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86-400: CompuServe, Inc. ( CompuServe Information Service, Inc. , also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi ) was an American online service , the first major commercial one in the world. It opened in 1969 as a timesharing and remote access service marketed to corporations. After a successful 1979 venture selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system

172-427: A Japanese-language version of CompuServe named NIFTY-Serve in 1989. In 1993, CompuServe Hong Kong was initiated as a joint venture with Hutchison Telecom and was able to acquire 50,000 customers before the dial-up ISP frenzy. Between 1994 and 1995 Fujitsu and CompuServe co-developed WorldsAway , an interactive virtual environment . As of 2014 the original virtual environment that began on CompuServe in 1995, known as

258-527: A Videotex service requiring a dedicated terminal, introduced software allowing home computer owners access. Beginning in the mid-1980s graphics based online services such as PlayNET , Prodigy , and Quantum Link (aka Q-Link) were developed. Quantum Link, which was based on Commodore-only Playnet software, later developed AppleLink Personal Edition, PC-Link (based on Tandy's DeskMate), and Promenade (for IBM), all of which (including Q-Link) were later combined as America Online . These online services presaged

344-430: A 10-Mbit line entering a network, STDM can be used to provide 178 terminals with a dedicated 56k connection (178 * 56k = 9.96 Mb). A more common use however is to only grant the bandwidth when that much is needed. STDM does not reserve a time slot for each terminal, rather it assigns a slot when the terminal is requiring data to be sent or received. In its primary form, TDM is used for circuit mode communication with

430-476: A 24-channel time-division multiplexer was placed in commercial operation by RCA Communications to send audio information between RCA's facility on Broad Street, New York, their transmitting station at Rocky Point and the receiving station at Riverhead, Long Island, New York. The communication was by a microwave system throughout Long Island. The experimental TDM system was developed by RCA Laboratories between 1950 and 1953. In 1962, engineers from Bell Labs developed

516-431: A GUI and thus unlike CompuServe's early GUI-based software, these online services provided a more robust GUI interface. Early GUI-based online service interfaces offered little in the way of detailed graphics such as photographs or pictures. Largely they were limited to simple icons and buttons and text. As modem speed increased it became more feasible to offer images and other more complicated graphics to users thus providing

602-487: A WH Smith book from the CompuServe facility. Approximately 1,000,000 UK customers had access to the shops at that time and it was British retailers' first major exposure to the medium. Other retailers joined the service soon after and included Sainsbury's Wine and Jaguar Cars (branded lifestyle goods). CompuServe UK commissioned writer Sue Schofield to produce a 'retail' pack including a new UK CompuServe Book and

688-566: A book from the WH Smith shop. This was a repeat of the first formal test of the service on February 9, 1995, which included secure payment and subsequent fulfilment of the order by Royal Mail postal delivery. Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), the UK's industry association for e-retailing, believes that the UK's first national shopping service secure online transaction was the purchase of

774-525: A desktop application to connect online and check emails. In April 1995, CompuServe had more than three million members, still the largest online service provider, and began its NetLauncher service, providing WWW access capability via Spry , a Mosaic browser. AOL, however, introduced a much cheaper flat-rate, unlimited-time, advertisement-funded price plan in the US to compete with CompuServe's hourly charges. In conjunction with AOL's marketing campaigns, this caused

860-417: A fixed number of channels and constant bandwidth per channel. Bandwidth reservation distinguishes time-division multiplexing from statistical multiplexing such as statistical time-division multiplexing. In pure TDM, the time slots are recurrent in a fixed order and pre-allocated to the channels, rather than scheduled on a packet-by-packet basis. In dynamic TDMA , a scheduling algorithm dynamically reserves

946-582: A frame carried a single telephone call in turn. Thus each of 24 voice calls was encoded into two constant-bit-rate streams of 64 kbit/s (one in each direction), and converted back to conventional analog signals by the complementary equipment on the receiving end of the trunk line. Time-division multiplexing is used primarily for digital signals but may be applied in analog multiplexing , as above, in which two or more signals or bit streams are transferred appearing simultaneously as sub-channels in one communication channel, but are physically taking turns on

