@cjd That was de rigeur for me from 1980 to 1995. First uunet, with uucp as the primary engine. Then internet connections were peer to peer. First rs232 to a neighbor. A 24x7 phone call with modems. Later, coax, ethernet, wifi.

It was a sad day when the world was sold on centralized internet access starting around 1996. We still kept up peer to peer connections via tunnels and later VPN tunnels.