Tymshare
Encyclopedia
Tymshare, Inc. was headquartered in Cupertino, California from 1964 to 1984.
It was a well-known timesharing service and third-party hardware maintenance company throughout its history and competed with companies such as Four Phase, Compuserve
, and Digital Equipment Corporation
(DEC, Digital). Tymshare developed or acquired innovative technologies, including data networking (Tymnet
), electronic data interchange
(EDI), credit card and payment processing (TTS, Western29), telecommunications provisioning (COEES), office automation (August, Augment
) and database technology (Magnum
).
The computing platforms included the XDS 940 (Tymcom-IX), XDS Sigma 7, DEC PDP-10 models KA, KI, KL and KS (Tymcom-X/XX, Tenex, August, Tops-20), XKL Toad-1, IBM 360 & 370 (VM, MVS, GNOSIS
) servers.
Divisions:
In 1984 Tymshare was acquired by McDonnell Douglas
, restructured, split up and portions were resold, spun off, and merged with other companies from 1984 through 2004 when most of its legacy network was finally shut down. Islands of its network technology continued as part of EDI, at least into 2008.
Rights to use technology developed by Tymshare is currently held by Boeing
, British Telecom (BT), Verizon, and AT&T
due to the acquisitions and mergers from 1984 through 2005. (Note: McDonnell Douglas was acquired by Boeing).
940 computers; access was via direct dial-up to the computers. In 1968, it purchased Dial Data, another time-sharing service bureau.
In 1968, Ann & Norm Hardy, Bill Frantz, Joe Rinde, and LaRoy Tymes developed the idea of using remote sites with minicomputers to communicate with the mainframes. The minicomputers would serve as the network's nodes, running a program called a "Supervisor" to route data. In November 1971, the first Tymnet Supervisor program became operational. Written in assembly code by LaRoy Tymes for the SDS 940, with architectural design contributions from Norman Hardy, the "Supervisor" was the beginning of the Tymnet network. The Varian
620i was also used for the TYMNET nodes. During those first years, Tymshare and its direct customers were the network's only users.
It soon became apparent that the SDS 940 could not keep up with the rapid growth of the network. In 1972, Joseph Rinde joined the Tymnet group and began porting the Supervisor code to the 32-bit Interdata 7/32
, as the 8/32 was not yet ready. In 1973, the 8/32 became available, but the performance was disappointing and a crash-effort was made to develop a machine that could run Rinde's Supervisor.
In 1974, a second, more efficient version of the Supervisor software became operational. The new Tymnet "Engine" software was used on both the Supervisor machines and on the nodes.
After the migration to Interdata, they started developing Tymnet on the PDP-10
. Tymshare sold a copy of the Tymnet network software to TRW
, who created their own private network, TRWNET.
In the 1970s, Tymshare, which had used Digital Equipment's operating system TOPS-10
for its PDP-10s, began independent work on the OS for their systems, called it TYMCOM-X, and implemented a file system that supported random access, paging with working sets, and spawnable processes. The OS work was done by a group of eight people: Bill Weiher, Vance Socci, Allen Ginzburg, Karen Kolling, Art Atkinson, Gary Morgenthaler (founder of the company that produced IDRIS
), Todd Corenson and Murray Bowles. Most Tymnet development was then done on TYMCOM-X.
Tymes and Rinde then developed Tymnet II. Tymnet II ran in parallel with the original network, which continued to run on the Varian machines until it was phased out over a period of several years. Tymnet II's different method of constructing virtual circuits allowed for much better scalability.
In 1984 Tymnet was bought by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as part of the acquisition of Tymshare. The company was renamed McDonnell Douglas Tymshare, and began a major reorganization. A year later, McDonnell Douglas (MD) split Tymshare into several separate operating companies: MD Network Systems Company, MD Field Service Company, MD RCS, MD "xxx" and many more. (This is sometimes referred to the Alphabet Soup phase of the company). At this point, Tymnet had outlived its parent company Tymshare.