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1032-450: A free CD-ROM containing the CIS software to access the service. CompuServe, with its closed private network system, was slow to react to the rapid development of the open World Wide Web and it was not long before major UK retailers started to develop their own websites independently of CompuServe. The original CompuServe user identifiers consisted of seven octal digits in the form 7xxxx,xx –

1118-404: A legacy of PDP-10 architecture – (later eight and nine octal digits in the form 7xxxx,xxx and 7xxxx,xxxx and finally ten octal digits in the form 1xxxxx,xxxx) that were generated in advance and issued on printed "Snap Paks". From 1989, CompuServe users had email access to the internet, using their user ID in the form xxxxx.xxxx@compuserve.com – where the comma in the original ID was replaced with

1204-425: A new frame, starting with the second sample, byte or data block from sub-channel 1, etc. TDM can be further extended into the time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme, where several stations connected to the same physical medium, for example sharing the same frequency channel, can communicate. Application examples include: In circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN), it

1290-461: A nicer look to their services Some of the resources and services online services have provided access to include message boards, chat services, electronic mail, file archives, current news and weather, online encyclopedias, airline reservations, and online games. Major online service providers like Compuserve also served as a way for software and hardware manufacturers to provide online support for their products via forums and file download areas within

1376-453: A number of online games . Around 1981, CompuServe introduced its CompuServe B protocol , a file-transfer protocol , allowing users to send files to each other. This was later expanded to the better-performance B+ version, intended for downloads from CIS itself. Although the B+ protocol was not widely supported by other software, it was used by default for some time by CIS itself. The B+ protocol

1462-463: A period. In 1996, users were allowed to create an alias for their internet e-mail address, which could also be used for a personal webpage; the longest-term members were allowed first choice of the new addresses. In 1998, users were offered the option of switching their mailbox to a newer system that provided POP3 access via the internet, so that any internet email program could be used. Current CompuServe email addresses look like XXXXXX@cs.com for users of

1548-464: A search request".) In 1992, CompuServe hosted the first known WYSIWYG e-mail content and forum posts. Fonts, colors and emoticons were encoded into 7-bit text-based messages via the third party product NavCIS (by Dvorak Development) operating with the operating systems DOS and Windows 3.1 , and later, Windows 95 . NavCIS included features for offline work, similar to offline readers used with bulletin board systems , allowing users to connect to

1634-411: A self-discovery mode. When a new switch was added to the network by connecting it to a neighbor via a leased telephone circuit, the new switch was discovered and absorbed into the network without explicit configuration. To change the network configuration, all that was needed was to add or remove connections, and the network would automatically reconfigure. The second feature implemented by Adaptive Routing

1720-614: A series of popular online games , including MegaWars III and Island of Kesmai . It introduced the GIF format for pictures and a system for exchanging GIF files. In 1994, it was described as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the others are Prodigy and America Online )". They remained a major influence through the mid-1990s, but the rise of the internet and more modern systems like AOL led to it losing marketshare. In 1997, 17 years after H&R Block had acquired it,

1806-466: A service providing application programs. The first of these new executives was Robert Tillson, who quit Service Bureau Corporation (then a subsidiary of Control Data Corporation , but originally formed as a division of IBM ) to become CompuServe's Executive Vice President of Marketing. He then recruited Charles McCall (who succeeded Jeff Wilkins as CEO, and later became CEO of the medical information company HBO & Co. ), Maury Cox (who became CEO after

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1892-482: A significant loss of customers until CompuServe responded with a similar plan of its own at $ 24.95 per month in late 1997. As the World Wide Web grew in popularity with the general public, company after company terminated their once-busy CompuServe customer assistance forums to offer customer assistance to a larger audience directly through their own company websites , an activity which the CompuServe forums of

