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by yusina
408 days ago
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Exactly. After all this discussion here my conclusion is that "connecting to the internet" is an ambiguous term. It can mean "have IP connectivity, i.e., IP packets routed to and from the internet" in which case the described PC was not "connected to the internet with QMODEM". It didn't do anything IP. It can mean "have a terminal that can interact with information from/to the internet" in which case the PC was indeed "connected to the internet with QMODEM". To me, the second meaning is quite the stretch, but apparently to others it's fine. |
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My problem with your definition is that it doesn't take into account the reality of connectivity at the time (at least in my experience of the early 90s) - not a whole lot of machines had IP stacks that were connected via ethernet/isdn/t1/etc and online all the time. Certainly you'd have to be pretty special to actually own one or have one at home. Connecting over some kind of tty or dialup was extremely common.
So using your definition, a sizeable percentage (possibly even a majority?) of people who were online and doing things on the internet during the QModem era were doing it through computers that were not "connected to the internet". Which seems obviously silly.