McDonnell Douglas acquired Microdata and created McDonnell Douglas Information Systems Group (MDISC), expecting to turn Microdata's desktop and server systems along with Tymshare's servers and Tymnet data network into a major player in the Information Services market. Microdata's systems were integrated into many parts of McDonnell Douglas, but Tymnet never was. MDC really did not seem to understand the telecommunications market. After five years, peace was breaking out in many places in the world and McDonnell Douglas sold off MDNSC and MDFSC at a profit for much needed cash.
On July 30, 1989 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, it was announced that British Telecom was purchasing McDonnell Douglas Network Systems Company, and McDonnell Douglas Field Service Company was being spun off as a start-up called NovaDyne.
McDonnell Douglas was later acquired itself by Boeing. British Telecom (BT) wanted to expand and the acquisition of Tymnet which was already a worldwide data network helped to achieve that goal. On November 17, 1989 MDNSC officially became BT Tymnet with its headquarters in San Jose, California. BT brought with it the idea of continuous development with teams in America, Europe, and Asia-pacific all working together on the same projects. BT renamed the Tymnet services, Global Network Services (GNS).
British Telecom brought new life to the company with development of hardware and software for the Tymnet data network using contacts BT already had with telecommunication hardware vendors. There was a trial of "next-generation" nodes scattered throughout the network, called "TURBO engine nodes" based on the Motorola 68000
family. In the mid to late '80s, serious node-code development was migrated from the PDP-10s to UNIX
. Sun-3
(based on the Motorola 68000) and later Sun-4
(SPARC based) workstations and servers were purchased from Sun Microsystems
, though the majority of PDP-10s were still around in the early '90s for legacy code, as well as documentation storage. Eventually, all of the code development sources were on the Sun-4s, and the development tools (NAD, etc.) had been ported to SunOS
.
Another project begun a few months before the BT purchase was to migrate the Tymnet code repository from the PDP-10s to Sun systems. The new servers were dubbed the Code Generation Systems or CGS. They were initially six Sun-3/280 servers upgraded eventually to two Sun-4/690 servers for redundancy. A second pair of servers for catastrophic failover was also installed in Malvern, Pennsylvania and later moved to Norristown, Pennsylvania as part of later site consolidation efforts. After the migration, these servers managed source code and binary images for more than 6600 nodes and 38,000 customer interfaces worldwide.
Tymnet was still growing, and at several times reached its peak capacity when some of its customers held network intensive events. One of these of note was a live, on-line presentation and chat on America On-Line
(AOL) with Michael Jackson
. Tymnet usage statistics showed AOL's call capacity was greater than its maximum volume for the duration of the event.
(MCI) negotiated what they called the "Deal of the Century", where MCI would take ownership of the US-based portions of Tymnet and they would create a joint venture called "Concert". (The joint venture was called "NewCo" for more than a year while they decided on a name). Concert was also aligned with another acquisition of BT, called Synchordia which was headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Tymnet was then referred to as: The Packet network, the BT/MCI network and Concert Packet-switching Services (CPS). At first, MCI only wanted to use the POPs or points of presence that Tymnet had because there were locations in over 150 cities in the US giving MCI more locations from which to provide local service. As MCI cut away at Tymnet, expecting it to die, it became a cash cow that just wouldn't go away.
In May 1994, there were still three DEC KL-10s under TYMCOM-X. At this time, the network had approximately 5000 nodes in 30 foreign countries. A variety of protocols can be run over a single packet-switching-network, and Tymnet's most-used protocols were X.25
, asynchronous terminal and host (ATI/AHI), and SNA.
BT and Concert also continued to develop the network, and after the failure of the "Turbo nodes" to take off, decided to have an outside company add Tymnet protocols to existing hardware used in their frame relay
network. Telematics International developed a subset of the Tymnet protocols to run on their ACP/PCP nodes. The Telematics nodes were connected in a mesh network (every node logically connected to every other node) via frame-relay and appeared to Tymnet as super-nodes that were directly connected to as many as 44 other super-nodes interconnecting most of Europe, Asia and the Americas as a high speed data network.
MCI took a different direction and looked to migrate the network protocols to run over TCP/IP and use Sun Microsystems
SPARC
technology. The supervisor technology was rewritten in C to run as standard UNIX applications under Sun's Solaris operating system
. Funding for this project was at a minimum but the Tymnet engineers believed it was a superior method and proceeded anyway.