1978-647: A single transmission line. In the 1870s, Émile Baudot developed a time-multiplexing system of multiple Hughes telegraph machines. In 1944, the British Army used the Wireless Set No. 10 to multiplex 10 telephone conversations over a microwave relay as far as 50 miles. This allowed commanders in the field to keep in contact with the staff in England across the English Channel . In 1953,

2064-489: A sub-brand of AOL. Oath was then divested as the new Yahoo! company in 2021. CompuServe was initiated during 1969 as Compu-Serv Network, Inc. in Columbus, Ohio , as a subsidiary of Golden United Life Insurance. Though Golden United founder Harry Gard Sr.'s son-in-law Jeffrey Wilkins is widely miscredited as the first president of CompuServe, its first president was actually John R. Goltz. Wilkins replaced Goltz as CEO within

2150-442: A subset of the system's functionality. In response, CIS decreased its hourly rates on several occasions. Subsequently, AOL switched to a monthly subscription instead of hourly rates, so for active users AOL was much less expensive. By late 1994, CompuServe was offering "unlimited use of the standard services (including news, sports, weather) ... and limited electronic mail" for $ 8.95 per month – what The New York Times called "probably

2236-439: A user, of material of the user's choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received. (B) As used in this section, other than subsection (a), the term "service provider" means a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefore, and includes an entity described in subparagraph (A). These broad definitions make it possible for numerous web businesses to benefit from

2322-531: Is called higher order multiplexing . Higher order multiplexing is accomplished by multiplexing the standard TDM frames. For example, a European 120 channel TDM frame is formed by multiplexing four standard 30 channel TDM frames. At each higher order multiplex, four TDM frames from the immediate lower order are combined, creating multiplexes with a bandwidth of n *64 kbit/s, where n = 120, 480, 1920, etc. There are three types of synchronous TDM: T1, SONET/SDH, and ISDN. Plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH)

2408-578: Is considered to be a transmission protocol (Layer 1 in the OSI Reference Model ), it also performs some switching functions, as stated in the third bullet point requirement listed above. The most common SDH Networking functions are these: SDH network functions are connected using high-speed optic fibre. Optic fibre uses light pulses to transmit data and is therefore extremely fast. Modern optic fibre transmission makes use of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) where signals transmitted across

2494-481: Is desirable to transmit multiple subscriber calls over the same transmission medium to effectively utilize the bandwidth of the medium. TDM allows transmitting and receiving telephone switches to create channels ( tributaries ) within a transmission stream. A standard DS0 voice signal has a data bit rate of 64 kbit/s. A TDM circuit runs at a much higher signal bandwidth, permitting the bandwidth to be divided into time frames (time slots) for each voice signal which

2580-598: Is multiplexed onto the line by the transmitter. If the TDM frame consists of n voice frames, the line bandwidth is n *64 kbit/s. Each voice time slot in the TDM frame is called a channel. In European systems, standard TDM frames contain 30 digital voice channels (E1), and in American systems (T1), they contain 24 channels. Both standards also contain extra bits (or bit time slots) for signaling and synchronization bits. Multiplexing more than 24 or 30 digital voice channels

2666-402: Is noticed. Time-division multiplexer Time-division multiplexing ( TDM ) is a method of transmitting and receiving independent signals over a common signal path by means of synchronized switches at each end of the transmission line so that each signal appears on the line only a fraction of time according to agreed rules, e.g. with each transmitter working in turn. It can be used when

CompuServe - Misplaced Pages Continue

2752-581: The Dreamscape , was still operating. During the late 1980s, it was possible to log on to CompuServe via worldwide X.25 packet switching networks, which bridged onto CompuServe's existing US-based network. It gradually introduced its own direct dial-up access network in many countries, a more economical solution. With its network expansion, CompuServe also extended the marketing of its commercial services, opening branches in London and Munich. CompuServe

2838-605: The Internet and World Wide Web , the United Kingdom's first national major-brands online shopping service was developed by the UK subsidiary of CompuServe/CIS as part of its proprietary closed-system collection of consumer services. Andrew Gray initiated CompuServe UK's operations as the European subsidiary of the US company during the late 1980s and later became the company's European general manager, while David Gilroy

