[danjayh]

I have fond memories of using Prodigy as a small child. When they added images to the news service, it was magical. I can't think of anything now that brings the same level of excitement as the progression of technology during my childhood in the late 80's and 90's (Maybe self-driving cars, but they're far less accessible).

On the architecture, I can't help you. We did run a small BBS when we were in 5th grade, but it fit on a single PC with a dialup line. There were several common software packages that provided file hosting, forums, games, extensibility, etc. that were used to run them. Towards the end, some (including ours) were even going graphical (google 'remote imaging protocol'). Much of the online world was confined to BBSs prior to the advent of the Internet.

[ramk]

Thank you for your personal perspective and the pointer to Remote Imaging Protocol. When you say you ran a BBS on your PC - how did others access the content on your BBS? Would others have access to the content when you were no longer connected to the dialup line?

[danjayh]

It wasn't through the Internet. We had a dedicated phone line for it (quite an expense for a 5th grader). Others dialed in directly, and when one user was connected, anyone else trying to connect got a busy signal. If the user wasn't remote, they paid long-distance charges by the minute to the telco. Larger BBSs had banks of phone lines to enable multiple users to connect simultaneously. Just the concept of multiplexing a single physical connection between multiple applications (or even users) via SLIP or PPP and TCP/IP was a pretty revolutionary change that came with the move from terminal-based communication to binary communication.

EDIT: I guess I should have said 'from circuit-switched networking to packet-switched networking', but ... you get the idea. The change largely occurred simultaneously.