The history of Runet: remember how the network was tempered
In early September, the first episode of the mini-series Holivar. History of Runet. " Of course, this topic could not leave our colleagues indifferent. Many of us, one way or another, caught the appearance of the first home computers and the formation of Runet in general, which we will definitely tell about at the end of the article.
Nevertheless, despite the fairly wide coverage of historical events, much of the video remained behind the scenes. Today we will try to fill in some of these gaps and, possibly, tell readers who are not familiar with this topic, something new from the world when computers were large.
A few words about "iron"
The youngest readers may seriously think that before the IBM era, neither computers nor life really existed. Rather, computers were, but resembled, rather, gigantic and clumsy amoebas brewed in a vat with a primary computer broth. But such concepts as familiarity, conflict of attributes and “jammed the cassette, it won’t play” remained in the distant past.
Nevertheless,
To enumerate all the models is neither patience of the author nor the desire to study it for the readers, so we will focus only on some subjectively the most interesting things.
For the sake of historical justice, we note that many computers in the USSR were not de facto exclusively Soviet developments. Many computers were clones of Western machines (often much less productive) on the Soviet element base.
Speccy
It would be strange to talk about computers of the 80s era and not say anything about a phenomenon like the ZX Spectrum, an 8-bit British computer based on the Zilog Z80 processor. This simple, but at the same time legendary computer scattered all over the world in record runs, and still has a huge fan base among lovers of retro technology.
/ ZX Spectrum 128 “Toast rack”, nicknamed “Toaster” for the shape of the grille, yasminroohi.com
"Native" Spectrum in the Union was not so much. But there were "Nafani", "Bytes", "Sparks" and other clones, industrially produced at the country's factories. In addition to factory machines, there were versions for home assembly. The most famous among them are the so-called Leningrad and Moscow. For a couple of days with a soldering iron by trial and error, it was possible to assemble a real computer with 48 or 128 kilobytes of RAM from a handful of microcircuits. Of course, provided that you managed to get a printed circuit board and correct errors in the circuit.
It was possible to connect a tape recorder to the finished machine and use the usual audio cassette to load programs.
/ “Leningrad” clone of Spectrum, starina.ru
Already in the late 80s and mainly in the 90s, the clones of the Spectrum moved to a new stage of development. There are models of ATM Turbo, Scorpio, Profi, Next and many others. They were united by one thing: the authors' desire to make a fairly primitive Spectrum (which, incidentally, was positioned by the inventor, Clive Sinclair, as an exclusively educational computer) something more serious, almost a competitor that was already appearing among ordinary people, but so far too expensive IBM.
Here's the answer to a possible question, why do we pay so much attention to the ZX Spectrum. Everything is explained by the cheapness, ease of self-assembly and the relatively rich capabilities of this computer. The combination of these factors made Spectrum clones the most massive home computers of the late 80s and the first half of the 90s.
In this regard, I would like to mention a rather interesting phenomenon, which can be safely called the forerunner of the mass Internet: the press, distributed through audio tapes.
This may seem wild to the modern reader, however, in the USSR there were many newspapers and magazines that were recorded on audio tapes in the format of programs and could be run on any ZX-compatible machine. You can familiarize yourself with the most complete list of such publications and read their “digitized” versions on this site . Please note that some of them exist in one form or another to this day.
In addition to the ZX Spectrum, there were many other home and production computers. You can read more about them here .
The ZX Spectrum community lives to this day. Invented new extensions, new approaches in programming, released new software and games.
A separate Spectrum can be devoted to the entire article, but such an approach would be a serious waste. You should return to the tracks laid by the author of the mini-series.
DEMOS
The following story, like its heroes, cannot be unambiguously characterized only in white or only in black tones. Perhaps one of the readers will see echoes of industrial espionage here. Someone will exclaim: “So, where does the Russian love for piracy grow from!” Both will be partly right. We are of the opinion that the heroes of the story are talented young people who were extremely constrained in the means to realize their technical ambitions.
