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34C3 preroll music
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Herald: Back in time, back to the 1990's
where the internet actually made sounds,
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and you could annoy the whole family while
blocking the phone line. He was actually
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heavily involved in these early days of
the internet. He operated and participated
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in these early structures, namely Bulletin
Board Systems and the UseNet. And he now
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takes us back in time, to tell us all
about the time when the internet made
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sounds. Thank you very much LaForge.
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applause
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LaForge: Thank you very much for the
introduction.This is a quite unusual
-
setting for me. Typically I give talks
about deeply technical topics. Protocoll
-
level details and telecom specs and so on.
Now the first time I speak in the Art and
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Culture track. That is definitely
something new for me. So, why am I here
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and why am I talking about this topic.
First of all, I was involved to some
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extent yes, but for sure I was not
somebody who had any significant role in
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that universe. Neither in the BBS scene or
in the early internet days. I was just
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basically a youngster, a teenager, who had
fun playing with technology and was
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helping others to communicate using
technology. There are many more people who
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have, who are much more qualified than me
to talk about that subject but I ... and
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that's the reason why I'm here and why I
submitted this talk is, you don't really
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see many people speaking about these days
or about those topics anymore. And even if
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you want to research it, I think there's
like one or two books in German on that
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subject, they're very hard to get and also
not very complete. So, I think we have to
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sort of document the history of it for
those people, who have not been around at
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the time. So, this talk will not have as
many acronyms as you are used to from
-
talks that I usually give. Still you have
typos in the slides, as you can see in the
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second line already, so that didn't
change. I didn't invent any of the
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technologies covered here. I didn't write
any of the software covered. I was just a
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user and operator or sysadmin. And that's
the world I grew up in from 11 onwards.
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As I said many people lack that history and
to start with that, maybe a quick poll in
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the audience. Who has ever dialed into a
BBS using a modem? Raise your hands. Okay.
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So, I'm preaching to the converted. Okay,
maybe I should invite all of you up to the
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stage and we should make a discussion-
round instead. Anyway. So, circuit switch
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telephony. Well, this is the telephony
from 1876 until about 1988 with
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analog voice circuits over copper wires
and dial-up connections between A and B.
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I guess everybody still remembers these.
Even if you're young, you should have seen
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a classic telephone, I think. And yeah,
you have analog amplifiers possibly in the
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path, but actually the copper wires are
physically switched at telephone
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exchanges. So, this structure looks a bit
like this: We have a telephone at one end,
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we have a telephone at another end, and we
have telephone exchanges or switches,
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which actually switch the circuit - hence
the term circuit switched telephony -
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between A and B. So, you have a copper
wire from your phone to the office, the
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exchange, to which you are connected and
then that exchange again has copper wires
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to other exchanges and so on. And based on
the phone number you dial the call is
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switched to the destination subscriber.
That's sort of the foundation in terms of
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technology that we're using here. Also
something to document for the
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international audience in Germany at that
time even local calls were metered and
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charged by the minute, flat rates didn't
exist and we had multiple zones so there's
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not just local calls and long-distance
calls but different depending on your
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distance so like up to 50 kilometers or
more than 50 kilometers and so on. And
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given on that and the steep pricing and
not so many people could afford long-
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distance BBSing at least not for a long
time. All of this started with a device
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called the acoustic coupler. It's actually
also how I started even though I'm young
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and I only started in I think about 90 or
91. At 10 or 11 years of age you don't
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have the latest and greatest in
technology. I got a used second hand or
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third hand Olivetti acoustic coupler from
my uncle it had even a battery it could be
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operated mobile it had a battery
compartment with eight Mignon (AA) cells.
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Actually I still own it and I still own
related telephone I just thought: yeah
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don't have to bring it here. But it
still exists. So anyway, here you have to
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dial using your normal phone. You dial the
digits of the phone number and once the
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other side picks up the phone and they put
their receiver onto the acoustic coupler
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and you put your receiver onto the
acoustic coupler, then data can be
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transmitted over the telephone line as
said with manual, dial manual pickup and
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rather extremely low speed. This all looks
like this and the next step in the logical
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progression then was modems, which is sort of you can
think of an automatized method of acoustic
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couplers, where you don't have an air gap
anymore. So in the acoustic coupler you
-
literally have a couple of centimeters of
air between the speaker and the microphone
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in the receiver of your phone, versus the
acoustic coupler. So with the modem
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there's a direct connection and also you
have automatic facilities to dial the
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telephone number and to answer the line
and so on. So you don't need a manual
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operator anymore to pick up a phone or
dial numbers. And this thing gets
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transmitted over the telephone
line. This is a stack of various different
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modems – we will see some others here,
some of you will remember the brands or
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the shapes or even the specific models of
those modems. But that's too much level of
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detail for the moment. So let's look a bit
at the speed, or lack of speed, that was
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available. It started with 300 bps. I
actually used 300 bps a couple of times.
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In fact, in like around 1990 of course it
was extremely slow but still it was what I
-
could start with at the time. Then the
1200 bps; so this is still rather slow and
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you can slowly read and follow the
text as it's being printed. Unfortunately
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I don't have an animation or something
like that. I'm not such a multimedia savvy
-
guy. So yes, then the speeds progressed,
you see the years in which they were
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created. The lines with the asterisk mark
years that I found some secondary sources
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that originally it had been specified
then. But actually the oldest spec
-
document for all these earlier ones was
from 1988. So if you go to the ITU
-
website, the earliest documents you can
find are from 1988 and none of those
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earlier documents could – at least on the
internet – be found anywhere. Maybe you
-
can go to a library or something like
that. Yeah so speeds progressed, different
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modulation schemes were introduced to
squeeze ever more bits into these
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3 kilohertz analog circuit over the
telephone line. And every couple of years
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a new, especially in the 90s, if you
follow this 91 14.400 bps, 93 19.200
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to 1994 28.000 bits per second. And there
were of course also proprietary protocols,
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then you had to have the same manufacturer
of modem that the other side whom you're
-
calling and so on, but these are the
official standardized protocols and speeds
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that were used. Which brings us... so okay
we have a telephone system; we can dial
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numbers; we have a modem that can dial
numbers; we have modems that can send bits
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in exceptionally fast speed. What do we do
with this? And this brings us to be BBSs:
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where could you actually dial, and what
could you do there? So what's the BBS?
