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 On Behalf Of Rich Shepard
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2023 11:52 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group
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