Despite the tensions between the USSR and the USA, many Soviet programmers underwent internships at major universities in the West annually. Around 1983, magnetic tapes with copies of UNIX v7 “leaked” to the Soviet Union. Apparently, the operating system was copied directly from VAX to the University of Berkeley, since the tape, among other things, contained side notes, which included tables of student sports achievements, among which were UNIX developers.
The Western operating system made an indelible impression on Russian programmers; it came to understand that we needed a single, machine-independent operating system. From about that moment, the “quiet” adaptation of the OS and software under the EU computers began. In addition to the “source”, magnetic tapes with software came from the USA and Vienna, some had a pronounced “African trace”. The project was called DEMOS - Interactive Unified Mobile Operating System.
/ Book about OS DEMOS, se7en.ws
In 1989, on the basis of the Institute I.V. Kurchatov was formed a programmer's cooperative. At first, it bore the name "Interface", but was later named after the "refined" operating system. In 1991, the cooperative turned into Demos Company LLC, and in 1992, after the creation of Relcom, a part of Demos employees transferred to it. In 1995, the Internet direction of Demos Company was allocated to Demos-Internet CJSC.
The telecom operator Demos-Internet CJSC and the system integrator Demos Company LLC are still alive and are part of the Demos group of companies. Now "Demos-Internet" provides data center services, Internet access, telephony and others.
“Demos” managed to master the advanced network technologies at that time, but by the mid-90s, when the Internet began to be mastered rapidly by business, it turned out that, in addition to access to the network, information protection was also necessary. Therefore, in 1996, Demos entered into partnership agreements with information security market leaders - CyberGuard, McAfee, Secure Computing and others.
/ demos.ru
Some chaotic material about "Demos", compiled by real participants in the events, can be read here .
If you are closer to more "dry" and readable materials, pay attention to this article . In the timeline format, it talks about the key events for Runet.
And we move on.
Relcom
We would like to start the story about the first Soviet, and subsequently Russian network, by quoting from an article dated 1995:
Relcom-IP is a new server that allows you to travel around the world. Enabling TCP / IP allows your computer direct access to the global Internet. As a rule, those people who are used to working on networks in IP mode from their terminal work on several machines.Relcom is the first Soviet and Russian computer network, the creation of which marked the beginning of the formation of the Runet.
The Relcom network began work on August 1, 1990 at the Institute of Atomic Energy I.V. Kurchatova in Moscow and connected using analog telephone modems computers in scientific institutions of Moscow, Leningrad and Novosibirsk to send email via the UUCP protocol. She acted in conjunction with the programmer's cooperative Demos (which soon became the first Russian Internet provider). In the same month, the first computer connection was established at the University of Helsinki.
The name of the network was given by Vadim Antonov, one of the participants in Demos, who will also play an important role in the development of the Runet. It was managed by Relkom by the same Demos and the computer center of the Kurchatov Institute.
/ kommersant.ru
By 1991, Relcom joined the European network EUnet and began broadcasting the most relevant Soviet news abroad - the events of the August Coup. In 1992, the joint-stock company of the same name was formed and the pilot implementation of online IP began.
You can familiarize yourself with a fun manual by current standards for using the network here .
By the way, the first Cisco 7000 Series router in Russia appeared in the Relcom network control center.
The bulk of Relkom users connected via telephone line, but other channels were also used - radio relay, fiber optic, satellite. Despite the fact that Relkom was the network with the most extensive infrastructure, it was not the only network in the Russian Federation, and Sovam Teleport and the SOVAMNET network cannot be ignored. In the first episode of Holivar, this milestone of becoming the RuNet was not spared, but we would like to add a few details.
Joint venture Sovam Teleport, founded in 1990, had a developed network of representative offices forming the SOVAMNET network in many Russian cities.
SOVAMNET on a commercial basis offered subscribers access to a number of information resources (finances, databases, resources of foreign corporate networks, backup systems) via the X25 / 28, Frame Relay, TCP / IP protocols. In particular, through SOVAMNET, the country's banks were connected to the global settlement and information system SWIFT. Sovam Teleport also provided liaison between the State Customs Committee of Russia and authorized export control banks.
In 1995, Sovam Teleport, with the support of a number of information resource providers, launched the Russia-on-Line (ROL) project. The project was a kind of tracing-paper from the Western America-on-Line network and consisted of several parts. In particular, this is the first commercial web server in Russia WWW.ONLINE.RU.
