I sought to be internet connected in 1994. Randy Bush had been putting third-world countries on the net as a consultant to the National Science Foundation (NSF). His company, RainNet, was turning to small business to do the same thing for them.
After a couple of hours of discussing internet politics Randy gets ready to leave. Wait, what about my connection? Oh, do you want a cheap computer or a really cheap computer?
After a couple of hours of discussing internet politics Randy gets ready to leave. Wait, what about my connection? Oh, do you want a cheap computer or a really cheap computer?
I chose cheap and paid $300 to have Randy's colleagues build up a working internet gateway out of OpenBSD unix. I'd not touched unix for four or five years. But this time I was an admin. It was interesting.
I also bought two 14.4 modems for each end of a second voice line I leased from my phone company. One for Randy's end, the other for mine. My new computer goes ditditditdatditdat and I'm on the net.
I was running pretty much the full internet stack like any other university computer center. Same software, cheap hardware. Interesting.