2924-716: The World Wide Web . (Like the Web, many forums were managed by independent producers who then administered the forum and recruited moderators, termed sysops .) Among these were many in which computer hardware and software companies offered customer assistance . This broadened the audience from primarily business users to the technical " geek " crowd, some of whom had earlier used Byte Magazine ' s Bix online service . There were special forums, special groups, but many had "relatively large premiums" (as did "some premium data bases" with charges of "$ 7.50 each time you enter

3010-445: The bit rate of the transmission medium exceeds that of the signal to be transmitted. This form of signal multiplexing was developed in telecommunications for telegraphy systems in the late 19th century but found its most common application in digital telephony in the second half of the 20th century. Time-division multiplexing was first developed for applications in telegraphy to route multiple transmissions simultaneously over

3096-831: The " CB Simulator ", a chat system that soon became one of CIS's most popular features. Instead of hiring employees to manage the forums, they contracted with systems operators (sysops), who received compensation based on the success of their own forum's boards, libraries, and chat areas. In July 1980, working with Associated Press , CompuServe began hosting text versions of the Columbus Dispatch , The New York Times , Virginian-Pilot and Ledger Star , The Washington Post , San Francisco Examiner , San Francisco Chronicle , and Los Angeles Times were added in 1981; additional newspapers followed. Although accessing articles in these newspapers comprised 5% of CompuServe's traffic, reading an entire newspaper using this method

3182-478: The CompuServe 2000 service. Online service provider In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems , downloadable files and programs , news articles , chat rooms , and electronic mail services. The term "online service"

3268-464: The DEC PDP-11 , and developed all the software that operated on the network. Often (and erroneously) termed an X.25 network, the CompuServe network implemented a mixture of standardized and proprietary layers throughout the network. One of the proprietary layers was termed Adaptive Routing. The Adaptive Routing system implemented two powerful features. One is that the network operated entirely in

3354-477: The Internet, or the origins of the Internet. Prodigy's Chief Technical Officer said in 1999: "Eleven years ago, the Internet was just an intangible dream that Prodigy brought to life. Now it is a force to be reckoned with." Despite that statement, neither service provided the back bone for the Internet, nor did either start the Internet. The first online service used a simple text-based interface in which content

3440-497: The MicroNET name in favor of its own, becoming CompuServe Information Service, or CIS. CIS' 1979 origin was approximately concurrent with that of The Source . By the mid-1980s, CompuServe was one of the largest information and networking services companies, and it was the largest consumer information service. It operated commercial branches in more than 30 US cities, selling primarily network services to major corporations throughout

3526-664: The OCILLA. The first commercial online services went live in 1979. CompuServe (owned in the 1980s and 1990s by H&R Block) and The Source (for a time owned by The Reader's Digest) are considered the first major online services created to serve the market of personal computer users. Utilizing text-based interfaces and menus, these services allowed anyone with a modem and communications software to use email, chat, news, financial and stock information, bulletin boards, special interest groups (SIGs), forums and general information. Subscribers could exchange email only with other subscribers of

CompuServe - Misplaced Pages Continue

3612-606: The U.S., the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) portion of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act has expanded the legal definition of online service in two different ways for different portions of the law. It states in section 512(k)(1): (A) As used in subsection (a), the term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by

3698-522: The United States (and later, in other countries) and interconnected. Over time, the CompuServe network evolved into a complicated multi-tiered network incorporating Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay (FR), Internet Protocol (IP) and X.25 technologies. In 1981, The Times explained CompuServe's technology in one sentence: CompuServe is offering a video-text-like service permitting personal computer users to retrieve software from

3784-400: The United States. Consumer accounts could be bought in most computer stores (a box with an instruction manual and a trial account login) and this service was well known to the public. By 1987, consumer business would provide 50% of CompuServe revenues. The corporate culture was entrepreneurial, encouraging " skunkworks projects ". Alexander "Sandy" Trevor secluded himself for a weekend, writing