/ These cards, however, from a later period, are still under the hammer, aucland.ru
Information on the server was supplied by various agencies and companies, including Izvestia, the Open Press Institute, PRIME, RINACO, and Inforynok. In addition to Russian sources, the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, Der Spiegel, Associated Press and other foreign press were available to visitors.
Read more about SOVAMNET, ROL and other providers' networks here .
.RU and .SU
We will deal with another rudiment that we inherited from the pioneers of the Russian part of the World Wide Web: how is it that there are still three national domains in the Russian Federation? The answer is quite simple and follows from the above information (we highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the material about DEMOS and the first connection from Helsinki).
Just a year before the collapse of the USSR, Vadim Antonov, an employee of Demos, registered a new first-level domain in the InterNIC international database on behalf of SUUG (Soviet UNIX User's Group). Zone SU (Soviet Union) was intended for use on the territory of the Soviet Union. By the way, one of the options for the domain name was .ussr, and the first sites on this domain were the resources of Demos, Relkom, the Kurchatov Institute and the Department of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It happened on September 19 (according to other sources - September 21), 1990. After registering the domain, regular exchange of information through Usenet conferences began, and the network expanded and captured more and more Soviet cities - Sverdlovsk, Izhevsk, Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Rostov-on-Don and others.
The Russian .ru domain was delegated on April 7, 1994. On this day, an entry on the opening of the Russian domain Internet space appeared in the international database of national top-level domains. This event was preceded by the signing of the agreement "On the procedure for administering the RU zone," which took place on December 4, 1993 at a meeting of the largest Internet providers that existed at that time in Russia: Demos Plus, Techno, GlasNet, SovAm Teleport , EUnet / Relcom, X-Atom, FREEnet. In accordance with it, the responsibilities for the administration and technical support of the national .ru domain were transferred to RosNIIROS (Russian Research Institute for the Development of Public Networks), which until 2000 registered all domains in the .ru zone. At first, the .ru domain was supposed to be the successor to the .su domain: the last one since the emergence of the .ru domain has ceased to accept new applications, but since 2002 free registration has resumed.
You can read more about the .su domain zone here .
Memoirs of Eyewitnesses
The second part of the video, dedicated to Artemy Lebedev and the hangouts of the first online publications, caused a lot of criticism in the comments of YouTube. We understand the authors of the "hot" comments - they wanted to get more academic material, and the authors of the video itself.
For many of us, it caused a warm wave of nostalgia: the first Internet connection, like the first kiss, is hard to forget. Therefore, in conclusion, we will share the memories of our colleagues.
Anton Zakharchenko,
General Director of IT-GRAD and 1cloud (included in the MTS Group),
Provider Strategy Director #CloudMTS:
“The first acquaintance with computers I had at work with my parents - something in there at the research institute. The first impression is a cool thing, but how to play with it? Dark screen, green icons ... It's incomprehensible!
And then a high-school neighbor has an x286 machine with a CGA display and speaker that could synthesize the simplest melodies. It becomes clear that it is already possible to play on it. I am shown Digger / FlashBack.
Then, at the Polytechnic Museum, in a tent, a miracle of Russian engineering was bought - the Nathanian computer, a console with a built-in Basic interpreter that connects to a standard TV, a cassette recorder is used as an external drive (ZX Spectrum clone - approx. Ed.).
/ “Nafanya” looked something like this, penza.kp.ru
This is where my acquaintance with the programming world begins: commands and codes in paper notebooks, sharing pieces of program code with rare friends who have the same miracle, hunting for cassettes with games (there are about 10 games on a 60-minute cassette). Long downloads, crashes, lack of saves, etc.
Then there was a computer club assembled by one of the school enthusiasts - an apartment on the ground floor in a residential area with 4 computers, I only remember the Saboteur game! (like, even the second part), 5.25 floppy disks. The rare lucky ones were those who could take a copy to their home.
Then came the 95th year - the first PC at home! Pentium 100MHz 4 MB RAM 850 MB HDD - and away we go!
