>"UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks.

[...]

>"History

Background

Prior to its founding, access to Usenet and e-mail exchange from non-ARPANET sites was accomplished using a cooperative network of systems running the UUCP protocol over POTS lines.

[PDS: POTS = "Plain Old Telephone Service" (via analog copper telephone lines and modem, aka (acoustic) "modulator/demodulator"). To put this in perspective, most people today have some form of always-on megabit broadband (1,000,000+ bits per second) -- whereas most modems of that era ran at 300, 1200, 2400 bits per second, and (as the years progressed) later modems ran at up to 56,000 bits per second -- but most of the "network" (if it can be called that, because at any given point in time some links were active and some were disconnected) was implemented by slower modems -- these were orders of magnitude less speed than what people have today -- or will have in the future...]

>"During the mid-1980s, growth of this network began to put considerable strain on the resources voluntarily provided by the larger UUCP hubs.

This prompted Rick Adams, a system administrator at the Center for Seismic Studies, to explore the possibilities of providing these services commercially as a way to reduce the burden on the existing hubs.

Early existence

With funding in the form of a loan from Usenix, UUNET Communications Services began operations in 1987 as a non-profit corporation providing

Usenet feeds, e-mail exchange and access to a large repository of software source code and related information.

The venture proved successful and shed its non-profit status within two years. At the same time, the company changed its name to UUNET Technologies. In 1990, UUNET launched its AlterNet service, which provided access to an IP backbone independent of the constraints of those operated by the government. That network lives on in a much larger form and serves as the core of a set of products which include access at dial-up and broadband speeds as well as web hosting. UUNET raised $6 Million from Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures and New Enterprise Associates in 1993 and $8.2 million in 1996 for expanding its network and hiring new executives with experience in marketing.[1]

In the mid-1990s, UUNET was the fastest-growing ISP, outpacing MCI and Sprint.

At its peak, Internet traffic was briefly doubling every few months, which translates to 10x growth each year. However, the continuing UUNET claims of such growth (long after it had fallen to lower, albeit still substantial levels) artificially fueled the expectations of the dot-com and telecom companies of the late 1990s, leading to the dot-com bubble and crash in 2000/2001.[2]"

Related: Usenet / Usenet News:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

>"Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/) is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.[1] Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that became widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.[2][3]

A major difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of news servers that store and forward messages to one another via "news feeds". Individual users may read messages from and post messages to a local server, which may be operated by anyone.

Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked world

, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ", "flame", sockpuppet, and "spam".[4]

In the early 1990s, shortly

before access to the Internet became commonly affordable

, Usenet connections via Fidonet's dial-up BBS networks

made long-distance or worldwide discussions and other communication widespread, not needing a server, just (local) telephone service.[5]

The name Usenet comes from the term "users network".[2] The first Usenet group was NET.general, which quickly became net.general.[6]"

Also related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system