AOL wasn't an abstraction layer to the internet, it was its own online service. To get on the actual internet, you had to wardial the telephone exchanges and h

AOL wasn't an abstraction layer to the internet, it was its own online service. To get on the actual internet, you had to wardial the telephone exchanges and happen to luck upon an unsecured university dialin server, from which, if you had a printout of IP addresses from a book or BBS, you could telenet to other servers to use gopher, ftp, irc, MUDs, etc. All plain text mode of course. AOL on the other hand was a lot more user friendly and lively, just dialin with a graphical interface and tons of groups, chat channels, games, etc. just right there. It wasn't until the internet was finally opened up to the public in the late 90s that AOL added an abstraction layer over the internet. Even then, it likely had all types of modem available, where, for instance, I tried IBM's ISP but it used modems that were incompatible with the modem that came installed in my IBM PC.