3870-532: The World , EarthLink , and MindSpring provided no content of their own, concentrating their efforts on making it easy for nontechnical users to install the various software required to "get online" before consumer operating systems came internet-enabled out of the box. In contrast to the online services' multitiered per-minute or per-hour rates, many ISPs offered flat-fee, unlimited access plans. Independent companies sprang up to offer access and packages to compete with

3956-621: The best deal." CIS's number of users grew, maximizing in April 1995 at 3 million worldwide. By this time AOL had more than 20 million users in the United States alone, but this was less than their maximum of 27 million, due to customers quitting for lesser-cost offerings. By 1997 the number of users quitting all online services for dial-up Internet service providers was reaching a climax. In 1997, CompuServe began converting its forums from its proprietary Host-Micro Interface (HMI) to HTML web standards. The 1997 change discontinued text based access to

4042-530: The big networks (eg, the-wire.com, 1994 in Toronto and bway.net 1995 in New York). These providers first offered access through telephone and modem, just as did the early online services providers. By the early 2000s, these independent ISPs had largely been supplanted by high speed and broadband access through cable and phone companies, as well as wireless access. The importance of the online services industry

4128-451: The business model that had supported the rise of the early online service industry. CompuServe, BIX , AOL, DELPHI, and Prodigy gradually added access to Internet e-mail, Usenet newsgroups , ftp, and to web sites. At the same time, they moved from usage-based billing to monthly subscriptions. Similarly, companies that paid to have AOL host their information or early online stores began to develop their own web sites, putting further stress on

4214-512: The central multiplexers in Columbus were replaced with PDP-8 minicomputers, and the PDP-8s were connected to a DEC PDP-15 minicomputer that acted as switches so a telephone number was not tied to a particular destination host. Finally, in 1977, CompuServe developed its own packet switching network, implemented by DEC PDP-11 minicomputers acting as network nodes that were installed throughout

4300-425: The channel. The time domain is divided into several recurrent time slots of fixed length, one for each sub-channel. A sample byte or data block of sub-channel 1 is transmitted during time slot 1, sub-channel 2 during time slot 2, etc. One TDM frame consists of one time slot per sub-channel, and usually a synchronization channel and sometimes an error correction channel. After all of these the cycle starts again with

4386-457: The computer time-sharing industry, by renting time on its PDP-10 midrange computers during business hours , mainly to other businesses. It was divested as a separate company during 1975, trading on the NASDAQ using the symbol CMPU. Concurrently, the company recruited executives who changed the emphasis from offering time-sharing services, for which customers wrote their own applications, to

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4472-504: The departure of McCall), and Robert Massey (who succeeded Cox as CEO). In 1977, CompuServe's board changed the company's name to CompuServe Incorporated. In 1979, it began "offering a dial-up online information service to consumers". In May 1980, at which time Compuserve had fewer than 1,000 subscribers to its consumer information service, H&R Block acquired the company for $ 25 million and within four years had grown its subscriber base to about 110,000. The original 1969 dial-up technology

4558-480: The economics of the online industry. Only the largest services like AOL (which later acquired CompuServe, just as CompuServe acquired The Source) were able to make the transition to the Internet-centric world. A new class of online service provider arose to provide access to the Internet, the internet service provider or ISP. Internet-only service providers like UUNET , The Pipeline , Panix , Netcom ,

4644-527: The fibre are transmitted at different wavelengths, creating additional channels for transmission. This increases the speed and capacity of the link, which in turn reduces both unit and total costs. Statistical time-division multiplexing (STDM) is an advanced version of TDM in which both the address of the terminal and the data itself are transmitted together for better routing. Using STDM allows bandwidth to be split over one line. Many college and corporate campuses use this type of TDM to distribute bandwidth. On