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Fundamentally, it's some computer – any
hardware, any operating system, any
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software. Some computer that accepts
incoming calls attached to a modem and
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offers some kind of interactive service to
the people who dial into that BBS. And if
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you wanted to operate a BBS, you had to
have a separate dedicated computer for
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that. Because, at the time, most of the
BBS software – and most of the software
-
that people used in general – predated
multitasking operating systems. So when
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you ran the BBS, the computer was busy
running the BBS; you couldn't do anything
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else at the same time. So you had to
invest quite a bit into a separate second
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computer, or third or fourth, to actually
operate that BBS. You had to have a
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separate telephone line. Because if you
operate the BBS into which people dial
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into, of course any time of the day or
night people will dial in there, so you
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cannot use your normal phone line that you
use to make phone calls but you had to
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have a separate dedicated phone line. And
of course the system had to run more or
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less 24/7 so people could dial in and
reach it. Luckily, on the user side there
-
was not so many requirements in terms of
technology that you needed. Your computer
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of course you only power when you use it,
and you can share the regular phone line –
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with the side effect, as in the
introduction has been mentioned, that your
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family might have gone angry if you
occupied it too long – but otherwise no
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additional infrastructure other than a
modem required. Now you dial into the BBS
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– what kind of content do you get? What do
you do in that BBS? And the name BBS in
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English is a Bulletin Board Service,
that's actually the acronym expansion. So
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there were Bulletin Boards, message boards
where you could exchange messages and
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texts with other people, other users of
that BBS or the so-called sysop, the
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system operator, the guy running that BBS.
You could also chat with the system
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operator, which, well, didn't exist before
– the ability to chat with somebody else
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remotely over a text-based terminal. There
were also multi-user games, text-based, as
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well as so called file areas where you
could download files. And downloading
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files, given the speeds back then and so
on and so on, of course it was primarily
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text documents or small programs or
something like that. Mp3 didn't exist of
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course, at least until 95 or whenever it
came out, so maybe some mod files for your
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module tracker, something like that. And
of course, last but not least, ASCII and
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ANSI artwork, which basically is an entire
subculture and scene and community in
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itself, creating artworks and drawings
using the character set that was used by
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ANSI.sys, which was the DOS, you could say
display driver, in quotes, in a certain
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character set and you could draw graphics
like this. We will see some more. And
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people were putting a lot of effort into
this, and sort of competing who could who
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could make the best representation or the
most expressive artwork given the limited
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resolution and the limited characters and
colors available in this domain. So, what
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kind of software did one use? Or what kind
of technology was used? Well, we already
-
had the computer and modem, you needed
some software. So on the BBS side, BBS
-
software, there's an unlimited number of
different BBS software programmes, and
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extensions, and modifications thereof, a
lot of them are freeware or shareware.
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Some of them are public domain, some
actual free software, some are
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proprietary. For any operating system, for
any computer architecture, people were
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writing BBS software. Whether you had an
Amiga or Atari or you had Apple or DOS PCs
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or you name it, software was written, by
hobbyists primarily. One concept that you
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will find in BBSs is the concept of so-
called doors. You can think of it as
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similar to CGIs in web. So basically, the
BBS software could call an external
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programme, which would then take over the
input and output to and from the user. So
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you could have sort of plugins to your BBS
software which would add additional new
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games or add chat software or messaging or
whatever. On the user side you had a
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primarily so-called terminal program. It's
called terminal program because actually
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it emulates a serial terminal, which is a
dedicated hardware device with a keyboard
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and a screen and a serial line, but not a
general-purpose computer and in order to
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make a general-purpose computer behave
like a terminal you had a terminal program
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on dos which I was using at the time. It's
primarily telex and telemate I think were
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the favorite ones at least on this side of
the planet and you started that program,
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you had a serial port, the serial port
attached to your modem and from there you
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dialed and the terminal program then was
responsible for displaying the texts and
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the ANSI graphics and so on and exchanging
files of a variety of different protocols,
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which we will also cover later but before
we go on let's do a quick demo of how this
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looks like. Now as a note I don't have a
modem here I'm not emulating a modem I'm
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not emulating a serial port, these days
you can get the same experience by using
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telnet over the internet but you can
actually telnet into BBSs, I just want to
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basically show how it looks like. So this
is the terminal program and we have now
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connected to the BBS this is sort of a
introductory graphic that we see before
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even logging into the the box yeah some...
of course the scrolling was much slower
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back then, so now we can scroll back up to
actually see what was there. Yes, some
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more graphics. You still haven't seen the
login prompt yet, as you can see a fairly
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graphics heavy BBS. Then you can choose
the theme of the BBS, a user interface,
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I'm going to go for the classic ANSI here.