Times were changing and the Internet
and World Wide Web
were becoming a practical and even important part of corporate and personal life. Tymnet technology needed improvements to keep pace with TCP/IP and other internet protocols. Both BT and MCI decided not to compete with the internet, but to convert their customer base to IP based networks and technologies. However, the Tymnet network was still bringing in lots of cash (in some cases more than current IP based services), so both BT and MCI needed to keep their customers happy.
and MCI Worldcom began the process of unraveling and separating their extensive voice and data communications systems.
Concert created Project Leonardo to separate the BT and MCI Worldcom voice and data networks. At times over the next five years, advancements were made or stalled due to BT and MCI management negotiating and renegotiating the terms of their contractual obligations to each other made during the alliance. At times, things came to a standstill, or decisions made were reversed, and some reversed again at a later time. Parts of the project were to migrate customers from X.25 to IP based networks, while others created a duplicate set of services so that both Concert and MCI could separately continue to run and manage their own portions of the network. Accounting data for network usage was also shared by the two companies and had to be separated before clients could be billed properly.
alliance between BT and AT&T, moving the headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia. This alliance did not help the negotiations between BT and MCI Worldcom as their partners from MCI and AT&T were corporate enemies. For Tymnet, the data network portion of the split, and the "CPS Leonardo" project, the split was never fully realized. Instead, MCI Worldcom completed their migration of services from Tymnet to IP based services in March 2003 and disconnected their supervisor nodes and their portion of the network on March 31, 2003.
BT continued to run the network using their own supervisor and other utility nodes until February 2004 when their last customer was able to move all of its customers to other access services. BT and AT&T dissolved their Concert alliance on September 30, 2003 and the remaining BT assets were combined with BTNA assets into BT Americas, Inc. Sometime in early March 2004, without ceremony, BT Americas disconnected the last two remaining Tymnet supervisors from the network, effectively shutting it down.
MCI Worldcom still had a profitable segment of its business based on EDI technology. This technology used Tymnet to interface between Tandem
computers using a non-standard x.25 interface and a high speed bi-synch modem used by the EDI customers. Prior to shutting down the MCI/Worldcom portion of Tymnet, they adapted the Tymnet Engine node code to permit internal connections between the x.25 interface and the high-speed modem interface without the aid of the Tymnet Supervisor. Once this was tested and deployed, they were able to shut down the rest of the MCI/Worldcom portion of Tymnet and continue to support their EDI customers. These "islands" of tymnet were still running 5 years later in 2008.
This scandal sent the stock price down to 0.10 (ten cents) per share, and Worldcom filed for bankruptcy. It came out of bankruptcy renamed as MCI several months later.
Shortly thereafter the name was change to AT&T Inc. to distinguish itself from AT&T Corp.
, formerly WorldCom, after SBC Communications agreed to acquire AT&T Corp. just a few weeks earlier.
Verizon was formed in 2000 when Bell Atlantic, one of the Regional Bell Operating Companies, merged with GTE
. Prior to its transformation into Verizon, Bell Atlantic had merged with another Regional Bell Operating Company, NYNEX
, in 1997
It was a well-known timesharing service and third-party hardware maintenance company throughout its history and competed with companies such as Four Phase, Compuserve
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
, and Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
(DEC, Digital). Tymshare developed or acquired innovative technologies, including data networking (Tymnet
Tymnet
Tymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in San Jose, California that used virtual call packet switched technology and X.25, SNA/SDLC, ASCII and BSC interfaces to connect host computers at thousands of large companies, educational institutions, and government agencies....
), electronic data interchange
Electronic Data Interchange
Electronic data interchange is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system, i.e...
(EDI), credit card and payment processing (TTS, Western29), telecommunications provisioning (COEES), office automation (August, Augment
NLS (computer system)
NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute during the 1960s...
) and database technology (Magnum
Magnum
Magnum may refer to several things:* Moses Magnum, a Marvel Comics villain*Magnum, P.I., a television series** Thomas Magnum, the lead character...
).
