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The University of Utah was also the fourth node of ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet - https://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/arpanet/ https://www.

The University of Utah was also the fourth node of ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet - https://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/arpanet/ https://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/arpanet/ On a personal note, this is also part of why I exist at all. My father came from England very young, worked his way through agriculture jobs in California, and somehow found himself with a job offer at the u of u as an electron microscopist. Met my mom there. Details are fuzzy and not retrievable from the dead. For some reason this job required him early access to the „internet“ in the 80s. In 1994, we were, as I was told at the time, one of the first families to “have internet” in Utah. We had a dial up connection that lasted 15 minutes before needing to reconnect. As anyone my age remembers, that was about as long as it took to load one webpage with one image. It was a massive influence on me and my neighborhood friends in countless ways and I’m eternally grateful for what came of it.

ngngngng 3y ago
There's a rivalry between the NBA fan bases of the Utah Jazz and the Houston Rockets. Commonly this manifests as little jabs Rockets fans will make, mocking Utah for not having internet. Always funny to see this brought up when Utah was one of the first places on the planet to have the "Internet".
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  The Jazz, like Jim Clark, were another transplant from New Orleans.
Olumde 3y ago
> Details are .. not retrievable from the dead You inherited your dad's British humour :)
jb1991 3y ago
1994 already feels a tad late in my memory, everyone at my high school already had email in 1993, and we knew several families with internet in their house by 1992.
McKayDavis 3y ago
East High School is the closest public high school to the University of Utah. Because of this proximity the school was fortunate to get a direct T1 (1.5 Mbps) connection in 1992 (93?). The original domain was east.east-slc.edu before it was standardized to east.k12.ut.us circa 1995. After school every day for a few hours the East High CS room would be full of students exploring the new online world: surfing gopher, playing MUDs, Usenet, and using NCSA Mozilla on the DEC station. This is when Yahoo! was all hand curated. Students could even dial in to one of 2 modems and connect to the Internet from home. It was glorious.
- Banditoz 3y ago
  Some Utah school districts still use the k12.ut.us domain in places, for school and grade management: https://skystu.jordan.k12.ut.us/ https://skystu.jordan.k12.ut.us/
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Skyline High School had a teletype terminal by 1978. I think it connected to the University of Utah, though I am not absolutely certain. But that was a long way below a T1 line...
  - mswen 3y ago
    I recall in the late 70s that my high school also had a teletype terminal and an IBM card reader that connected to a mainframe for the whole school district. As a student I had some awareness that it was unusual. I was also working PT at a Radio Shack at the same time and saw the first arrival of a TRS-80 to our store. Despite that early exposure to computing technology I went other directions for the next couple decades.
- esafak 3y ago
  A high school with a T1 connection was pretty sick! I don't know quite how to translate it into terms younger readers can appreciate.
  - netdoll 3y ago
herewulf 3y ago
The U of U still has a large block of public IPs that they use for all their "internal" systems. No need for NAT there! That was at least 100% true as of around 15 years ago. I know the CS and engineering departments are still using that block. Hard to imagine that it still holds true for WiFi APs, etc and the proliferation of devices.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That's how the internet should have been.
riceart 3y ago
1994 was way way after dialup Internet access was mainstream (both Yahoo and Amazon were founded that year). Any first access in the state would be sometime in the 80s. By 1993 there were already national level dialup ISPs. > that was about as long [15 minutes] as it took to load one webpage with one image. Very hyperbolic. A simple webpage with text would load in seconds on a 28.8k modem. A single image would usually be a 10s of kB in those days, so maybe some seconds, not even a minute.
- nine_k 3y ago
  You assume 28.8, good phone lines, and a responsive server. Sometimes it was an old 9600 because it was all you could easily get, noisy lines, and the server on the other end being slow because the picture was popular. Then a page could load for a minute, with pictures and all. Not 15 minutes though.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  Right, unless the backhaul was massively overcommitted... which was normal at the time because it was really difficult to sufficiently provision backhaul, even a few months in advance. The internet was certainly not fast in 1994. Anyway, since when does the truth need to get in the way of a good story?
- dgacmu 3y ago
  This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university. (I helped create the third public ISP in Utah (ArosNet), in 1995). V34 (28.8k) was only ratified in 1994, and many ISPs were still at 14.4 at that time. Many customers still used much slower modems - 9600 remained quite common. The commercial Internet really only started taking off in 1993. Not by coincidence, that was the same year NCSA Mosaic was released.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
Are you saying that you were made during one of those 15-min waits?
CynAq 3y ago
I can only imagine how cool it must be to be raised by early adopters of internet technology. I can somewhat relate to this story in a couple coincidental points. First is that my father being a relatively early adopter of the PC in his professional life as a civil engineer in the early 80s, while an internet connection was about twenty years in the future for him, and the second one is that I learned electron microscopy on a Jeol microscope from 1994 when I was doing my master's in material science. And this is my first comment in HN. I hope everyone is doing wonderfully well.
ttoinou 3y ago
Great story thanks for sharing. We come to HN for this :-)
elliotec 3y ago
Most of the discussion on this thread is about my timeline of saying we were one of the first families with internet in 1994. First of all, I did try to qualify it with “as I was told” - i was a kid and all I knew was what my dad and the internet told me - but I was writing that comment with haste and on second thought, the timing was certainly more like 1992. Also, I didn’t say that’s when we got it, just when he told me that. As i said before, he had it in the 80s. Just to throw a wrench in the discussion. Also yes, it was hyperbole to say it took 15 min to download an image, but just barely and just for the fun of the story. Love you all and your pedantic asses.

ngngngng 3y ago

There's a rivalry between the NBA fan bases of the Utah Jazz and the Houston Rockets. Commonly this manifests as little jabs Rockets fans will make, mocking Utah for not having internet. Always funny to see this brought up when Utah was one of the first places on the planet to have the "Internet".

selimthegrim 3y ago
The Jazz, like Jim Clark, were another transplant from New Orleans.