Finally, I come to a login screen and I
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can log into the system where I have to
enter my handle and the password which is
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now in clear-text over telnet. For those
of you interested in this, not that
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there's anything useful I just registered
this morning at the BBS so there's nothing
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associated with this account. Yeah some
more graphics. Finally, we are at a
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message board and we see as I said I just
logged in or registered this BBS today. We
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see there is a message number one from
Hawk Hubbard, "Welcome", so if I want to
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look at that message I could basically say
"I want to read it now". This is the
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message reader I go in here, then here,
"Welcome to forge" and so on.. So he
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welcomes me to the BBS now let's go to the
main menu of the BBS, which in this case
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looks like that and you have different...
the file areas, where you can download
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files, you have the door games that I
mentioned, you have an ANSI gallery, a BBS
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list, you can look at the last callers who
has called this mailbox and you can see
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this... Well, yeah three test calls from
me this morning, but you can see actually
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other people are still logging into this
BBS and it's 2017, so it's not... to me
-
this is mostly history but during the
preparation of this talk I discovered that
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some people, for some people it is still
the present and I'm very happy to see
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there's still such an active community
around BBSs and which enables me to show
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all of this without firing up some
emulators and so on. So yeah, we also can
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look at one-liners, here's some messages
that people can leave to other people,
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other users in the BBS, again with some
quite a graphical... We don't want to
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leave any additional words here, but what for
example we can look at the ANSI gallery
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just very quickly, can try to select
something here, I have no idea what I'm
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looking at so... Ok... so here you have a
sort of a viewer that, yeah... So it will
-
show you the sections of a sort of longer
artwork in this particular case... Yeah...
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well... And the artwork... to me there
always was a lot of similarity between the
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sort of, between the ANSI art artists and
the people doing... Now I'm lacking the
-
word, street art basically I think there's
a lot of similarity between that. Okay
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good, that was just a very quick demo of
course I could now look at more messages
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and write messages and play blackjack and
do whatever I want, which I don't in this
-
case, so we will log off. And again some
more graphics and you can leave a comment
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to the sysop if you want or you can just
basically... Log of... Ok, that for a very
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quick demo of the look and feel. Now since
I'm such a technical person and looking at
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protocol stacks, I tried to draw a
protocol stack diagram for BBSs, which
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ended up at this. So basically at the
lower layers we have the pots, the plain
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old telephony system or ISDN, which we
will get to in a few slides. We had modems
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on the analogue telephone system, we had
other things on ISDN. In the end at some
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point you always have rs-232, a serial
port, either emulated or real, and then
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either you had a terminal program directly
on top of that or, for example to transfer
-
files, you have used X modem or Y modem or
Z modem, which added error correction and
-
retransmission and block transmission so
you could safely transfer files without,
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or at least with less, corruption. The
checksum algorithms were not so scientific
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in many cases. Here we then have well some
other things, FTN, Point what does that,
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UUCP we will cover that later. Basically
you could run different protocols and
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different systems on top of that. One
curiosity that I still want to mention is
-
that, which I actually I forgot until on
Twitter somebody reminded me a couple of
-
days ago that this existed, and I went "oh
yes, RIPterm, I used that quite some time
-
ago", so instead of having these text-
based user interfaces some people, company
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called TeleGrafix came up with a language
called RIPscript which was a fairly
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compact language of textual commands, by
which the BTS could control a vector
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graphic renderer on the client side in
your terminal program, and you could
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actually draw VGA resolution graphics like
the one that's presented here on the slide
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from the VBS on the screen of the user,
which was quite a big change compared to
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the ASCII art or ANSI art that you've seen
before. Yeah, so we're still at BBSs and
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BBSs that are isolated, so you can
participate in those bulletin boards and
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you can read and write messages and
exchange ideas and recipes and thoughts
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and cheat codes and whatever you want to
exchange. Users log in at different times,
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the BBS is busy if it has only a single
line while it's being used by some other
-
user. Of course you can add as a BBS
operator, as the sysop, you can add more
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modems and more phone lines, which is of
course expensive, together with the multi-
-
port serial cards and and everything that
was required. You can have time limits for
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each user, but in the end it's sort of,
there's a limit to how far you can scale a
-
single BTS sort of - not a BTS, a BBS,
jeez, a single BBS... Well also there's a
-
scalability limit for BTSs, but that's
another talk, so, yeah. Which brings us to
-
one method of more efficiently engaging
with BBSs for exchanging messages which is
-
a concept of points or offline message
reading. So as we have just seen in this
-
example we log in to the VP... the BBS and we
have an online interactive session with
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the BBS while we read and write the
messages and of course it means we occupy
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the telephone line for an extended period
of time and it's not used very efficiently
-
because humans typically read slower than
at least a fourteen point four or twenty
-
eight kilobits per second. So people
invented something called points or
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offline message reading and different
concepts different systems different
-
standards different technologies. What
they did in the end is they compressed and
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batched all the messages for you into
files and you on your client-side you were
-
writing your messages offline and also
compressing and batching the messages that
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you've written and then you make a call,
you quickly exchange those files in both
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directions even in full duplex if the
system supports it and then you terminate
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the connection again. So during a very
short call you can exchange much more, many
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more messages and you have all the time to
read through those messages without having
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to look at the phone meter or your phone
bill all the time. So, more scalability,
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more users, shorter connection time, lower
cost for everyone involved. Definitely an
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interesting technology, but still sort of
scalability is limited of a single BTS
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which, eh, BBS which brings us to BBS
networks, store-and-forward networks which
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basically extended the ability to exchange
messages beyond a single BBS, but so
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basically the bulletin boards or the
message groups that you had at a BBS were
-
replicated over different protocols that
were invented by various different people
-
over time, so not only one BBS had all the
messages of a given bulletin board but all
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the other BBSs participating also were
receiving these messages and replicating
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them all over the network. Also for
personal mail, which is like email, right,
-
between two participants, you could route
those messages across the network. The two
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users exchanging messages didn't have to
connect to the same BBS anymore. So much
-
more scalability and also you could use it
efficiently for message routing to reduce
-
the need for long distance calls and so
on. So let's look at a couple of these BBS
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networks and the technologies they used.
