There was a time when only institutions were on the internet. Eventually one could get dial-up connection to a commercial entity. NYC's had an early commercial service provided by PANIX (Public Access Unix) and the San Francisco bay area had the Well.
This was just a terminal connection where one could connect to other hosts on the internet through a dial-up connection. The modem would connect to a computer that had a route to an internet gateway. PANIX provided a Unix user account one could dial into. One didn't need an IP address to get on the internet. The difference was that an internet host couldn't find/connect to the terminal one was browsing on. There was no "addressability". If one downloaded a file from the internet it didn't end up on the machine one was using. The file ended up in a directory on the computer one was dialed into. The second step of retrieving the file involved downloading the file from your home directory on the Unix machine one was dialed into. In my case I think I needed a modem that supported the Zmodem protocol.
Eventual the dial-up providers were able to provide IP addresses using the SLIP (serial link IP). Once one had an IP the machine was on equal footing of all the other internet hosts. The computers could exchange information directly. This provided an easy way for a web browser to directly connect from the machine one was using and the host one was connected to. This is when graphical browser became available to everyone with an IP address. The graphics became inline and could be rendered directly on the client.
I believe there were ways prior to this to inline render graphics I never experienced them. AOL used to be a closed network with graphics and no internet gateway. CompuServe may have been similar. I never used either of those systems.
Outside of my college's library connection I only accessed the internet through PANIX until the internet boom. I learned about PANIX through an ad in the back of Computer Shopper.
Mosaic, the first graphical browser was developed by National Center for Supercomputing Applications. They were of course not bound by dial-up or similar and probably didn't care for commercial offerings of connectivity in their priorities in development.
And before it, slip had been available and standardized for some time.
I would say what drove the adoption of commercial services was the graphical web, not the other way around.
I think the point I would want to make is the commercial availability of IP addresses drove the graphical browser adoption.
I read about graphical browsers in MacWeek in an article about SoundWire. This was a website that was selling music on the web. I believe fulfillment was through snailmail. There headquarters were in a Brooklyn apartment. I somehow contacted the owner (Joe a friend of Dang) and took the subway to his apartment to see a graphical browser in action. I don't know how long it took to actually get my own IP address but I know it took me a few days to get a MacPPP connection to actually work over slip.
That implies that you got on the bandwagon because it was a graphical web? At my department in Sweden it was an overnight adoption when we found Mosaic.
And I can see you struggle to get PPP to work over slip!
Prior to the Mosaic I thought Gopher was superior to a text based WWW. Once ISDN became available I used an Ascend Pipeline 50 and that made IP addresses available across an entire network. The office I was working at also immediately adopted Mosaic/Netscape at that time. Getting PPP to work was definitely heavy lifting for me. Getting an IP address as an individual was difficult in the early days.
There was a time when only institutions were on the internet. Eventually one could get dial-up connection to a commercial entity. NYC's had an early commercial service provided by PANIX (Public Access Unix) and the San Francisco bay area had the Well.
This was just a terminal connection where one could connect to other hosts on the internet through a dial-up connection. The modem would connect to a computer that had a route to an internet gateway. PANIX provided a Unix user account one could dial into. One didn't need an IP address to get on the internet. The difference was that an internet host couldn't find/connect to the terminal one was browsing on. There was no "addressability". If one downloaded a file from the internet it didn't end up on the machine one was using. The file ended up in a directory on the computer one was dialed into. The second step of retrieving the file involved downloading the file from your home directory on the Unix machine one was dialed into. In my case I think I needed a modem that supported the Zmodem protocol.
Eventual the dial-up providers were able to provide IP addresses using the SLIP (serial link IP). Once one had an IP the machine was on equal footing of all the other internet hosts. The computers could exchange information directly. This provided an easy way for a web browser to directly connect from the machine one was using and the host one was connected to. This is when graphical browser became available to everyone with an IP address. The graphics became inline and could be rendered directly on the client.
I believe there were ways prior to this to inline render graphics I never experienced them. AOL used to be a closed network with graphics and no internet gateway. CompuServe may have been similar. I never used either of those systems.
Outside of my college's library connection I only accessed the internet through PANIX until the internet boom. I learned about PANIX through an ad in the back of Computer Shopper.
Mosaic, the first graphical browser was developed by National Center for Supercomputing Applications. They were of course not bound by dial-up or similar and probably didn't care for commercial offerings of connectivity in their priorities in development.
And before it, slip had been available and standardized for some time.
I would say what drove the adoption of commercial services was the graphical web, not the other way around.
I think the point I would want to make is the commercial availability of IP addresses drove the graphical browser adoption.
I read about graphical browsers in MacWeek in an article about SoundWire. This was a website that was selling music on the web. I believe fulfillment was through snailmail. There headquarters were in a Brooklyn apartment. I somehow contacted the owner (Joe a friend of Dang) and took the subway to his apartment to see a graphical browser in action. I don't know how long it took to actually get my own IP address but I know it took me a few days to get a MacPPP connection to actually work over slip.
That implies that you got on the bandwagon because it was a graphical web? At my department in Sweden it was an overnight adoption when we found Mosaic.
And I can see you struggle to get PPP to work over slip!
Prior to the Mosaic I thought Gopher was superior to a text based WWW. Once ISDN became available I used an Ascend Pipeline 50 and that made IP addresses available across an entire network. The office I was working at also immediately adopted Mosaic/Netscape at that time. Getting PPP to work was definitely heavy lifting for me. Getting an IP address as an individual was difficult in the early days.