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"The History of TPC.INT" |
Other Languages: English |
The experiment is a project in outreach: to integrate the e-mail and facsimile communities through the creative use of e-mail, to send a fax which travels almost all of it's distance through the Internet, making only the final "local" hop from computer to FAX machine courtesy of a "Remote Printer" . . . a cell which has been specifically configured to provide coverage for that region, or local calling area.Working together, many sites cooperatively provide "remote printing" access to the international telephone network. This allows people to send faxes via e-mail. The general-purpose Internet e-mail infrastructure takes care of all the routing, delivering the message to the appropriate remote printer gateway in a manner totally transparent to the user.
The experiment relies, for its success, on the generosity of individuals, which is why there is not coverage to every fax machine in the world. Setting up a cell will not be difficult for the UNIX-aware, and we now have servers for Windows NT/95/3.x in beta-testing (volunteers welcomed), but it requires someone to actually do it in each locality. If you know someone who might be interested in setting up a cell, by all means tell them to have a look at our fax server instructions, or drop them a copy of the Sales Pitch. We need you!
1993 July 16: An "Experiment in Remote Printing" began in July of 1993. It was the inspired creation of Carl Malamud of the Internet Multicasting Service and Marshall Rose, of Dover Beach Consulting. The official kick-off of the experiment was 16 July 1993. At that time, service was operational for Canberra Australia , Washington DC, most of Silicon Valley, parts of Riverside California, and the University of Michigan.
Since that time, coverage around the world has grown substantially. Check our coverage list or verify page to see if your area is covered. If you would like to see an area covered that is not currently, read our fax server page for details on how to start your own fax server cell.
1994: Declaring TPC a success, Malamud and Rose end the experiment and closed the projct down. Darren Nickerson recreated TPC from his cell in Oxford.
1995: TPC.INT gaines some speed. Many new cells have joined the project, and fax coverage is continuing to expand.
1997 June: www.tpc.int gets a major overhaul with the help of Stephen Herzog of Secure Design. Several mirror sites have volunteered to share the web site load, and distribute the documentation for TPC to various parts of the globe. In addition, several volunteers have assisted in translating various pages into German, Italian, Russian, and other languages.
1998 April: With support e-mail threatening to swamp Mr. Hewes, a new support e-mail address has been created along with a ticket based e-mail support management system. A special thanks to Darren and all the volunteers who man the support line for us.
Present: The TPC.INT project continues to run from its' primary server from Oxford. Darren is currently looking for some equipment donations including a dual PII and an ISP to host it. Ofcourse TPC can always use more volunteers who wish to set up a fax server and start a cell.
We believe that by providing easy access to remote printing recipients, enterprise-wide access is enhanced, regardless of kind of institution (e.g., commercial, educational, or government), or the size of institution (e.g., global, regional, or local). This approach to outreach allows an organization to make it easier for the "outside world" to communicate with personnel in the organization who are users of facsimile but not e-mail, such as the sales person, the university registrar, or the (elected) official.
The ease in which the Internet mail infrastructure can be used to provide this facility is (yet) another example of the power of a general-purpose infrastructure. Of course, as the experiment progresses, some of the things we'll be studying are economic and policy models that deal with issues such as accounting and settlement.
Go rent the film "The President's Analyst", from Paramount Pictures, 1967.
Go read Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", Harpers and Row (New York, 1986).