One large and very popular example of
-
course is the Fido Network which consists
of two parts, net mail and echo mail.
-
Net mail is the private personal mail and echo
mail are public message boards or message
-
groups. Fido had some, the technology used
by Fido called FTN Fido technology
-
networks were used also by other networks.
They were using the same protocols, but
-
they were not the same group of BBSs or
the same content and so on. Treknet for
-
Star Trek fans was one, Gernet in Germany
was an example for that. And there also
-
were other technologies and other networks
such as Z-Netz, where they called it
-
"Bretter" actually, so boards, the
individual message groups. And again they
-
had other offsprings that used the same
technology but have different groups and
-
different policies and different
structures such as T-Netz or CL-Netz. And
-
then there was the big faction of people
who did UUCP, the UNIX to UNIX copy, which
-
we will look at a little bit. And MausNet
is another german example here originating
-
from the city of Muenster, which was used
to up to 120 BBSs here. Let's look at Fido
-
a little bit more. Started allegedly in
1984. Of course I was not involved at that
-
time at the age of 5. It reached a limit
of 250 nodes in 1985 because apparently, I
-
suppose probably, a single integer UINT8
was used for the node number or something
-
like that and then about 250 should be
sufficient for everyone. I don't know what
-
the other 5 are for. And then they
introduced in '86 hierarchic regional
-
routing and addressing that was more
scalable and in the end at the peak of the
-
Fido net propagation it was 39,000 nodes;
that's BBSs not individual users but
-
39,000 BBSs were interconnected with an
estimated 2 million users worldwide and
-
that's for a you know hobbyist amateur
network is I think quite impressive.
-
The addresses looked like this. That's
actually a node number that I used around
-
'95 in Nuremberg at the time. Z-Netz
started as Zerberus-Netz - and I'm not
-
sure if padeluun or Rena or any of the
people involved in the audience if then I
-
hope I represent the history correctly -
which is a network technology created in
-
Germany. The standards are inspired but
different than the Usenet and UUCP
-
protocols and there were all kinds of
flame war about who understood the specs
-
wrong and whether there's an improvement
between ZConnect compared to the Usenet
-
standards or not. But anyway it was
different and there was one program called
-
CrossPoint which was the most popular
point software at the time I think at
-
least on DOS for Z-Netz and also for other
technologies. The screenshot here at the
-
bottom actually is a cross point
screenshot. And cross point in the early
-
90s already had features that I'm still
missing today in any email client that I
-
have found. Right? Imagine you have a
thread that crosses multiple folders,
-
multiple news groups, multiple whatever
and you have threading like the tree of
-
the thread across folders and news groups
and so on. I mean that's something that
-
you cannot do with any of the
software still today. Maybe you have you
-
have an answer which software today
supports this but for sure nothing I have
-
found has the kind of features and
functionality. Unfortunately it was
-
written in Pascal and it had a line length
limit of 255 characters per line which
-
made it not very compatible to Usenet
standards where lines could have different
-
lengths so one couldn't continue to use it
in today's time and age at least not
-
easily. Usenet is another network of these
BBS days where messages were exchanged by
-
a system called UNIX to UNIX copy. UNIX to
UNIX copy predates the Usenet it was used,
-
well as the name implies, to copy
something between UNIX machines - file
-
copying - and some of those files that
people were copying were internet mail at
-
the time. And then the Usenet news format
was invented. The format is quite similar
-
to internet mail, which we still know
today, but it's not a personal mail
-
between person A and person B, but it, you
could post it to a so-called news group
-
and there was a hierarchy of news groups
which replicated and flooded messages
-
across the entire network, across the
globe. And it was a flooding mechanism
-
involve to make sure that the messages get
replicated and the duplicates get detected
-
and duplicates are not basically
transmitted again or rather shown again
-
and so on. The routing was originally
defined in route maps in UUCP which is a
-
quite a bit odd over time because it's
basically a static source based routing
-
for the UUCP mails. News as I said
they were flooding anyway. Usenet was
-
quite popular until well into the 90s. I
was news master of two news servers for
-
some time basically doing system
administration of those boxes. And just to
-
give you an anecdote again; into this
context we will get to Kommunikationsnetz
-
Franken, which is a nonprofit organization
in the area of Franconia in southern
-
Germany, where I was active. And at the
time internet - like when we actually got
-
to IP, at some point, IP traffic was so
expensive that it was rather difficult to
-
get a full newsfeed over IP because you've
wasted a lot of your expensive bandwidth -
-
wasted in quotes - but you used it for
news and so what we did actually is, we
-
put up a satellite dish at a building in
Nuremberg and we had satellite feeds from
-
the US. So there were US companies that
were streaming compressed Usenet batches
-
up to a geostationary satellite which has
a downlink over Europe and then we got two
-
megabits of compressed batched news net
news in, I would say, let's say 95ish or
-
something like that, so that was
definitely a big improvement. So we we had
-
a full news feed coming directly from the
US without having to pay for all the
-
International data transfer. Another
curiosity is the Floppy Poll/Point. Now
-
nobody is laughing yet. Well not everyone
had phone lines in the 90s, particularly
-
in eastern Germany. Phone lines were still
a rare commodity after reunification
-
happened in 90. It took some time until
people could get connected to the
-
telephone network. And so what people did
is actually they exchanged daily floppies
-
by postal mail. So basically rather than
sending your compressed batches of
-
messages over modems, because well for a
modem you need phone lines, you put a
-
floppy - I would assume 3.5 inch at the
time, not so much four and a quarter inch
-
- but you put a floppy in an envelope you
send it to your BBS and the guy
-
opens the envelope and puts it in the BBS
and he sends you a floppy in return. So
-
you add one day or something to your
transmission but then well the
-
transmission speed of messages in those
networks at the time was sort of one to
-
two days or maybe even three days anyway
so if you add another day what does it
-
matter? It was such a big advantage that
you could get messages like worldwide
-
messages at all in such a short time and
for basically no cost whatsoever. Okay
-
getting to the internet, yeah. How did I
start to access Internet, how did people
-
start to access the Internet at the time?
