Re: akamai yesterday - what in the world was that

[Paul Nash <paul () nashnetworks ca>]

> So, I grew up in South Africa, and one of the more fascinating /
> cooler things I saw was a modem which would get you ~50bps (bps, not
> Kbps) over a single strand of barbed wire -- you'd hammer a largish
> nail into the ground, and clip one alligator[0] clip onto that, and
> another alligator clip onto the barbed wire. Repeat the process on the
> other side (up to ~5km away), plug the modems in, and bits would
> flow... I only saw these used a few times, but always thought they
> were cool….

Do you remember anything about the actual type of modem?  Or where you deployed them?

In the days before the Internet came to SA, I ran a dial-up email link between the US and Pretoria, polled by various 
people locally (including CSIR, SAIMR).  I also carried mail for the UNHCR in Northern Mozambique.  Mail came via Karl 
Deninger (DDSW1) in Chicago, IIRC.

They were missing several kilometres of phone wire, so connected the link to the fence on each side of the road.  We 
get about 1200bps on a good day IIRC, and would loose carrier whenever someone moved cattle from one field to another 
and opened a gate in the fence.

        paul