The computing platforms included the XDS 940 (Tymcom-IX), XDS Sigma 7, DEC PDP-10 models KA, KI, KL and KS (Tymcom-X/XX, Tenex, August, Tops-20), XKL Toad-1, IBM 360 & 370 (VM, MVS, GNOSIS
GNOSIS
GNOSIS is a capability-based operating system that was researched during the 1970s in Tymshare, Inc. It was based on the research of Norman Hardy, Dale E. Jordan, Bill Frantz, Charlie Landau, Jay Jonekait, et al. It provided a foundation for the development of future operating systems such as...
) servers.
Divisions:
- INSD - Information Services Division
- STD - Systems Technology Division
- DND - Data Networks Division
In 1984 Tymshare was acquired by McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It formed from a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas was based at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport...
, restructured, split up and portions were resold, spun off, and merged with other companies from 1984 through 2004 when most of its legacy network was finally shut down. Islands of its network technology continued as part of EDI, at least into 2008.
Rights to use technology developed by Tymshare is currently held by Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
, British Telecom (BT), Verizon, and AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
due to the acquisitions and mergers from 1984 through 2005. (Note: McDonnell Douglas was acquired by Boeing).
Beginnings: Tymshare
Tymshare was founded in 1964 by Tom O’Rourke and Dave Schmidt as a time sharing company, selling computer time and software packages for users. It had two SDS/XDSScientific Data Systems
Scientific Data Systems, or SDS, was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky, a veteran of Packard Bell and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was an early adopter of integrated circuits in computer design and the first to employ silicon...
940 computers; access was via direct dial-up to the computers. In 1968, it purchased Dial Data, another time-sharing service bureau.
In 1968, Ann & Norm Hardy, Bill Frantz, Joe Rinde, and LaRoy Tymes developed the idea of using remote sites with minicomputers to communicate with the mainframes. The minicomputers would serve as the network's nodes, running a program called a "Supervisor" to route data. In November 1971, the first Tymnet Supervisor program became operational. Written in assembly code by LaRoy Tymes for the SDS 940, with architectural design contributions from Norman Hardy, the "Supervisor" was the beginning of the Tymnet network. The Varian
Varian Data Machines
Varian Data Machines was a division of Varian Associates which sold minicomputers. It entered the market in 1966, but met stiff competition and was bought by Sperry Corporation in 1977....
620i was also used for the TYMNET nodes. During those first years, Tymshare and its direct customers were the network's only users.
It soon became apparent that the SDS 940 could not keep up with the rapid growth of the network. In 1972, Joseph Rinde joined the Tymnet group and began porting the Supervisor code to the 32-bit Interdata 7/32
Interdata 7/32 and 8/32
The Model 7/32 and Model 8/32 were 32-bit minicomputers developed by Interdata, Inc. of Oceanport, New Jersey during the 1970s. They are primarily remembered for being the first 32-bit minicomputers, and the first non-PDP computers to run Unix...
, as the 8/32 was not yet ready. In 1973, the 8/32 became available, but the performance was disappointing and a crash-effort was made to develop a machine that could run Rinde's Supervisor.
In 1974, a second, more efficient version of the Supervisor software became operational. The new Tymnet "Engine" software was used on both the Supervisor machines and on the nodes.
After the migration to Interdata, they started developing Tymnet on the PDP-10
PDP-10
The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
. Tymshare sold a copy of the Tymnet network software to TRW
TRW
TRW Inc. was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft,...
, who created their own private network, TRWNET.
In the 1970s, Tymshare, which had used Digital Equipment's operating system TOPS-10
TOPS-10
The TOPS-10 System was a computer operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation for the PDP-10 mainframe computer launched in 1967...
for its PDP-10s, began independent work on the OS for their systems, called it TYMCOM-X, and implemented a file system that supported random access, paging with working sets, and spawnable processes. The OS work was done by a group of eight people: Bill Weiher, Vance Socci, Allen Ginzburg, Karen Kolling, Art Atkinson, Gary Morgenthaler (founder of the company that produced IDRIS
Idris
Idris may refer to:* Idris, a fictional dragon in Ivor the Engine* Idris, the TARDIS personified in the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Wife"* Idris , giant and astronomer of Welsh tradition...