Well mail and news was sort of the
-
Internet in the beginning via UUCP, which
is nice and fine, but it's not IP, yet. So
-
what you could do is you could, instead of
dialing into a BBS, you could of course
-
use your modem to dial to the serial port
of the TTY of any UNIX machine that's
-
somewhere else. If you have a UNIX
workstation somewhere, that's connected to
-
an IP network using 10base2 or whatever
was the network technology at the time or
-
FDDI or whatever, x21... then you could
attach a modem to a serial part of such a
-
UNIX box and you just get the login prompt
when you connect with the modem to that
-
box. Like you sit in front of your Linux
system today, you have your login prompt.
-
And then on that workstation you basically
you could remotely use that workstation
-
and then you could run FTP clients or IRC
clients or telnet, gopher, whatever on the
-
text console. That was mostly available to
people in the academic sector of course
-
because they had some UNIX machines at
universities. I was too young to be at
-
university, so I had to use FTP mailers
for quite some time. So what's an FTP
-
mailer? Well it's basically some FTP
client that runs on a remote machine
-
somewhere that's connected to the Internet
and that has email access and you can use
-
input/output over email. So if you want to
FTP to some FTP server you send an email.
-
It says "ftp ftp." and an "ls" and
then some hours later you get a response
-
with the list of the files, yeah? And then
after you've got the list of the files you
-
do the first CD to change into a directory
and then you get again the response. And
-
then finally you know which file you want
so you issue a get command over the file
-
and then you get this long series of
UUencoded mails. UUencode is a method of
-
sending binary 8-bit messages over mails
before MIME existed. The MIME format which
-
we use today for email attachments and so
on. That didn't exist at the time, so it
-
was UUencode before, so yeah. So hours or
days later you got that and it
-
worked perfectly fine, I mean, I was quite
happy to be able to use that at the time.
-
Now, then, if you had dial-up access to
UNIX boxes, you could also do something
-
called SLIP, which is a serial line IP. So
you could transport IP over the modem line
-
and as a result you have IP at home in
your apartment! Unbelievable! it was later
-
superseded by PPP which introduced
features such as auto-configuration,
-
authentication, compression and so on -
well there was a compressed SLIP, but yeah
-
not quite as compressed as PPP - and
popular software stack at the time - and
-
I'm talking about early 90s, mid-90s - is
basically Trumpet Winsock on Windows with
-
NCSA Mosaic as a browser, because Windows
back then didn't have TCP/IP, so you had
-
to install another package to actually
have TCP/IP on Windows at the time. If
-
you didn't have Windows, I will get to
that, and I'm talking about the pre-Linux
-
days here. So what did you do if you
wanted to do internet on a PC before Linux
-
was around? I didn't have a 386 initially,
I had a 286. And on a 286 of course you
-
couldn't run any multitasking operating
system because it doesn't have a real
-
protected mode. So no Linux, no BSD, but
there was something called KA9Q NOS. And
-
now I want to see hands: who has ever
heard of or used KA9Q NOS? Yeah! Ok...
-
laughs
Audience member shouts: It is a person's
-
callsign.
LaForge: Yes, "It's a person's callsign"
-
was the comment from the audience, this is
correct. KA9Q is Phil Karn in the US and
-
he wrote a network operating system the
KA9Q NOS, the network operating system.
-
And it is an implementation of - he
started actually in the 80s with this on
-
CPM and then later ported it to DOS - and
it implements TCP/IP, SLIP, PPP including
-
POP3 server, SMTP server + client, IP
routing, telnet, ARP and so on. And you
-
could do all this on DOS. I used it quite
a lot at my home. You could do routing and
-
you had multiple applications at the same
time all on top of DOS. It was a fantastic
-
piece of software. And then you could
build a router to ethernet and you could
-
have multiple other machines in your home
and you have more and more cable in your
-
home. And more and more connected machines,
yeah, actually, yeah we will get to that, ok.
-
PPP superseded that. At some point ISDN
came around, particularly in Germany. ISDN
-
is the digital version of telephony
system, so instead of having analog
-
circuits you now transfer digital bits.
That could be audio, digitized audio, but
-
of course it could be any other
transparent digital data. In Germany ISDN
-
was first put in operation in 1989. Until
'93 it used a German protocol standard
-
called 1TR6, and from '94 onwards the
European E-DSS1 protocol standard was
-
available. It was hugely popularized from
1995 onwards by subsidies. So at the time
-
if you actually ordered an ISDN connection
and at the same time you bought a, let's
-
say a small PBX or a phone or a modem or
something like that, you could [get]
-
subsidies from Deutsche Telekom. So, I
think it went up to 700 marks - not sure
-
if somebody remembers the exact figures -
and so you've got quite a bit of money to
-
buy equipment to switch to this new
technology. So when ISDN you don't have a
-
modem because there's nothing to modulate
or demodulate, it's digital, so it's
-
called a terminal adapter, and it adapts
the bitstream, the synchronous serial
-
bitstream of the ISDN to your operating
system or your computer and there was
-
something called V.110 as a rate
adaptation to do asynchronous serial like
-
RS-232, sort of, over a synchronous ISDN.