4730-500: The first D1 channel banks, which combined 24 digitized voice calls over a four-wire copper trunk line between Bell central office analogue switches. A channel bank at each end of the line allowed the single line to carry short portions, each 1 ⁄ 8000 of a second, of up to 24 voice calls, in turn. The discrete signals on the trunk line carried 1.544 Mbit/s divided into 8000 separate frames per second, each composed of 24 contiguous octets and one framing bit. Each octet in

4816-587: The first year of operation. Goltz and Wilkins were both graduate students of electrical engineering at the University of Arizona . Other early recruits from the same University included Sandy Trevor (inventor of the CompuServe CB Simulator chat system), Doug Chinnock, and Larry Shelley. The company's objectives were twofold: to provide in-house computer processing for Golden United Life Insurance; and to develop as an independent business in

4902-415: The forums, but the forums were accessible both through the web as well as through CompuServe's proprietary HMI protocol. In 2004 CompuServe discontinued HMI and converted the forums to web access only. The forums remained active on CompuServe.com until the end of 2017. CompuServe made a number of acquisitions in its history, both before and after being acquired by H&R Block: Before the widespread use of

4988-426: The largest selection of local dial-up telephone connections in the world, in an era when network usage charges were expensive, but still less than long-distance charges. Other networks permitted CompuServe access to still more locations, including international locations, usually with substantial connect-time surcharges. It was common during the early 1980s to pay a $ 30-per-hour charge to connect to CompuServe, which at

5074-514: The mainframe computer over telephone lines. The New York Times described them as "the most international of the Big Three" and noted that "it can be reached by a local phone call in more than 700 cities". CompuServe was also a vendor of other commercial services. One of these was the Financial Services group, which collected and consolidated financial data from myriad data feeds, including CompuStat , Disclosure, I/B/E/S as well as

5160-632: The minute, with separate day-time and evening/weekend rates. As the use of computers that supported color and graphics, such the Atari 8-bit computers , Commodore 64 , TI-99/4A , Apple II , and early IBM PC compatibles , increased, online services gradually developed framed or partially graphical information displays. Early services such as CompuServe added increasingly sophisticated graphics-based front end software to present their information, though they continued to offer text-based access for those who needed or preferred it. In 1985 Viewtron , which began as

5246-486: The name InfoPlex, and was also a pioneer of the real-time chat market with its CB Simulator service introduced on February 21, 1980, as the first public, commercial multi-user chat program. Introduced in 1985, EaasySABRE, a customer-accessible extension of the Sabre travel system, made it possible for individuals to find and book airline flights and hotel rooms without the help of a travel agent . CompuServe also introduced

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5332-439: The online service provider's network. Prior to the advent of the web, such support had to be done either via an online service or a private bulletin board system run by the company and accessed over a direct phone line. Depending on the jurisdiction there may be rules exempting an OSP from responsibility for content provided by users, but with a ' notice and take down (NTD) obligation to remove unacceptable content as soon as it

5418-472: The parent company announced its desire to sell CIS. A complex deal was devised with WorldCom acting as a broker, resulting in CIS being sold to AOL. In 2015, Verizon acquired AOL, including its CompuServe division. In 2017, after Verizon completed its acquisition of Yahoo! , CompuServe became part of Verizon's newly formed subsidiary Oath Inc. At the time, the remaining original parts of CIS were closed down, leaving it only as an internet service provider and

5504-536: The price and quote feeds from the major exchanges. CompuServe developed extensive screening and reporting programs that were used by many investment banks on Wall Street . In 1979, Radio Shack marketed the residential information service MicroNET, in which home users accessed the computers during evening hours when the CompuServe computers were otherwise idle. This was a success and CompuServe began to advertize it more widely, as "MicroNET, CompuServe's Personal Computing Division". Its success prompted CompuServe to disuse

5590-410: The primary transmission protocol in most PSTN networks. It was developed to allow streams 1.544 Mbit/s and above to be multiplexed, in order to create larger SDH frames known as Synchronous Transport Modules (STM). The STM-1 frame consists of smaller streams that are multiplexed to create a 155.52 Mbit/s frame. SDH can also multiplex packet based frames e.g. Ethernet , PPP and ATM. While SDH

