Toasternet

"[5]Pozar, and other early toasternet builders Bill Woodcock and John Gilmore were participants in the cooperative The Little Garden, the first Internet service provider based on the west coast of the United States.

Rather, the term "toasternet" refers generically to small computer networks built out of cheap and readily available parts.

Unlike commercial network service providers, who are motivated primarily by their bottom line, most toasternets exist to meet their members' communication needs -- to get people wired.

"[6]Gareth Bronwyn, also writing in Wired in 1993, defined them much more haphazardly, saying that they used "Cheap Internet routers made with old PCs" and coining the umbrella term "grunge computing.

"[7] It is worthy of note that, prior to the 1992 privatization of the Internet via Al Gore's National Information Infrastructure plan, the operation of toasternets was not actually legal, since Internet connectivity was supplied to authorized parties (generally defense contractors and research universities) by, and at the expense of, the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, and toasternets extended access to the network beyond the parties authorized to use it.

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 .