Okay and how did we get internet access?
-
Well, it was, if you were not in academia
or something like that, there were a few
-
commercial ISPs like XLink or EUnet. They
were very expensive and of course you
-
didn't have local dial-in in all the
different cities around Germany, but you
-
had grassroot groups of enthusiasts that
established themselves in some
-
associations to make sure the members can
get internet access. In my region in
-
Nuremberg Kommunikationsnetz Franken was
particularly active. They started with
-
dial-up UUCP services and later IP for
non-commercial users - and I have to say
-
with an extremely high technical standard
which I'm still fascinated by today.
-
Kommunikationsnetz Franken had points of
presence in various different cities in
-
the region because not everybody could
call to Nuremberg as a local call and
-
every user got six static IP addresses,
routed to wherever he dialed in. The use of
-
OSPF in the mid-1990s to make sure you
have static IP addresses wherever you dial
-
in. Some people still don't have that in
2017 and I'm not even talking about the
-
static IP addresses, but anyway. So about
800 users peak at that association at the
-
time. And there was an umbrella
organization called "Individual Network
-
e.V." (IN). This was established.
Individuals could not become members in
-
that association so it's - the name is a
bit interesting - it's called Individual
-
Network, because it's about networking for
individuals, but the members were the
-
regional associations such as
Kommunikationsnetz Franken, who then
-
basically used this umbrella entity to
negotiate decent rates to get internet
-
connectivity and so on. And apparently the
IN members served more than three hundred
-
thousand users at some point - so it
scaled quite a bit - was dissolved in 2000
-
when lots of commercialized ISPs were
around and also when the remaining member
-
entities, which many of which still exist
today such as Kommunikationsnetz Franken,
-
they didn't need this umbrella entity to
get decent internet rates or tariffs
-
again. So, with packets which TCP/IP we
just need one number that we call at some
-
point We're not dialing into hundreds of
different BBS's anymore but we're actually
-
connecting always to the same number which
is our ISP, and then when we have that
-
connection we exchange packet data with
systems worldwide which brought new
-
purpose to lease lines. Analog leased
lines were basically telephone lines that
-
were permanently switched, or actually
permanently wired at the exchange. So you
-
had two wires of copper between one
location and another location and they
-
were physically connected you could apply
a DC voltage and the DC voltage would come
-
out at the other end. You could get this
from Deutsche Post or Telekom at the time.
-
When I could finally afford one in '98 for
900 marks installation cost and in my case
-
180 marks per month, was sixty marks
per hop. Hop means: telephone exchange. So
-
if between the other end where you want to
connect to and where you are, are three
-
telephone exchanges, you had three times
sixty marks or 180 marks per month. And
-
then I connected to a system that looked
like this, which is called the Hub
-
Nuremburg of this Kommunikationsnetz
Franken, which is in the basement of one
-
of the members. You have basically a PC
running Linux of FreeBSD, no it was BSD
-
actually, with like a 16-port serial card
and various modems stacked on various
-
shelves to interconnect all these
different leased lines and which then had
-
one ISDN leased line with 128 kilobits to
some internet uplink. Yeah that's the
-
obligatory ISDN network termination and
telephone sockets, which brings us to ISDN
-
leased lines. There was a product called
SPV "Semi-Permanente Festverbindung",
-
which is not really a leased line - it's
semi-permanent - and it's basically a
-
flat-rate call to one specific destination
telephone number, which you could get in
-
national 1TR6 ISDN and which was rather
inexpensive and what many people used who
-
wanted more than the ISDN speeds. Okay I
have to speed up a bit, time is running
-
out! The first step of abusing analog
lines, which we did, is by deploying a
-
device called an ICU-T, which is the
inverse of an ISDN NTBA. So in ISDN you
-
still have the telephone exchange and you
have a network termination, the NTBA, on
-
your line. And basically the the ICU-T was
a single line telephone exchange side of
-
this protocol. So you could use an analog
line which you normally used for analog
-
modems but you remove the two analog
modems you put an NTBA on one end, you put
-
the ICU-T on the other end and suddenly we
can get 128 kilobits over that line which
-
previously you could only do 33.6 without
having to pay any additional cents or
-
money to Deutsche Telekom, of course. And
then there was some special ISDN routers
-
which could use the signaling channel, the
16 kbps signaling D-channel on ISDN also
-
for data, so you get 128 + 16 kilobytes of
data, because well, there's no signaling,
-
you're not dialling anyone so you can as
well use that. Now this is sort of the
-
hierarchy of the leased line
infrastructure at this entity. I'm not
-
showing every leased line here, but
basically I was at the upper left corner
-
here connecting with 33.6 kbps to this hub
Nuremburg, which connects to 128K to a
-
machine in a Nuremberg building of the
University of Erlangen, which then
-
connects over X21 to the University of
Erlangen, where then all kinds of other
-
leased lines come together. That was the
the architecture of what we deployed
-
there. Some more pictures: this is in
Fürth, a neighbor city of Nuremberg. The
-
collection of telephone outlets and the
collection of modems and the machine - oh
-
there was, I'm missing one picture sorry
for that - anyway you can see a pile of
-
modems here and some more modems here and
the machine over there. And then we went
-
into phase two of abusing analog telephone
lines, when the first DSL modems came out.
-
So we imported some Ascend DSLpipes in '99
from the US and with some firmwares you
-
could operate them back to back without
the DSLAM so basically you operate one DSL
-
modem at one end of the leased line and
another DSL modem at the other end, and if
-
you are close enough like with a single
hop at the single telephone exchange you
-
could get up to 2.3 megabits symmetric
over your analog line. And that in 1999
-
was quite a lot of speed, especially if
you're not paying for traffic or anything
-
like that. Some less alternative, less
expensive one alternatives came out. Okay!
