Digex – At the dawn of the commercial

Internet

Doug Mohney

Digex Employee #10 – October 1993

DEFCON 12 – 31 July 2004, 11:00

What will I cover?

Digex history circa ’93-’94 Internet history

Infrastructure then and now First commercial web servers/service

mtv.com cia.gov peta.org (later, ’96ish)

Why should you care?

“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it…”

Basement startup in 1991 – Literally! IPO’ed in 1996, bought in 1997 IPO’ed AGAIN in 1999 Bought by WorldCom for billions before

dot.bomb hit History starting to repeat with WISPs…

Digex Significant (early) Contributions

First commercial server hosting biz! mtv.com – 1st entertainment web server The Al Gore Gold Rush

cpsc.gov cia.gov

peta.org

Digex’s founders

Doug Humphrey Digex on MIT time-share in ’80s UMD, WATS80, Defcon Tandem engineer

Mike Doughney UMD, WMUC radio WorldCom IDB satellite engineer

Gulf War I, got home, quit Wanna-be programmer

mtd.com, peta.org, Internet name rights

Have you seen this man?(picture via Google)

Digex Supporting Characters

Rob “RS” Seastrom Provided hardware, brought up 1st dial-up system Later - 1st commercial Net connection in Japan

Rob “Strat” Stratton Provided first e-mail build, guru on concepts Went on to UUNet, Wheel Group, In-Q-Tel

Richard Butler Provided personal credit, tie-breaker

Digex - Pre’93

Incorporated 1990 Was going to be a e-mail “exchange”

Everyone was an island: AOL, MCI, Compu$erve, Genie, etc….

Internet dial-up biz started as a sideline Need to generate some cash to pay the bills..

First users in Sept 91, 6 phone lines By end of 1993, 2000+ users, 100+ lines, leased

line customers, dedicated SLIP/PPP, web hosting

Above the Chinese Restaurant (As the Gods Intended) - 1993-1994

Now and then – ’94 vs ‘04 28.8Kbps modem T-3 (45Mbps) – ANS T3 delivered on fiber Fiber rare, but growing 623 web servers What’s a web page? Pentium Windows 3.1/95 Edu/NSFNet fading out Wired “In,” new Few homes had 2nd phone

lines

DSL, cable, 56Kbps OC-48, OC-192/10Gbs Get T3 on copper pairs.. Fiber to Home (almost) 46 million web servers Grandma’s got a web site P4, AMD-64 Linux, Windows XP All commercial Wired mainstream Most homes ditching 2nd

lines for cell phones, broadband

Infrastructure snapshot – ‘93

NSFNet, run by ANS – The "Backbone" T3 high-speed network ANS received permission to sell commercial as part of

transfer of network ops out of gov’t T1 was Big Deal

PSInet, UUnet had nat’l T1 backbones DIGEX got a T1 backdoor deal from ANS

Diamond mine program – seed program “Free” T1 for 12 months, then pay Fit in with Digex general rule #1 – “If you want to do

business with us, you have to give us something for free.”

Two key characters in ’93

Ed Kern One-time doorman for 9:30 Club in DC and ??? Got attention by bitching. Ended up with root and a job Wore sweats, Birkenstocks, rain or shine, snow or summer. Fuck a major vocabulary word

Dave McGuire Systems programmer & hardware savant Engineered hardware for 1st commercial web server

Ed and Dave

Digex in 1993 October 10 people, December nearly 20 RBOCs (ILECs now) didn’t Get It. Had to force Bell Atlantic's hand to get fiber

No fiber, no mass dial-tone, no T3s Maxed out all copper in Greenbelt – 40 dial-up lines

Local residents couldn’t get 2nd lines Digex get substandard cruddy lines that were “marginal”

Placed 80 line order Sales rep happy, BA engineers not!

Small bus – Only sold handful of lines/year Our rep getting T1, 56K, 10s of lines per month

No “thank you” notes from the RBOCs… Internet popularity drove 2nd/3rd lines into households

1993 – DC’s competition

PSINet Held NYSERNet for ransom

UUNet – 20-30 people Started as non-profit to distribute software Everyone wanted to “be” UUNet

SURANet Regional power, University consortium U of Maryland trick horse

First commercial server hosting

Summer of ‘93 People wanted net presence, not the overhead Outsource mgmt – No telco, Unix, network!

Hardware hack Sun 3/60 workstation board in VME chassis – All Dave McGuire Fit 12 boards into chassis, Ethernet boot, disk access According to Sun "Couldn't be done“ 3/60 boards cheap, Sun dumping

Better than dumpster diving Presaged “blades” – Density, fewer plugs, no shelves

Why good?