5676-555: The same service. (For a time a service called DASnet carried mail among several online services, and CompuServe, MCI Mail , and other services experimented with X.400 protocols to exchange email until the Internet rendered these outmoded.) Other text-based online services followed such as Delphi , GEnie and MCI Mail. The 1980s also saw the rise of independent Computer Bulletin Boards, or BBSes. (Online services are not BBSes. An online service may contain an electronic bulletin board, but

5762-439: The service and exchange new mail and forum content in a largely automated fashion. Once the "run" was complete, the user edited their messages locally while offline. The system also allowed interactive navigation of the system to support services like the chat system. Many of these services remained text based. CompuServe later introduced CompuServe Information Manager (CIM) to compete more directly with AOL. Unlike Navigator, CIM

5848-461: The term "BBS" is reserved for independent dialup, microcomputer-based services that are usually single-user systems.) The commercial services used pre-existing packet-switched (X.25) data communications networks, or the services' own networks (as with CompuServe). In either case, users dialed into local access points and were connected to remote computer centers where information and services were located. As with telephone service, subscribers paid by

5934-602: The time cost $ 5 to $ 6 per hour before factoring in the connection-time surcharges. This resulted in the company being nicknamed CompuSpend , Compu$ erve or CI$ . CNS has been the primary supplier of dial-up communications for credit-card authorizations for more than 20 years, a competence developed as a result of its long-time relationship with Visa International . At the peak of this type of business, CompuServe transmitted millions of authorization transactions each month, representing several billion dollars of consumer purchase transactions. For many businesses an always-on connection

6020-469: The time could not address because they did not yet have universal WWW access. In 1992, CompuServe acquired Mark Cuban 's company, MicroSolutions, for $ 6 million. AOL's entry into the PC market in 1991 marked the beginning of the end for CIS. AOL charged $ 2.95 an hour versus $ 5.00 an hour for CompuServe. AOL used a freely available graphical user interface -based client; CompuServe's wasn't free, and it only had

6106-608: The web browser that would change global online life 10 years later. Before Quantum Link, Apple computer had developed its own service, called AppleLink , which was mostly a support network targeted at Apple dealers and developers. Later, Apple offered the short-lived eWorld , targeted at Mac consumers and based on the Mac version of the America Online software. Beginning in 1992, the Internet, which had previously been limited to government, academic, and corporate research settings,

6192-1006: Was CompuServe's UK director of customer services. The service continued to grow and offered technical assistance managed by Suzanne Gautier and sales managed by Colin Campbell. The service was proposed by Paul Stanfield, an independent business-to-consumer electronic commerce consultant, to Martin Turner, Product Marketing Director for CIS UK, in August 1994. Turner agreed and the project started in September with rapid market research, product development and sales of online space to major UK retail and catalogue companies. These included WH Smith , Tesco , Virgin / Our Price , Great Universal Stores/ GUS , Interflora , Dixons Retail , Past Times, PC World (retailer) and Innovations. The service began on Thursday April 27, 1995, with Paul Stanfield's purchase of

6278-589: Was a luxury of the NavCIS , AutoSIG and TapCIS applications for power users . CIS users could purchase services and software from other CompuServe members using their CompuServe account, something Internet users could not do until the NSFNET lifted the prohibition on commercial Internet use in 1989. During the early 1990s, the hourly rate decreased from more than $ 10 per hour to $ 1.95 per hour. In March 1992, it began online signups with credit card based payments and

6364-516: Was adapted for online work, and used a point-and-click interface very similar to AOLs. Later versions interacted with the hosts using the HMI communications protocol. For some types of service which were not compatible with HMI, the older text-based interface could be used. WinCIM also allowed caching of forum messages, news articles and e-mail, so that reading and posting could be performed offline, without incurring hourly connection costs. Previously, this