), Todd Corenson and Murray Bowles. Most Tymnet development was then done on TYMCOM-X.
Tymes and Rinde then developed Tymnet II. Tymnet II ran in parallel with the original network, which continued to run on the Varian machines until it was phased out over a period of several years. Tymnet II's different method of constructing virtual circuits allowed for much better scalability.
Tymnet, Inc. spun off
In about 1979, Tymnet Inc. was spun off from Tymshare Inc. to continue administration and operation of the network. The network continued to grow, and customers who owned their own host computers and wanted access to them from remote sites became interested in connecting their computers to the network. This led to the foundation of Tymnet as a wholly owned subsidiary of Tymshare to run a public network as a common carrier within the United States. This allowed users to connect their host computers and terminals to the network, and use the computers from remote sites or sell time on their computers to other users of the network, with Tymnet charging them for the use of the network.Tymshare sold to McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas TymshareIn 1984 Tymnet was bought by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as part of the acquisition of Tymshare. The company was renamed McDonnell Douglas Tymshare, and began a major reorganization. A year later, McDonnell Douglas (MD) split Tymshare into several separate operating companies: MD Network Systems Company, MD Field Service Company, MD RCS, MD "xxx" and many more. (This is sometimes referred to the Alphabet Soup phase of the company). At this point, Tymnet had outlived its parent company Tymshare.
McDonnell Douglas acquired Microdata and created McDonnell Douglas Information Systems Group (MDISC), expecting to turn Microdata's desktop and server systems along with Tymshare's servers and Tymnet data network into a major player in the Information Services market. Microdata's systems were integrated into many parts of McDonnell Douglas, but Tymnet never was. MDC really did not seem to understand the telecommunications market. After five years, peace was breaking out in many places in the world and McDonnell Douglas sold off MDNSC and MDFSC at a profit for much needed cash.
MDC Network Systems Company sold to British Telecom
BT Tymnet, BT North America, BTNAOn July 30, 1989 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, it was announced that British Telecom was purchasing McDonnell Douglas Network Systems Company, and McDonnell Douglas Field Service Company was being spun off as a start-up called NovaDyne.
McDonnell Douglas was later acquired itself by Boeing. British Telecom (BT) wanted to expand and the acquisition of Tymnet which was already a worldwide data network helped to achieve that goal. On November 17, 1989 MDNSC officially became BT Tymnet with its headquarters in San Jose, California. BT brought with it the idea of continuous development with teams in America, Europe, and Asia-pacific all working together on the same projects. BT renamed the Tymnet services, Global Network Services (GNS).
British Telecom brought new life to the company with development of hardware and software for the Tymnet data network using contacts BT already had with telecommunication hardware vendors. There was a trial of "next-generation" nodes scattered throughout the network, called "TURBO engine nodes" based on the Motorola 68000
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
family. In the mid to late '80s, serious node-code development was migrated from the PDP-10s to UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
. Sun-3
Sun-3
Sun-3 was the name given to a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9th, 1985. The Sun-3 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the...
(based on the Motorola 68000) and later Sun-4
Sun-4
Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RISC architecture in place of the 68k family...
(SPARC based) workstations and servers were purchased from Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, though the majority of PDP-10s were still around in the early '90s for legacy code, as well as documentation storage. Eventually, all of the code development sources were on the Sun-4s, and the development tools (NAD, etc.) had been ported to SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
.
Another project begun a few months before the BT purchase was to migrate the Tymnet code repository from the PDP-10s to Sun systems. The new servers were dubbed the Code Generation Systems or CGS. They were initially six Sun-3/280 servers upgraded eventually to two Sun-4/690 servers for redundancy. A second pair of servers for catastrophic failover was also installed in Malvern, Pennsylvania and later moved to Norristown, Pennsylvania as part of later site consolidation efforts. After the migration, these servers managed source code and binary images for more than 6600 nodes and 38,000 customer interfaces worldwide.
Tymnet was still growing, and at several times reached its peak capacity when some of its customers held network intensive events. One of these of note was a live, on-line presentation and chat on America On-Line
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
(AOL) with Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
. Tymnet usage statistics showed AOL's call capacity was greater than its maximum volume for the duration of the event.
