[ih] Commercial ISPs (Re: Some Questions over IPv4 Ownership)

[sbrim at cisco.com (Scott Brim)]

On 10/12/2010 15:00 EDT, Ofer Inbar wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 08:03:49PM -0700,
> jfh <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>> Somewhere along the line, commercial ISPs popped into being.  I'm
>> not sure who was first, but my recollection is that this happened as
>> spinoffs from NSFNet and/or CSNet.  Again, there must have been some
>> kind of agreements between those commercial entities and a piece of
>> the government, detailing the rules about ownership.  These first
>> ISPs were different because they were not research collaborators.
>> They were in business simply to make money selling Internet service.
> 
> Software Tool & Die's (aka "the World") was the first commercial
> consumer ISP, and UUNET was the first commercial IP network provider -
> who sold IP service to STD.

The way I remember it:

STD provided Internet services but they were not a network.

UUNET was a non-profit exchange, not a network, until 1990 (?)

PSINet was started as a network, with NYSERNet members as an instant
installed base, in 1989.