Digex

1
Digex At the dawn of the commercial Internet

• Doug Mohney
• Digex Employee 10 October 1993
• DEFCON 12 31 July 2004, 1100

2
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)

3
Why should you care?

• Those who forget the past are condemned to
  repeat it
• Basement startup in 1991 Literally!
• IPOed in 1996, bought in 1997
• IPOed AGAIN in 1999
• Bought by WorldCom for billions before dot.bomb
  hit
• History starting to repeat with WISPs

4
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

5
Digexs 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

6
Have you seen this man?(picture via Google)
7
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

8
Digex - Pre93

• Incorporated 1990
• Was going to be a e-mail exchange
• Everyone was an island AOL, MCI, Compuerve,
  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

9
Above the Chinese Restaurant (As the Gods
Intended) - 1993-1994
10
Now and then 94 vs 04

• 28.8Kbps modem
• T-3 (45Mbps) ANS
• T3 delivered on fiber
• Fiber rare, but growing
• 623 web servers
• Whats 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
• Grandmas got a web site
• P4, AMD-64
• Linux, Windows XP
• All commercial
• Wired mainstream
• Most homes ditching 2nd lines for cell phones,
  broadband

11
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 govt
• T1 was Big Deal
• PSInet, UUnet had natl 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.

12
Two key characters in 93

• Ed Kern
• One-time doorman for 930 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

13
Ed and Dave
14
Digex in 1993

• October 10 people, December nearly 20
• RBOCs (ILECs now) didnt 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 couldnt 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

15
1993 DCs 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

16
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

17
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

18
Initial customers

• ALAWASH.org VERY first paying host
• American Librarian Association They wanted
  user_at_alawash.org e-mail
• At that time, World Wide What?
• MTV.COM
• Very first entertainment host on the Net
• Freaked the Net Purists out

19
Adam Curry The Internet Cassandra
20
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 Currys AmEx information Priceless ?
• Curry got mtv.com from Viacom
• Viacom wanted pay-per-view model
• Agreed to Experiment

21
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)

22
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 Currys 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

23
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

24
cia.gov

• Agency didnt 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.

25
Mike Doughney (Left, not right)
26
peta.org Mike Doughneys 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

27
Where did DIGEX go from there?

• IPO in 1996
• Sold to Intermedia Communications in 1997 for
  150 million cash 600employees
• 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

28
Digex Chains of ownership

• Leased line group
• Digex --gt Intermedia/Digex --gt Allegiance Telecom
  --gt XO Communications
• Server group
• Digex -gt Intermedia/Digex -gt Digex(IPO) -gt
  WorldCom/MCI

29
Digex, MCIs property 2004
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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

31
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

32
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 Hmmlessons 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 its in the domain

33
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

34
The End

• Thank you, thank you very much