I was working at Central Point Software when it acquired Xtree in 1993. I flew down there to assist with the acquisition and returned with a Sparc and Telebit TrailBlazer and a 9600bps dedicated dialup account to UUnet. Somehow Xtree had wrangled that account from UUnet when they were doing their Xtree for Unix (the successor program is here, a fascinating historical read https://www.unixtree.org/ ) and that became CPS's first "Internet" connection as I eventually setup the Microsoft SMTP Gateway software for the original Microsoft Mail since I was the only one who knew anything about The Internet.
In the meantime I had been doing UUCP dialup to Agora for several years. I'll have to fire up unixtree and see what it's like, although I don't generally use the GUI on Unixes... Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Rich Shepard Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2023 11:52 AM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PLUG] email services supporting IMAP On Sun, 19 Nov 2023, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > Interesting. In 1993 the emerging NSFnet was not permitted to be > connected to commercial entities. You must have had a special > dispensation. That happened in 1995 as I recall... Ted, Well, thinking about timing I'll acknowledge that you're correct. Between 1993 and 1997 I had a dial-up connection to Aracnet (which became SpiritOne before is suddenly shut down), and they provided mail service. In 1997 I defenestrated to Linux and set up my own mail server using postfix using ADSL until I had to find a new ISP. That was Verizon -> Frontier Communications -> Ziply Fiber. I don't recall when I had fiber installed, probably when Frontier was the ISP. Rich
