Stumbled across an interesting PhD thesis on the history of "British Computer Networks and the Internet": https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf #retronetworking #retrocomputing #telecoms
@LaF0rge Interesting read (I've only skimmed it so far) - but I think it downplays the subversive role played by UCL and Kent University who provided Internet access over x25 - allowing institutions who were obliged to buy x25 to tunnel TCP/IP over it and connect to the wider internet via leased lines from those institutions to the USA.
Kent went so far as to offer service to commercial research partners for a fee. (1986 perhaps?)
@steely_glint @LaF0rge Peter Kirstein, mentioned in there was great like that at negotiating and expanding access. A more recent history of that time (and early UK internet in 1973) is in his memoirs:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/computer-science/about/about-peter-kirstein
