Internet history (was: We need a better Internet)

[Drew Van Zandt]

Walt, Mickey, Minnie, Sleepy, and friends... Oh, yes, and I remember that
somehow Satan (ran out of Disney names...) had a vote to make a quorum for
the cluster, which was a huge headache to find.  Satan, of course, was on
the far end of the building from Walt (obviously only Walt was *supposed* to
have a vote), on a user's desk, over thicknet.  The rest of the workstations
were tapped off that on 10Base2, and of course from time to time someone
would run the end of the cable straight in to an Ethernet card instead of
using a T and a terminator.  *shudder*  The network runs were *weird*, too,
since the classified and unclassified cables couldn't come within a meter of
each other.  You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

It took us months to figure out what was going on, since we had to keep the
system up as much as possible during working hours... and they kicked us out
and locked the vault door on the front of the building at 6 sharp.  That and
there were only two of us, and we kept getting sent out to do temporary
cluster installs on subs.

I am a BIG fan of star topology (including in non-network electrical
systems) as a result.

--DTVZ
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