ALternatives to EMail

there were a large variety of value added networks (VANs) that sprung up ... some as early as the 70s ... but lots in the 90s ... that had all sorts of proprietary formats for conveying information. the existance of some of this VANs contributed to the EDI standardization efforts.

the proliferation of the internet pretty much turned the VANs of the 70s and 80s into dinosaurs.

however, there are issues with social engineering and hostile intent when there is relatively free any-to-any connectivity across the whole world.

note that the internal network

was larger than the internet

from just about the beginning until sometime mid-85.

there was also bitnet and earn which was larger than "internet" (more nodes) during a period in the early 80s. note that while bitnet-earn used similar technology to that used in the internal network ... they were considered totally separate networks (the count of nodes were in the two networks were total different).

the internal network also evolved its own information distribution ala usenet ... a portion of that appeared in bitnet-earn as "listserv" and somewhat exists today in the usenet bit.listserv.* group hierarchy.

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