Olumde 3y ago

> Details are .. not retrievable from the dead You inherited your dad's British humour :)

jb1991 3y ago

1994 already feels a tad late in my memory, everyone at my high school already had email in 1993, and we knew several families with internet in their house by 1992.

McKayDavis 3y ago

East High School is the closest public high school to the University of Utah. Because of this proximity the school was fortunate to get a direct T1 (1.5 Mbps) connection in 1992 (93?). The original domain was east.east-slc.edu before it was standardized to east.k12.ut.us circa 1995. After school every day for a few hours the East High CS room would be full of students exploring the new online world: surfing gopher, playing MUDs, Usenet, and using NCSA Mozilla on the DEC station. This is when Yahoo! was all hand curated. Students could even dial in to one of 2 modems and connect to the Internet from home. It was glorious.

Banditoz 3y ago
Some Utah school districts still use the k12.ut.us domain in places, for school and grade management: https://skystu.jordan.k12.ut.us/ https://skystu.jordan.k12.ut.us/
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Skyline High School had a teletype terminal by 1978. I think it connected to the University of Utah, though I am not absolutely certain. But that was a long way below a T1 line...
- mswen 3y ago
  I recall in the late 70s that my high school also had a teletype terminal and an IBM card reader that connected to a mainframe for the whole school district. As a student I had some awareness that it was unusual. I was also working PT at a Radio Shack at the same time and saw the first arrival of a TRS-80 to our store. Despite that early exposure to computing technology I went other directions for the next couple decades.
esafak 3y ago
A high school with a T1 connection was pretty sick! I don't know quite how to translate it into terms younger readers can appreciate.
- netdoll 3y ago

herewulf 3y ago

The U of U still has a large block of public IPs that they use for all their "internal" systems. No need for NAT there! That was at least 100% true as of around 15 years ago. I know the CS and engineering departments are still using that block. Hard to imagine that it still holds true for WiFi APs, etc and the proliferation of devices.

jacquesm 3y ago
That's how the internet should have been.

riceart 3y ago

1994 was way way after dialup Internet access was mainstream (both Yahoo and Amazon were founded that year). Any first access in the state would be sometime in the 80s. By 1993 there were already national level dialup ISPs. > that was about as long [15 minutes] as it took to load one webpage with one image. Very hyperbolic. A simple webpage with text would load in seconds on a 28.8k modem. A single image would usually be a 10s of kB in those days, so maybe some seconds, not even a minute.

nine_k 3y ago
You assume 28.8, good phone lines, and a responsive server. Sometimes it was an old 9600 because it was all you could easily get, noisy lines, and the server on the other end being slow because the picture was popular. Then a page could load for a minute, with pictures and all. Not 15 minutes though.
doctor_eval 3y ago
Right, unless the backhaul was massively overcommitted... which was normal at the time because it was really difficult to sufficiently provision backhaul, even a few months in advance. The internet was certainly not fast in 1994. Anyway, since when does the truth need to get in the way of a good story?
dgacmu 3y ago
This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university. (I helped create the third public ISP in Utah (ArosNet), in 1995). V34 (28.8k) was only ratified in 1994, and many ISPs were still at 14.4 at that time. Many customers still used much slower modems - 9600 remained quite common. The commercial Internet really only started taking off in 1993. Not by coincidence, that was the same year NCSA Mosaic was released.
- jacquesm 3y ago

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago

Are you saying that you were made during one of those 15-min waits?

CynAq 3y ago

I can only imagine how cool it must be to be raised by early adopters of internet technology. I can somewhat relate to this story in a couple coincidental points. First is that my father being a relatively early adopter of the PC in his professional life as a civil engineer in the early 80s, while an internet connection was about twenty years in the future for him, and the second one is that I learned electron microscopy on a Jeol microscope from 1994 when I was doing my master's in material science. And this is my first comment in HN. I hope everyone is doing wonderfully well.

ttoinou 3y ago

Great story thanks for sharing. We come to HN for this :-)

elliotec 3y ago

Most of the discussion on this thread is about my timeline of saying we were one of the first families with internet in 1994. First of all, I did try to qualify it with “as I was told” - i was a kid and all I knew was what my dad and the internet told me - but I was writing that comment with haste and on second thought, the timing was certainly more like 1992. Also, I didn’t say that’s when we got it, just when he told me that. As i said before, he had it in the 80s. Just to throw a wrench in the discussion. Also yes, it was hyperbole to say it took 15 min to download an image, but just barely and just for the fun of the story. Love you all and your pedantic asses.