6450-399: Was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, while ISP mostly serves to provide access to the Internet and generally provides little if any exclusive content of its own. In

6536-411: Was an extravagance, and a dial-up option made better sense. This service presently remains in operation, as part of Verizon (see below). There are no other competitors remaining in this market. The company was notable for introducing a number of online services to personal computer users. CompuServe began offering electronic mail capabilities and technical support to commercial customers in 1978 using

6622-510: Was developed as a standard for multiplexing higher order frames. PDH created larger numbers of channels by multiplexing the standard Europeans 30 channel TDM frames. This solution worked for a while; however PDH suffered from several inherent drawbacks which ultimately resulted in the development of the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH). The requirements which drove the development of SDH were these: SDH has become

6708-487: Was fairly simple—the local telephone number in Cleveland, for example, was a line connected to a time-division multiplexer that connected via a leased line to a matched multiplexer in Columbus that was connected to a time-sharing host system. In the earliest buildups, each line terminated at a single machine of CompuServe's host service, so that one dialed different telephone numbers to reach different computers. Later,

6794-519: Was impractical; the text of a $ 0.20 print edition newspaper would take two to six hours to download at a cost of $ 5 per hour (after 6 p.m.). Another major unit of CompuServe, the CompuServe Network Services, was formed in 1982 to generate revenue by selling connectivity to the nationwide packet network CompuServe had built to support its time-sharing service. CompuServe designed and manufactured its own network processors, based on

6880-614: Was largely text only and users made choices via a command prompt. This allowed just about any computer with a modem and terminal communications program the ability to access these text-based online services. CompuServe would later offer, with the advent of the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows -based PCs, a GUI interface program for their service. This provided a very rudimentary GUI interface. CompuServe continued to offer text-only access for those needing it. Online services like Prodigy and AOL developed their online service around

6966-611: Was later extended to include the Host-Micro Interface (HMI), a mechanism for communicating commands and transaction requests to a server application operating on the mainframes. HMI could be used by "front end" client software to present a GUI -based interface to CIS, without having to use the error-prone CLI to route commands. CompuServe began to expand its business operations outside the United States. It began in Japan in 1986 with Fujitsu and Nissho Iwai , and developed

7052-634: Was often discussed by network engineers, but was implemented only by CNS – establishing connection paths on the basis of real-time performance measurements. As one circuit became busy, traffic was diverted to alternative paths to prevent overloading and poor performance for users. While the CNS network was not itself based on the X.25 protocol, the network presented a standard X.25 interface to customers, providing dial-up connectivity to corporate hosts, and allowing CompuServe to form alliances with private networks Tymnet and Telenet , among others. This gave CompuServe

7138-499: Was opened to commercial entities. The first online service to offer Internet access was DELPHI, which had developed TCP/IP access much earlier, in connection with an environmental group that rated Internet access. The explosion of popularity of the World Wide Web in 1994 accelerated the development of the Internet as an information and communication resource for consumers and businesses. The sudden availability of low- to no-cost email and appearance of free independent web sites broke

7224-422: Was opened to the public, roughly the same time as The Source . H&R Block bought the company in 1980 and began to more aggressively advertise the service. CompuServe dominated the industry during the 1980s, buying their competitor The Source. At its peak during the early 1990s, CIS had an online chat system , message forums for a variety of topics, extensive software libraries for most personal computers, and

7310-408: Was the first online service to offer Internet connectivity, albeit with limited access, as early as 1989, when it connected its proprietary e-mail service to allow incoming and outgoing messages to be exchanged with Internet-based e-mail addresses. During the early 1990s, CompuServe had hundreds of thousands of users visiting its thousands of moderated forums, forerunners to the discussion sites of

7396-475: Was vital in "paving the road" for the information superhighway . When Mosaic and Netscape were released in 1994, they had a ready audience of more than 10 million people who were able to download their first web browser through an online service. Though ISPs quickly began offering software packages with setup to their customers, this brief period gave many users their first online experience. Two online services in particular, Prodigy and AOL, are often confused with

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