PSI & UUNet focused on pipes Web hosting ("Private domains") for people

that didn't want to dork with UNIX Generate a lot of traffic, leverage for future

Settlements (if they came) peering Destination, place to be

Make money! Low cost of setup, low overhead

Initial customers

ALAWASH.org – VERY first paying host American Librarian Association – They wanted

user@alawash.org e-mail At that time, “World Wide What?”

MTV.COM Very first entertainment host on the Net Freaked the Net Purists out

Adam Curry – The Internet Cassandra

Adam Curry: Net pioneer (!?!)

M-TV VJ, Friday top 20 Video Countdown Closet geek: account on Panix

“Cybersleaze” gossip column Done via .PLAN, dragged PANIX to its knees

PANIX told him to take a hike; go talk to.... Adam Curry’s AmEx information – Priceless Curry got mtv.com from Viacom

Viacom wanted pay-per-view model Agreed to “Experiment”

mtv.com early days

Academic Uber-Geeks were afraid of "commercialism“ corrupting the purity of the Internet

Initial probing of userIDs Bevis & Butthead First day had 50,000 hits Became one of the most popular site on the

Net at the time Ultimately put Digex among top traffic-movers

on the Net (#5; Walnut CD Unix dist #1)

Curry – A man before his time WALKED OFF HIS MTV VJ JOB FOR THE NET! “There are no secrets, only information you don't yet

have.” – Adam Curry’s blog site Cassandra of the Internet

Music on-line, intellectual property rights Nobody paid much attention… until later

Ultimately Viacom got back mtv.com domain Lawsuit, threats, threats, blah-blah

Made gobs of money, moved to Amsterdam, married model, lives happily ever after

www.curry.com –one of the few blogs worth reading

The Al Gore Gold Rush

Gore not "father" of Internet, but “Reinventing Government” Exec. branch agencies on Internet by fall of ’94.

Rush to get ‘Net presence over summer (Fed FY closes 30 Sept, if I recall..)

Big windfall for young Internet companies Digex got--

cpsc.gov cia.gov

cia.gov

Agency didn’t want to be (officially) hooked Whois implied they had a T1 via UUNet, ANS(?) Web site would be a hot target Some (not lots) Old Guard vs New Guard

DID want a presence to get Al off their back Outsourcing the most logical solution DIGEX only game in town – everyone else did not

comprehend server hosting Sun 4 server Security - "Air gap the size of the Beltway.“

Mike Doughney (Left, not right)

peta.org – Mike Doughney’s crusade (well, one of them)

Mike was bored towards end (95-97), registered mtd.com, peta.org domains

Set up peta.org People Eating Tasty Animals!

PETA got upset, sued Mike Multiyear battle, ultimately got peta.org

Vegan Hypocrites! Beef.com this year spoofing beef.org PETA has lots (70+?) parody domains

Where did DIGEX go from there?

IPO in 1996 Sold to Intermedia Communications in 1997

for $150 million cash – 600+employees Split into leased line, web server units Web server unit re-IPOed in 1999 Intermedia sold to WorldCom for $5 billion

Pieces tossed for Digex

Digex Chains of ownership

Leased line group Digex --> Intermedia/Digex --> Allegiance

Telecom --> XO Communications Server group

Digex -> Intermedia/Digex -> Digex(IPO) -> WorldCom/MCI

Digex, MCI’s property 2004

Where are they now?

Humphrey Has own SS-7, surplus RN patrol boat

Batz Maru “One hundred feet of British Steel” Doughney

Stalking “Christian cults” around the country Kern

Cisco, was at Cogent for 5 seconds McGuire

Freelance consulting

Digex - The book? Maybe fall 2004, VON Publishing Cover history from 1990ish - end of 1997, including:

VC rounds, (First) IPO process Acquisition by Intermedia Communications

Era from 1997-2004 not covered (another project): Very complex, soap opera of ownership

Intermedia shuffled in Fagan, Shull to head web host Digex Second Digex IPO in 1999; but 60% owned by Intermedia

“Independent” but not really…. WorldCom/Bernie Ebbers wanted Digex

Ultimately bought Intermedia for $5 billion, threw away pieces of Intermedia to keep the web biz.

And we all know what happened to Bernie…

A “party” favor

Pictures of Digex Christmas Party 1996 I did not take them, I did not post them, I am not

responsible for their content or electronic publication.

Pictures taken by non-Digex employee Guest with camera – Hmm…lessons learned, anyone?

Posted on web site in Sweden http://www.lysator.liu.se/~lien/xparty1.html

URL posted on Orkut/Google forum Public posting of URL, so it’s in the “domain”

Personal whoring

VON Magazine www.vonmag.com

Will ultimately have pointer to published Digex history Infrastructure, security, some VoIP, Cap Hill & FCC

The Inquirer (UK) www.theinquirer.net Security, Internet history, whatever I can sneak by

Mobile Radio Technology Wireless, Wi-Fi, FCC, new RF to play with

The End

Thank you, thank you very much…