Celebrating the brilliant pragmatism of TCP/IP, the wiring of the world

It's 1988. Windows 2.0 is a DOS shell that runs on a dual-floppy 8086 PC. VGA is the aspirational video standard. A three-man startup in East London has decided to create low-cost LANs. There's not much of that and not much by way of standards, which is why a young programmer is rather excited by an emerging contender called TCP/IP. He's particularly keen because he's just finished implementing IBM's PC networking API, NetBIOS, which hurt almost as much as integrating any sort of networking with DOS. Research means library books, magazine articles, and asking questions on Usenet over kilobit dial-up. Getting the wrong idea is easy. Trying to build the TCP/IP stack on the ISO/OSI seven-layer model produces more pain, but sanity prevails, and after a bit, there's a working network. Nearly 40 years later, the once-young programmer is now a curmudgeonly Reg columnist. Floppies have become terabyte thumb drives. Kilobit modems are gigabit fiber and Wi-Fi. …