-
Before I wrap up, a short detour or one
thing still to mention. Another phenomenon
-
back then - I'm not sure if this happened
in other cities too - and in my area in
-
Fürth we had an entity called Falcons
Maze, which was called an online bistro.
-
I became a regular there around '94. They
initially had four DOS PCs, each of them
-
with a modem and with a dedicated call-
charge meter. And you could basically go
-
there, it's a cafe, you can have, you know
you can eat and drink and so on, and you
-
can sit at the PC and you can then from
there dial into BBSs and basically do
-
things if you didn't have a modem or a PC
at home. But the interesting part of
-
course was that there all the other peoples
were hanging out, the other BBS users,
-
sysops and so on. At some point the PCs
were networked with 10base2, so people
-
could play doom when it came out, I think
in - not sure when it reached us in
-
Germany - '94 maybe or so, and yeah. The
internet became more popular. It started
-
subsidiaries and we set up ISDN SPVs, the
"semi-permanente Verbindung" as an
-
internet uplink from there, so that also,
I mean, you can find some sources that
-
this apparently, allegedly was the first
internet cafe. I'm not sure if anyone else
-
has contested that. Something like that.
Anyway, after lots of anecdotes I want to
-
give you some time for Q&A. To summarize:
the first decades of wide area
-
communications were powered by a community
of enthusiasts or rather communities that
-
were disjunct and not connected, largely
motivated by non-commercial motives. Of
-
course there were commercial BBSs but by
far not without much corporate or
-
government influence, right? There was no
Google and there was no ministry that was
-
putting censorship or something like that.
And the BBS community is a distinct
-
subculture so it has different norms and
it has different values, different from
-
the ham radio guys, different from free
software guys, of course some overlap, but
-
still a separate community with separate
norms. What I personally think is the big
-
loss, other than the loss of picture on
the screen, is that back then the networks
-
were distributed. There was no single
point of failure. The infrastructure was
-
owned and operated by its users, by
individuals. The connection speeds were
-
symmetric and there was no, like, data
center versus consumer separation that we
-
have in the internet day and age of today.
And that's, yes, I really think this
-
autonomy and decentralization is a big
loss to society or the community as a
-
whole. Ok, some pointers: if you want to
read up more or look at some ANSI artwork
-
or log into BBSs, the telnet BBS guide I
can highly recommend that. You can also
-
find the BBS I looked into. Ok, good.
Which brings us to the point where we can
-
have some questions.
-
Applause
-
Herald: The microphones here in, 3, 1, 2
and 4, but first we have questions from
-
the signal angel. So what's the question for?
-
Signal Angel: The internet wants to know,
"What was the highest phone bill you ever
-
got back then?"
LaForge: To be honest, I don't remember
-
but for sure it was four digits. I'm quite
sure it was. It was quite devastating,
-
yes.
Hearld: There is another question from the
-
internet.
Signal Angel: And there's another
-
question, "You mentioned that there are
very few books around those topics. Which
-
ones would you recommend regarding BBS,
Usenet and so on?"
-
LaForge: I cannot respond to this directly
I don't remember that. I can put it
-
together and people can reach out to me
or I put it in the slides when I submit
-
them into the frap system, sorry for that.
Herald: So we have a question from the
-
microphone number two please.
Mic 2: Yes, back in the 90s most of the
-
voice was uncompressed and actually
direct. Modern technologies usually, I
-
think, voice always compressed transferred
over IP. Do you know for any modern
-
modulation formats the text can survive
several codecs voice codecs or data
-
transmission?
LaForge: I'm not the expert on that
-
subject. I know there are some codecs,
yes, but they are extremely slow. So you
-
are happy if you get something like 1200
or maybe 2400 bps of data through a modem
-
that survives multiple codecs and then of
course always the question of which
-
codecs.
Herald: Okay microphone number four
-
please.
Mic 4: Okay I don't have a question to
-
Herald actually, but thanks for the talk.
I would like to ask the audience because
-
many, I think, users and operators of BBSs
are here. Who wants to meet this evening,
-
at I would say nine o'clock, in one of the
seminar rooms for talk about the back old
-
times? Yeah, so I will try to lock a self-
organized session at the seminar room
-
1415, I think it's called, at 9 o'clock.
LaForge: Ok, thank you very much.
-
Mic 4: So, see you there and talk about
the good days of and some more stories I
-
think.
Herald: There are still more people
-
queuing up. Microphone number 4, please.
Mic 4: I've got a question about the
-
political bulletin board systems. Could
you tell us a bit about the CL-Net and the
-
fascist clone the Thule-Net? What was the
dynamics back then and the fights? What
-
were the conflicts in those boxes?
LaForge: I have to admit I cannot say too
-
much about it. I know, of course, CL-Netz
was a network mainly for left-wing
-
political activists and groups and yes
there was Thule-Netz, a right-wing
-
Network, and I knew there was discussions
and so on and there were people trying to
-
hack each other's mailboxes and so on,
but I was not participating or involved
-
in these discussions to an extent that I
can really comment on it sorry.
-
Herald: Microphone number one, please.
Mic 1: Hi Harald. I still remember when I
-
started with an acoustic coupler. I did
that because there was a severe threat of
-
punishment if you used an illegal modem at
the time from the Deutsche Bundespost. So
-
I was actually never aware that a little
bit later you could actually do an end,
-
back to back DSL modem connection over an
analogue exchange. So at that time you did
-
that, what was the the punishment
situation from the Bundespost or whatever
-
it was called at the time if they would
have ever caught you doing that? Do you
-
remember?
