Sublink Network was a non-profit association founded in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

in 1989 to allow cost-sharing access to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Sublink Network was registered with the sublink.org domain (this domain now belongs to one of the founders). Sublink Network had its own sublink.* newsgroup hierarchy and a gateway with the Italian branch of FidoNet.

History

Its founders on September 25, 1989 were: Paolo Ventafridda (president), Paolo Pennisi, Marco Sacchi, Carlo Vellano, Davide Yachaya and Mauro Mozzarelli. The association was based in Milan, Italy. The association for a few years had a

UUCP UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the pr ...

dialup Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telep ...

link to

Rutgers university Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

, but later obtained free support from

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been par ...

who provided Internet mail and

newsgroups A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinc ...

(now named "groups" by google) feed. At its peak in 1991-1995 Sublink Network counted around one hundred nodes distributed across the Italian territory. Sublink was the very first public (non-academic) internet email and newsgroup network in Italy, with very low access fees (around $100 a year), fast backbone modems running at 19200 bps (the average modem was 2400 bit/s at that time), and fully registered to the NIC. When after 1997, low cost PPP commercial access to the Internet started to become available, interest for UUCP cost-share Internet feeds started to decline and the association was naturally dissolved.

References

UUCP network map for the early internet in Italy Early public networking analysis by the Italian National Research Center, 1993 (pdf, Italian){{Cite journal, url=http://www.tdmagazine.itd.cnr.it/files/pdfarticles/PDF02/Trentin.pdf, doi = 10.17471/2499-4324/770, year = 1993, volume = 1, issue = 2, last1 = Trentin, first1 = Guglielmo, title = La tecnologia della comunicazione via rete, journal = Italian Journal of Educational Technology Internet access Non-profit organisations based in Italy Organizations established in 1989