MCI, NewCo, Concert
In 1993 BT and MCI CommunicationsMCI Communications
MCI Communications Corp. was an American telecommunications company that was instrumental in legal and regulatory changes that led to the breakup of the AT&T monopoly of American telephony and ushered in the competitive long-distance telephone industry. It was headquartered in Washington,...
(MCI) negotiated what they called the "Deal of the Century", where MCI would take ownership of the US-based portions of Tymnet and they would create a joint venture called "Concert". (The joint venture was called "NewCo" for more than a year while they decided on a name). Concert was also aligned with another acquisition of BT, called Synchordia which was headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Tymnet was then referred to as: The Packet network, the BT/MCI network and Concert Packet-switching Services (CPS). At first, MCI only wanted to use the POPs or points of presence that Tymnet had because there were locations in over 150 cities in the US giving MCI more locations from which to provide local service. As MCI cut away at Tymnet, expecting it to die, it became a cash cow that just wouldn't go away.
In May 1994, there were still three DEC KL-10s under TYMCOM-X. At this time, the network had approximately 5000 nodes in 30 foreign countries. A variety of protocols can be run over a single packet-switching-network, and Tymnet's most-used protocols were X.25
X.25
X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...
, asynchronous terminal and host (ATI/AHI), and SNA.
BT and Concert also continued to develop the network, and after the failure of the "Turbo nodes" to take off, decided to have an outside company add Tymnet protocols to existing hardware used in their frame relay
Frame relay
Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network technology that specifies the physical and logical link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology...
network. Telematics International developed a subset of the Tymnet protocols to run on their ACP/PCP nodes. The Telematics nodes were connected in a mesh network (every node logically connected to every other node) via frame-relay and appeared to Tymnet as super-nodes that were directly connected to as many as 44 other super-nodes interconnecting most of Europe, Asia and the Americas as a high speed data network.
MCI took a different direction and looked to migrate the network protocols to run over TCP/IP and use Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
technology. The supervisor technology was rewritten in C to run as standard UNIX applications under Sun's Solaris operating system
Solaris Operating System
Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....
. Funding for this project was at a minimum but the Tymnet engineers believed it was a superior method and proceeded anyway.
Times were changing and the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
were becoming a practical and even important part of corporate and personal life. Tymnet technology needed improvements to keep pace with TCP/IP and other internet protocols. Both BT and MCI decided not to compete with the internet, but to convert their customer base to IP based networks and technologies. However, the Tymnet network was still bringing in lots of cash (in some cases more than current IP based services), so both BT and MCI needed to keep their customers happy.
MCI, MCI Worldcom, Worldcom vs. BT, Concert
In 1997 talks were underway for BT to acquire MCI. The deal fell through, and in September, 1998 MCI was acquired by WorldCom after they made a better offer for the company. Actually, the WorldCom offer was nearly identical to the BT offer, but where BT planned to buy out MCI shares of stock, WorldCom offered a stock-swap which was more attractive to the stockholders. WorldCom took control in September 1998 and dissolved the BT/MCI alliance as of October 15, 1998.Concert - Headquarters in Reston, Virginia
With the alliance gone, BTBT Group
BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...
and MCI Worldcom began the process of unraveling and separating their extensive voice and data communications systems.
Concert created Project Leonardo to separate the BT and MCI Worldcom voice and data networks. At times over the next five years, advancements were made or stalled due to BT and MCI management negotiating and renegotiating the terms of their contractual obligations to each other made during the alliance. At times, things came to a standstill, or decisions made were reversed, and some reversed again at a later time. Parts of the project were to migrate customers from X.25 to IP based networks, while others created a duplicate set of services so that both Concert and MCI could separately continue to run and manage their own portions of the network. Accounting data for network usage was also shared by the two companies and had to be separated before clients could be billed properly.
Concert - BT+AT&T - Headquarters in Atlanta, Ga.