Price lists of computer stores - poor copies in small print of any components; self-assembly. Markets with pirated software (then they didn’t even know such words, there were no other sources). Ballpoint mats with a pattern, 3.5`` floppy disks.
Then a lyceum and a computer class - the first grid / Novell / server. 1997-98 - game clubs - drove in Warcraft II, Quake II / III. Internet access occasionally appeared.
97th year - ROL, Russia On Line, Combelga, MTU Inform - prepaid cards for accessing the Internet. They bought, hunted for computer magazines (in which they were invested as promos), Computerra / Country of Games / Home Computer. Programming at the Lyceum - Pascal.
Peripherals appear - printers / scanners - the beginning of the collection of a home digital archive.
The 99th year - acquaintance with hypertext markup and the first experiments on the web, the first earnings on creating sites :)
Since 2000 - already an institute, homework, programming labs, Assembler, Pascal, MatLab. Part time admin / tech support, etc. "
Andrey Grigoryev,
Product owner
1cloud.ru:
“I definitely won’t tell you about the USSR, but in '98 we started programming and taught us in basic language. Something like a Spark computer acted as a computer.
There was no network connectivity in the classroom, much less there were no Internet access. As far as I remember, such a pleasure as the Spark computer was especially inaccessible to ordinary citizens. Although in the mid-90s, some friends already had IBM-386 at home. About network connections in my environment did not really say anything, they used 3.5 '' floppy disks (1.4 mb of memory) to transfer information. At work in the early 00s, I came across rudiments from old network connections over a coaxial cable, maybe I confuse, but the speed is up to 10 mb / s, + collision domains on a common hub, this is when two packets simultaneously come to the device and the entire network freezes at different timeouts.
And here I can already recall my experience with the network - this is the beginning of the 00s and a dial-up modem with dial-up dial-up pool of numbers from North-West Telecom. Now it is part of Rostelecom.
The main provider is North-West Telecom, the main means of communication is a modem, a telephone line was used (and the subscriber number was busy during the Internet session), the speed was limited to 56 kbit / s, but in fact due to the quality of the copper lines and the distance from the hub the speed was 2 times less. Prices, unfortunately, I do not remember. ADSL modems with a speed of 2 Mb / s and a splitter (a special device that carried an Internet channel and telephony at different frequencies) already appeared in the 00s. As a result, the telephone line was free during Internet sessions. ”
Andrey Komelin,
Market Analyst IT-GRAD:
"Holivar", a film by Andrei Loshak, caused heated debate in society. I cannot help joining them, because by age I found the first steps of Runet with its primitive pages, communication via ICQ / IRC and a sense of permissiveness. It was then that the first holivars arose, heated online disputes with insults and transitions to personalities that almost never work out in order to change someone’s opinion. Rather, the main goal is to argue for the sake of argument, to bring kitchen gatherings under vodka to a new level, when heated debate not only becomes public, but also forever remains on the Internet. And each round of discussion takes polemic to a new level and increases the degree. Did Andrei Loshak want with this project to create a holivar about the origin of the Runet? Let's get it right.
The last few decades, all the main achievements of scientific and technological progress come from the United States, so it is logical there to look for the origins of Runet. Andrei Loshak tells the story that one of the ideological inspirers of the first attempts to combine computers of the USSR and the USA was Joel Schatz, California hippie. It is noteworthy that initially the idea came to him during the LSD trip. In the process of psychedelic experience, Joel felt the informational fragmentation of the modern world and realized that his task was to help people unite and establish a process of joint cognition of reality. In the name of this idea, Schatz, at the height of the Cold War, builds the first bridges with the USSR, including participating in the organization of the first television bridges between the two warring countries. Thus, the psychedelic revolution of the 60s indirectly influenced the development of the Runet.
