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The prototype I evaluated at NeXT was supposed to work with any modem (remember Hayes compatibility?) and didn't need PPP, since we had arranged a proprietary h

by MrTonyD 11y ago

The prototype I evaluated at NeXT was supposed to work with any modem (remember Hayes compatibility?) and didn't need PPP, since we had arranged a proprietary handshake with the organization that gave out IP addresses (I've forgotten the name. At the time I believe there was just one entity allowed to give out IP addresses.) We discussed requiring a specific modem - but decided that we didn't want that to be a requirement for getting an IP address. Ultimately, it came down to "unsupportability" by NeXT. Several people other than me told Steve that things would go wrong connecting to the Internet, and when they did we would be mostly helpless to support them. At the same time, the organization in Virginia didn't want to support the software either - the software was a "black box" mostly provided by us on their machines. So we killed the project. I never heard anybody mention browsers.

DanielKehoe 11y ago
It's absolutely fascinating to hear this story. I'd never heard it before. That was a historically significant moment. Do you recall if the software was internally developed at NeXT or acquired from a third party?
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  I was told that we had developed most of the software in conjunction with the group that gave out IP addresses - but that we ended up doing almost all the work ourselves and setting up their machines at their site. (They were skeptical about the whole project, and not enthusiastic about the automatic registration of new IPs. When I spoke to them it was obvious that they wanted to ignore the whole project.) My impression was that our engineers who had done the work weren't around Redwood City (or perhaps they had quit - we weren't doing well and lots of people were leaving at the time.) So I was figuring out the code on my own and doing the debugging - nobody was taking ownership of the code. It was an overly complex mess since it both registered for an IP and then did billing. Very fragile.

by MrTonyD 11y ago

DanielKehoe 11y ago

It's absolutely fascinating to hear this story. I'd never heard it before. That was a historically significant moment. Do you recall if the software was internally developed at NeXT or acquired from a third party?

MrTonyD 11y ago
I was told that we had developed most of the software in conjunction with the group that gave out IP addresses - but that we ended up doing almost all the work ourselves and setting up their machines at their site. (They were skeptical about the whole project, and not enthusiastic about the automatic registration of new IPs. When I spoke to them it was obvious that they wanted to ignore the whole project.) My impression was that our engineers who had done the work weren't around Redwood City (or perhaps they had quit - we weren't doing well and lots of people were leaving at the time.) So I was figuring out the code on my own and doing the debugging - nobody was taking ownership of the code. It was an overly complex mess since it both registered for an IP and then did billing. Very fragile.