> Our ISPs had metered traffic (traffic that went out to that external monopoly) I remember hitting FTP sites that would check to see if you were in Australia

> Our ISPs had metered traffic (traffic that went out to that external monopoly) I remember hitting FTP sites that would check to see if you were in Australia or New Zealand and would bounce you out if you weren't. Some of the earliest form of "geolocation". A popular Linux or w4r3z release would drop and you'd always know you were in for a long night when only the .au servers were replying...and turning away your login. It reminds me of the joke poem: "A host is a host from coast to coast, and nobody talks to a host that's close, unless the host that isn't close is busy, hung, or dead."