It is interestingly told about the appearance of the first modern operating system in Russia: an almost spy story about how stolen UNIX was Russified and adapted for Soviet obsolete hardware. What is characteristic, the government noted the merits of the first domestic pirates with monetary prizes and all kinds of incentives. If you wish, you can find references to Leskov Lefty, who managed to shoe a flea at the envy of the British. The very fact of encouragement from the government can be seen as the forerunner (first swallow) of the dashing nineties, when piracy became comprehensive and, one might say, served as one of the drivers of the growth of mass computer literacy among Russians. There was no money for licensed software, but almost everyone had the opportunity to use hacked software. It was then that a joke arose that the Russians have 3 ways to get software: theft, robbery and the exchange of loot. Few people have heard about the markets of Gorbushka (Moscow) and Juno (St. Petersburg), where you could get literally everything that was needed.
In general, the general development trend of Runet coincides with that in the United States. Initially being available only to a narrow intellectual layer of scientists, it gradually became more and more popular and formed as an alternative medium for communication and information. We are introduced to the first iconic personalities of a new sphere, from designer Artemy Lebedev to the shocking network writer Bayan Shiryanov. We see how, from the tool of science, the Runet is turning into a new sphere of human life with new heroes, rules and temptations. The history of the site anekdot.ru, as the most popular resource of the time, very vividly characterizes that era: Russian people of that time preferred pornography and dating sites to humor.
The Internet in general and the Runet in particular cannot exist in isolation from society, this is just one of the facets of the cornerstone of human activity. Andrei Loshak quite logically draws analogies between the main milestones of our country and the development of the Runet. In the first part of Holivar, the emphasis is on the freedom and horizontal communication that were inherent in the network in the early stages of development. But in the process of the evolution of society, the Internet itself has changed. Big money of big business and the ubiquitous authoritarian state came into it, and the structure itself began to acquire a pronounced vertical hierarchy. For better or for worse, these changes were a great occasion for the holivar! Is this the main goal of the film? Let the Holywar begin! ”
Anton Karasev,
B2B Marketing Director
Group of companies "IT-GRAD":
“Andrei Loshak’s project is, above all, an opportunity to stop and look back. Today we are in a rapid stream of continuous development of Internet technologies: fast Internet, miniaturization of devices, a frightening variety of software and services. It’s scary to think, because just a couple of decades ago we were in completely different realities of the dialup ... The colossal leap that the industry has made can not be estimated without such a retrospective.
For me, getting to know the PC world began in the late 80s. And it looked pretty weird :)
About once a month, 2 computers were brought to the kindergarten, on which we were offered to play a little. The process was as follows: during a day's walk, the two children were sent to the room where the cars were installed. It took about 5 minutes to play one of the installed toys. I remember exactly that there were some races and a penguin, which had to be carried out along the icy road, without falling into the ice hole. Then it seemed to me that I touched something mysterious, hitherto unknown. It was cooler than a sea battle in slot machines! I clearly remember my feelings and emotions. The "mobile computer class" was the ultimate dream, coupled with the hardships of expectation and an emotional explosion during the game.
After, already at the very beginning of the 90s, a friend of the neighbor surprisingly appeared Spectrum and a bunch of toys on audio cassettes. This was a new stage in gaming that aroused even greater interest in computer technology.
286th car. I will never forget her. The first “modern” computers appeared in parents at work, in a research institute, and I had the opportunity a couple of times a month, breaking the harsh security at the entrance, to explore the exciting world of PC. MS DOS, a file system device, the simplest text editor and, of course, games! Wolf and Golden Ax were a real discovery for me!
In the 95th, I finally got a Pentium 100, bought by my parents for crazy money, which, literally, was collected by the whole family. From this moment, a new era began for me.
It’s rather strange to say this, but the “modern young” generation of users absolutely do not understand what a 3.5 floppy disk and the Internet via a telephone line with enchanting speed of 42 kbit / s. Therefore, "Holivar" is a must-see for those who want to feel the fantastic speed of development of computer technology. "
Afterword
The history of Runet, as well as the history of the development of computer technology in the USSR and in the post-Soviet space, can hardly be described as a sequential, linear process. IT enthusiasts from all over the country worked independently, only periodically exchanging technologies and ideas, and an attempt to tie every step and every achievement to the coordinate axis of time is doomed to failure in advance. We hope that after reading this article many of the points missed in the “Runet History” have become more clear to you, and the memories of our employees have left a pleasant feeling of nostalgia.
We will be glad to see your stories in the comments.
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