The Toasternet "Zocalo," constructed by Bill Woodcock between 1987 and 1993,[1] which subsequently grew to become the AS715 backbone network across the US and Europe during the dot-com era.
Caption numbers:
1) FTP server drive.
2) POP mail spooler.
3) Prototype PPP router being tested.
4) Livingston PortMaster router.
5) Norris Earphone atop a stack of modems.
6) punchdown blocks.
7) HTTP server, AURP router, AFP server, PAP spooler.
8) CD drive.
9) mail, FTP, primary nameserver, shell accounts.
10) news spooling drive.
11) Powerbook serves as a mobile administration console, as well as phone book, etc.
12) news and NFS server, secondary nameserver.

Toasternets were an early-1990s instantiation of the decentralized Internet, featuring open-standards-based federated services, radical decentralization, ad-hoc routing and consisting of many small individual and collective networks rather than a cartel of large commercial Internet service provider networks. Today's community networks and decentralized social networks are the closest modern inheritors of the ethos of the 1991-1994 era Toasternets.[2][3]

History

The first known use of the word was by Robert Ullmann, then active in the Internet Engineering Task Force developing next-generation Internet addressing and routing protocols. He circulated the documents Toasternet Part I (December 1989) and Toasternet Part II (March 1992) on the IETF mailing list, then published RFCs 1475 and 1476 and the "CATNIP" Internet-Draft in June 1993.[4]

Early toasternet proponent Tim Pozar described a Toasternet as:

References

  1. ↑ Woodcock, Bill (December 1, 1994). "What is a Toasternet?". The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. HarperSan Francisco. p. 240. ISBN 0-06-251059-2. Toasternets are private, independent Internet-connected networks that spring up in basements, closets, wherever there's space. They are built by individuals, often, using bizarre mixtures of mismatched hardware and software. Prototype high-speed routers and network hardware nestle comfortably among antiquated UNIX hosts built from ten-year-old discarded parts; alpha-test software runs on machines salvaged from junkyards and dumpsters. Macintoshes run ported PC software; PCs run one-of-a-kind operating systems. Many toasternets seem at first like hellish tangles of junk, unlikely to work at all. Fact is, the intensity of competition, the rate of propagation, and the great variety of methods and combinations have created a form of electronic Darwinism. Software, protocols, and routing algorithms are born, fan out over the net, and disappear, prey to faster, more reliable, more portable new generations. Toasternets are a hothouse for technological standards, and we all profit from the resulting hybrid vigor.
  2. ↑ Wenz, John (2017-06-01). "The New Internet From 'Silicon Valley' Is Actually Possible". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 17 July 2021. By creating a decentralized network, you have no favored sites, and there's less emphasis on one platform over another. It'd be a bit like the ancient (in digital terms) idea of a toasternet, which strings together various computers to create network access among users, that attempts to circumvent internet service providers by becoming its own gateway.
  3. ↑ Doctorow, Cory (2017-04-07). "Scuttlebutt: an "off-grid" P2P social network that runs without servers and can fall back to sneakernet". BoingBoing. Retrieved 17 July 2021. It reminds me a lot of Fidonet, Tom Jennings' classic BBS networking infrastructure that linked millions of people around the world by programming local dial-up BBSes to call one another during off-peak/low-tariff hours and swap messages destined for one another, or more distant nodes. Fidonet eventually got a bridge into Usenet (thanks to trailblazing San Francisco ISP The Little Garden) that supercharged it in much the way of Scuttlebutt's pubs.
  4. ↑ Ullman, Robert (June 1993). RFC 1475: TP/IX: The Next Internet. Internet Engineering Task Force. doi:10.17487/RFC1475. RFC 1475. The first version of this memo, describing a possible next generation of Internet protocols, was written by the present author in the summer and fall of 1989, and circulated informally, including to the IESG, in December 1989. A further informal note on the addressing, called "Toasternet Part II", was circulated on the IETF mail list during March of 1992.
  5. ↑ Pozar, Tim (1993-05-21). "Toasternets: An introduction on building your own". Slackware. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  6. ↑ Steuer, Jonathan (April 1993). "Toasternets". Wired. Vol. 2, no. 5. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  7. ↑ Branwyn, Gareth (1993-03-01). "Jargon Watch". Wired. Retrieved 17 July 2021. Toasternet: Cheap Internet routers made with old PCs. May have been inspired by the Video Toaster desktop editing device for the Amiga, or by that ubiquitous home appliance. "Grunge Computing" has been proposed as a general term for the re-purposing of old PCs and other trashed digital technology.
  8. ↑ Berlind, David. "Remember SNMP-controlled toasters (ToasterNet)? How about Java-controlled robots?". ZDnet. Retrieved 17 July 2021. Some of my fondest memories date back to the early 90's when, at Interop in San Jose, a company called Epilogue demonstrated how the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) wasn't just for managing routers and other network gear. To prove SNMP's versality, Epilogue showed how it could be used to manage other devices too. Like toasters. John Romkey described the early days of TCP/IP, network management, and the birth of ToasterNet: 'If you put bread in the toaster, and set a variable in SNMP, the toaster would start toasting. There was a whole MIB written up for it, including how done you wanted the toast, and whether it was a bagel or Wonderbread. In order to figure out a matrix of how long to toast a bagel or Wonderbread to get it done to a specific doneness, I ended up with lots and lots of bread in my garage.'
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toasternet