every destination. That would look something like this:
beta!gamma!rice!hp-pcd!hplabs!hpda!fortune!avsdS!avsdT:deborah
Because the gateway machine at Rice and the system at HP only exchanged messages nightly, delivery and getting a response always took at least a couple of days. But it was free!
I was the other end of that long address string. I am amazed that William has that saved somewhere!
It’s amazing what can stick around in my brain!
This paper has some info on EDUNET. It has citations from late 1976, so is probably a 1977 publication.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800103.803326
This points to an issue of EDUNET News, with a network map.
https://books.google.com/books?id=dZniAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=edunet+educom+mit+rice&source=bl&ots=UVrvmgFgYH&sig=ACfU3U1elzqhEu2P2bPPGWXteOZR_dj5Vg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFgYGO-56DAxWnLFkFHfjNBPUQ6AF6BAggEAM#v=onepage&q=edunet%20educom%20mit%20rice&f=false
Thanks, Walter!
It looks to me like this was an email + file transfer thing over Telenet and maybe BITNET (IBM). The computer people probably would have started using UUCP mail around the same time, 1979 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP). CSNET, using TCP/IP protocols, started in 1981, not sure when or if Rice got on that, but it would have rapidly eclipsed EDUNET. HP Labs was on CSNET using 9600 baud X.25. CSNET was followed (organizationally, same protocols) by NSFNET, with the regional net being SESQUINET. Rice was the connection from SESQUINET to the NSFNET backbone, that was brought up in 1987. Farrell Gerbode is your contact for that. I think Stan Barber was also involved.
Starting with CSNET, your reference for all that is The Matrix, John Quarterman, 1990. This book is an amazing compilation of the absolute Babel of networking going on at the time. Today’s Internet seems so simple in comparison. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/_Digital_Press/Quarterman_The_Matrix_1990.pdf
Mailnet and EDUNET used the Telenet packet network which was metered (per packet!) in addition to the fixed cost for having the connection. Those costs were borne by ICSA.
BITNET was a store and forward network of academic institutions built of “leased line” (point-to-point) circuits. Files were sent from host to host (similar to UUNET) using the IBM VM/370’s Remote Spooling Console System (RSCS). Rice was (IIRC) the 100th institution to connect. (We waited 2-1/2 years for it to get closer because the circuits were so expensive.) The eventual 9.6Kbps connection ran from Rice’s VM/370 system to one at Washington University in St. Louis. The circuit was provided by Southern Pacific Railroad Communications, the “SPR” in “Sprint”. Ken Kennedy got grantor approval for one of his existing research grants to bear the cost of the circuit (which was +/-$10K per month). (Reference for BITNET: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET)
Rice’s CSNET connection used another Telenet connection which also was usage sensitive. A grant in CompSci bore the Telenet charges. CSNET used TCP/IP protocols which made it Rice’s first connection to what we know as the Internet. The backbone of CSNET was the ARPANET. NSF made an arrangement with DARPA for 50% of ARPANET’s capacity.
Rice had a native 56Kbps connection to ARPANET from late 1985-1987 via UT’s Balcones Research Center under the “NSFNET Phase I” program. This link used IP-over-X.25 hardware home in a small VAX located in Mudd. Paul Milazzo, a graduate student in CompSci, assembled the gateway. The commercial network hardware itself was buggy and not well-tested. It was used only in one other place, a military barracks in Germany. But it was, at last, a usage-insensitive connection to the Internet. Having to reboot the gateway when the network hardware hung up was a small price to pay.
The Phase I connection was used by Sesquinet when it began operations in early 1987. It was replaced with the initial T-1 (1.544Mbs) NSFNET in early 1988. The T-1 network was replaced by a T-3 (45Mbs) configuration in 1991.
Sesquinet was sold in 1998.
I clearly remember that we learned to use e-mail in COMP 103 in 1983, but it was only usable on campus for undergraduates. I had a friend (Robert Brazile, actually) who was going to UNT in Denton for a semester or two and we wanted to correspond by e-mail. So I asked nicely and was granted permission to send e-mail off campus. It was considered a “research tool” at the time.