I recently became aware of the world of pre-Internet online services [1] (AppleLink, Delphi, CompuServe, AOL etc) that provided a wide variety of online services like chat, file-sharing, forums and even other services like the WELL [2] which almost sounds like a pre-Internet Reddit.<p>I have not been able to find much detail about the network and software architecture of these systems. Does any one know or can point to resources about the architecture of these systems. What was the backend of these systems? Were they mostly “hosted” products with the software running on the provider’s servers or was it peer-to-peer? What network protocols did they use?<p>As a side note - I came across these things in the book “The Innovators” by Walter Isaacson [3], which is an excellent book if you are interested in the history of computing and the central characters right from its early beginnings in the 1800s to the current times.<p>[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pre%E2%80%93World_Wide_Web_online_services
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)
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).<p>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.
This is a great question and if I had some way of boosting it I would.<p>The costs of getting online with these services was pretty high.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3087928" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3087928</a><p>Compuserve, charging $11 per hour, had "more than 250,000 subscribers".<p>Delphi, charging $6 per hour had a loyal but small (less than 10,000 users) following.<p>$11 in 1988 is about $23 today.
Older online services ran on minicomputers with connectivity over private networks. Read up about modems, terminal servers, protocols like X.25, minicomputers like DEC VAXen, PDPs, networks like Tymnet and Telenet/SprintNet.