At 10:30 PM +1200 28/3/01, Mark Davies wrote:

From: Geoff Huston Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 17:50:40 +1000

...

Just a quick note from the other side of the Tasman - the earliest efforts appeared to be at the Victoria University, Wellington, where the Computer Science Department operated a modem-based trans-Tasman messaging service through the eighties - I'm not sure whether the link used the uunet protocols or the acsnet protocols, but I'm not sure thats all that relevant. It linked up to a comparable Computer Science messaging network in Australia.

It was ACSnet to melbourne as well as uucp to Calgary and to uunet (actually it was initially seismo back in the pre uunet days). There was even a short period when email between here and canterbury went via calgary.

...

The first link was, as I recall, a 14.4Kbps analog modem connection, installed in late 88 (or thereabouts) with NASA and NZ funding.

And the first NZ IP link out of Waikato was a slip link between here and there running over the DSIR's internal serial network with an 8086 based PCrouter at

8088 wasn't it?

each end. That link ran at 9.6K though the DSIR constrained it to only 4.8K. That was quickly followed by a similar link from here to Massey.

And of course slightly prior to that was the SPEARNET stuff, using PACNET (X.25) and the JANET Coloured Book protocols. The PACNET costs limited the usefulness. I think that was originally at 2400bps! It later went to 9600. Earlier still, starting in 1981, Auckland and VUW had a BITNET link between their IBM mainframes (midis really) over a 4800bps leased line. Fine for email etc. This linked into SPEARNET later, and subsequentially into the uucp link to Comp Sci and later the Internet. My whois handle in rfc1166 (back in the days when you could list the Internet in a single RFC) refers to the host rs1.vuw.ac.nz which was in fact the upgraded IBM mainframe. There was stuff before that, including the Massey-VUW link in the mid 1970's (Kiwinet as I recall). We reused the modems from that on the BITNET link. Most of us involved from those days are still around, many on this list. -- Michael Newbery Technical Specialist TelstraSaturn Limited Tel: +64-4-939 5102 Mobile: +64-2-939 5102 Fax: +64-4-922 8401 --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog