[Gllug] Dealing with "Word-Only" organisations

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

On 14/11/10 11:14, John Winters wrote:
> On 05/11/10 20:14, general_email at technicalbloke.com wrote:
> [snip]
>    
>> I was quite young when the tories were in power last so I don't remember
>> their reign in any detail but I'd guess the most complex working IT
>> system they would have presided over (although developed under a labour
>> GPO) would have been Prestel which, at its peak, only consisted of 12
>> networked machines for the whole UK.
>>      
> "Networked" is stretching it a bit - they were linked together by 9.6k
> and 64k X.25 connections.  However the fact that just 12 machines could
> support the whole of the UK speaks volumes for how efficiently the
> software was written.  The whole of Australia was serviced by just two
> live systems (one running and one hot spare) situated in Melbourne.
>    

Yes, but do bear in mind in that context the whole of the UK was about 
1000 simultaneous users at peak time, I'd guess the modern internet 
would hit 10s of millions at some times of the day. Australia isn't 
exactly the most population dense part of the world either, it wouldn't 
have taken much to service half a dozen vic 20s! I hear internet service 
is still extremely patchy and slow in Australia (not to mention 
massively overpriced and censored).

Roger

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