My first interest in networking came in the early 80s, as I was in the final years of my mathematics and computer science master’s program.
At the time, dial-up terminal networking was about the most advanced there was. And if you were lucky, you’d get 1200 baud (transmitting approximately 120 characters per second). My current fiber-optic home links are 1 Gigabit/sec, which is about 1 million times faster.
Beyond this, computer-to-computer communication was mostly confined to the local data center. Transferring files from one computer to another typically involved physically moving storage media around. I have a great story about that, but that will be in another unit.
Eager to learn, we browsed the library to find a new book by Andrew Tanenbaum: Computer Networks. We already worked through most of his book “Structured Computer Organization” and we liked his approach and style. Many years later, I had the chance to meet and work with him a few times. He is both smart and personable.
Our professors did not have time to set up a new course on computer networks, so we proposed teaming up with other students to each present a chapter to the group. That worked, but we could not do much practical work, as we lacked internet connectivity and even the hardware and software to run that on. I had to wait many years for that.
After my Master’s, I got the chance to pursue a Ph.D. in a research group that was focussed on networking and computer communications. Even then, it took a few years before I moved from dial-up networking to planet scale internet.
It may seem archaic from today’s perspective, but that is how it was. You can’t expect to be using the network much when you are still in the proces of building it out.