LaForge: I have no clue. Yes, it sort of,
-
and I mean the... How can I say? The the
criminal offense, I think, stopped in '92
-
when Deutsche Post was privatized. So
until '92 it was a criminal offence to
-
operate a non-approved modem at the German
telephone network, because was government
-
owned. It was a crime, not a minor
offence. But afterwards I don't really
-
know to be honest. I don't think anyone
bothered at the time and nobody, I mean
-
the, we never had any trouble with these
DSL things and so on, that we did over
-
analog circuits.
Herald: Microphone number two, please.
-
Mic 2: Okay, hello I'm from Taiwan and I
just want to share something interesting
-
for everyone. In Taiwan is a small country
in Asia. We are still using BBS. The
-
largest is named PTT and exported to use
SSH or WebSocket you can edit, and the
-
source code is open available on GitHub.
Everybody can search it. Thank you.
-
LaForge: Thank you very much. It's
actually not just for Taiwan, but you can
-
find many, I mean maybe it's more popular
there still, but you can find many BBSs
-
that are still in operation today in many
different countries even also with BBS
-
software that's free software that's
maintained now on GitHub or on other
-
repositories with contributors and so on.
So the community still lives, but I think
-
at least internationally it's very small
and I'm happy to hear if it's larger in
-
some countries.
Herald: You have still time for questions.
-
Microphone number four, please.
Mic 4: So you talked about restoring
-
decentralization. So, what old systems
would you like to see coming back?
-
Something like the Usenet? I mean it's
still there, but you can't access it
-
without paying a lot of money to some big
gateway. So, which technologies would you
-
like to revive or do you think are
realistic to revive to have
-
decentralization again?
LaForge: I don't think the technologies
-
necessarily need to be revived because
they are, to a large extent, old and
-
people are smarter and the, how can I say,
the capacity and the computational
-
complexity of what you can do today and so
on is much better. So we can have much
-
better technology. But the thing that I
would like to see revived is more
-
decentralization and more people operating
their own technology and that's just, I
-
think, I don't really have a plan and I'm
not saying I have a vision I'm just saying
-
it has a problem, this development, that
basically it's a consumer / producer model
-
and especially with content delivery
networks and with attacks on network
-
neutrality and and all these topics, it's
always moving in one direction. It's
-
basically turning the user into a stupid
consumer and and making sure all the
-
control and all the content, and so on, is
in the hand of large corporations.
-
Applause
By the way, one interesting anecdote about
-
the... I talked about the asymmetry of the
speed, right? And with DSL at this ADSL
-
and the popular technology is always the
downlink is bigger than the uplink. I know
-
in Brazil a lot of people, basically in
small, like small size ISPs, they did it
-
the opposite way around! So they did one
modem with basically a large downstream
-
and small upstream and then they, on
another line next to it, they inverted it
-
by using a master modem on one side and a
slave modem on the other so then again he
-
had symmetric speed. So, some people had
creative ideas to work around some of the
-
technological restrictions.
Herald: So microphone number two, please.
-
Mic 2: I also from Taiwan and I want to
add something for my friend. Like, there
-
are still like half million people come
here to BBS called PTT, yeah, today. And
-
like, there's a, there are 100,000 people
online now, yeah. So, I think the
-
community is now like...
Herald: What ist your question? Can you
-
please phrase the question?
Mic 2: I just want to add something for my
-
friend, yeah.
LaForge: Okay, thank you.
-
Herald: Microphone number one, please.
Mic 1: cough You talked about content of
-
these mailboxes. Isn't it that the
Freifunk community today is a possible way
-
to get this freedom back from what you had
in your mailboxes? The services they were
-
offered there, the Freifunk could do the
same today with user own structures and so
-
on.
LaForge: That's very correct yes. Freifunk
-
definitely is much more in the spirit of
the community owned and community run
-
systems, and I see lots of similarities
between the BBS community and what
-
Freifunk is doing today. It's correct.
Mic 1: Are you are you doing something
-
with Freifunk?
LaForge: Me personally? No, I'm not
-
involved.
Mic 1: Okay.
-
Herald: I think microphone number two is
waiting way too long.
-
Mic 2: Hello, thanks for the talk. You
mentioned that most people didn't have a
-
TCP/IP capable operating system at this
time and I started to read recently about
-
an operating system called Xenix, X-E-N-
I-X, that was actually developed by
-
Microsoft and published in 1983 that could
run on IBM PC compatible machines on the
-
x86 processors, and I hear that in the
Russian BBS systems at least it was very
-
popular. Did you encounter any Xenix
operating systems at that time?
-
LaForge: No I personally did not encounter
Xenix. I read about it, yes, and I know it
-
I could have possibly run it on my 286
machine, but I mean, I don't think it was
-
something that was readily available for
affordable price to individuals, but maybe
-
I'm wrong. No, certainly not, okay, some
people are heavily shaking their heads.
-
Mic 2: I think this is why it was popular
in Russia...
-
Laughs
LaForge: Possibly. I do not want to
-
comment on that...
Herald: We have time for one more
-
question. Microphone number 4.
Mic 4: I just wanted to note, in the wiki
-
the meeting is up. Search for BBS and this
evening at 9 o'clock I think we can talk
-
about all the details of running DSL on
modem lines. I've also got some more
-
details on that and a lot of these modems
left if you need some. But I think, so see
-
you Harold at 9 o'clock
LaForge: Yeah definitely! Thanks!
-
Mic 4: Ok, everybody welcome.
LaForge: Thank you!
-
Applause
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Herald: Thank you very much for the talk.
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34C3 Music
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