In 2000 BT then went searching for another alliance, and created a new ConcertConcert Communications Services
Concert Communications Services was a $1 billion joint venture, originally launched June 1994 by BT Group and MCI Communications. Portugal Telecom became a partner in 1997....
alliance between BT and AT&T, moving the headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia. This alliance did not help the negotiations between BT and MCI Worldcom as their partners from MCI and AT&T were corporate enemies. For Tymnet, the data network portion of the split, and the "CPS Leonardo" project, the split was never fully realized. Instead, MCI Worldcom completed their migration of services from Tymnet to IP based services in March 2003 and disconnected their supervisor nodes and their portion of the network on March 31, 2003.
BT continued to run the network using their own supervisor and other utility nodes until February 2004 when their last customer was able to move all of its customers to other access services. BT and AT&T dissolved their Concert alliance on September 30, 2003 and the remaining BT assets were combined with BTNA assets into BT Americas, Inc. Sometime in early March 2004, without ceremony, BT Americas disconnected the last two remaining Tymnet supervisors from the network, effectively shutting it down.
MCI Worldcom still had a profitable segment of its business based on EDI technology. This technology used Tymnet to interface between Tandem
Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum uptime and zero data loss. The company was founded in...
computers using a non-standard x.25 interface and a high speed bi-synch modem used by the EDI customers. Prior to shutting down the MCI/Worldcom portion of Tymnet, they adapted the Tymnet Engine node code to permit internal connections between the x.25 interface and the high-speed modem interface without the aid of the Tymnet Supervisor. Once this was tested and deployed, they were able to shut down the rest of the MCI/Worldcom portion of Tymnet and continue to support their EDI customers. These "islands" of tymnet were still running 5 years later in 2008.
Worldcom bankruptcy
Worldcom executives were involved in a financial scandal resulting in the CEO, Bernie Ebbers, to be ousted and later brought up on federal charges.This scandal sent the stock price down to 0.10 (ten cents) per share, and Worldcom filed for bankruptcy. It came out of bankruptcy renamed as MCI several months later.
AT&T sold to SBC
On January 31, 2005, SBC announced that it would purchase AT&T Corp. for more than $16 billion.Shortly thereafter the name was change to AT&T Inc. to distinguish itself from AT&T Corp.
MCI sold to Verizon
On February 14, 2005, Verizon agreed to acquire MCIMCI Inc.
MCI, Inc. is an American telecommunications subsidiary of Verizon Communications that is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia...
, formerly WorldCom, after SBC Communications agreed to acquire AT&T Corp. just a few weeks earlier.
Verizon was formed in 2000 when Bell Atlantic, one of the Regional Bell Operating Companies, merged with GTE
GTE
GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System....
. Prior to its transformation into Verizon, Bell Atlantic had merged with another Regional Bell Operating Company, NYNEX
NYNEX
NYNEX Corporation was a telephone company that served five New England states as well as most of New York state, except the Rochester area, from 1984 through 1997....
, in 1997
See also
- TymnetTymnetTymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in San Jose, California that used virtual call packet switched technology and X.25, SNA/SDLC, ASCII and BSC interfaces to connect host computers at thousands of large companies, educational institutions, and government agencies....
- British Telecom
- MCIMCI CommunicationsMCI Communications Corp. was an American telecommunications company that was instrumental in legal and regulatory changes that led to the breakup of the AT&T monopoly of American telephony and ushered in the competitive long-distance telephone industry. It was headquartered in Washington,...
- WorldCom
- AT&TAT&TAT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
- Verizon
- McDonnell DouglasMcDonnell DouglasMcDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It formed from a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas was based at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport...
- BoeingBoeingThe Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
- Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
- CompaqCompaqCompaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
- Hewlett-PackardHewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
- CompuserveCompuServeCompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
- TRWTRWTRW Inc. was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft,...
- TRWNET
- AOLAOLAOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
(America On Line) - NLSNLS (computer system)NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute during the 1960s...
- dBASEDBASEdBase II was the first widely used database management system for microcomputers. It was originally published by Ashton-Tate for CP/M, and later on ported to the Apple II and IBM PC under DOS...
- GNOSISGNOSISGNOSIS is a capability-based operating system that was researched during the 1970s in Tymshare, Inc. It was based on the research of Norman Hardy, Dale E. Jordan, Bill Frantz, Charlie Landau, Jay Jonekait, et al. It provided a foundation for the development of future operating systems such as...