Category Archives: 1989

Etherswitch

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etherswitchEarly technology company Kalpana introduced the first network switch in 1989, the Etherswitch. A networking equipment vendor in Silicon Valley during the 80s and 90s, they developed the concept of a multiport network switch and also created EtherChannel. Kalpana was acquired by Cisco in 1994. Basically just a bridge, the Etherswitch used multiple ports instead of the industry standard two.

Dissed by many of the other elite companies at the time, the basic seven port switch offered features found in most modern switches such as low latency, full-duplex, and plug and play operation.  It originally sold for $10,500. Although expensive compared to today, it was one-third the cost of Ethernet routers of the day. Cisco, initially only interested in routing, realized it would also need to embrace switching to become dominant in the networking market and eventually bought Kalpana and it’s related technology.  Little did anyone realize the impact this technology would have on the world and the internet.

Kevin Mitnick

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kevin2Kevin Mitnick was convicted of destroying data over a computer network and with stealing operator’s manuals from the telephone company in 1981. As his escapades continued, he became the first high profile hacker.

Born in 1964 in Los Angeles, Mitnick first began hacking by changing friends’ grades on the high school’s computer system in the 1970s. He was again convicted in 1983 for breaking into a Pentagon computer over the ArpaNet. Later he was accused of tampering with a TRW credit computer, and went into hiding. A warrant was issued for his arrest which promptly disappeared from police records. He was then later convicted for stealing software in 1987. In 1988 he pled guilty to one count of computer fraud and one count of possessing illegal long-distance access codes for attempting to break into Easynet, Digital’s computer network. As part of a plea bargain he was sentenced to one year in prison and six months of counseling.

After serving his sentence he went to work for a detective agency, where soon it was discovered someone was illegaly using a commercial database at the company. When a warrant was issued and authorities went to arrest him Mitnick promptly went underground, hiding from the police and FBI for two years. In 1994 he broke into scientist/computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura’s computers and was tracked down within a few months and arrested yet again in 1995. Rumors swirled that Mitnick was able to launch a nuclear strike by whistling into a phone and punching some numbers. As a result, jail officials placed him in solitary confinement for nearly 8 months.

After his release from prison in January 2002, he was banned from using the internet until January 21st, 2003. He is now CEO of a computer security consulting company and has published two books.

The Cuckoos Egg

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cuckoo2Cliff Stoll’s “The Cuckoo’s Egg” was on the best seller list in 1989 for more than four months. It chronicles the story of his pursuit of a German computer spy.  A systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, he’d detected anomalies in his network, discovering an apparently authorized user was using a stolen account and granting himself the powers of a systems manager.

For nearly a year Stoll tracked the hacker’s movements into his system, and what began as a curiosity turned into a law enforcement investigation as the culprit accessed sensitive military systems. The hacker turned out to be a German computer wiz selling information to Soviet intelligence. In 1989 Stoll published the account, in which he made public several major security weaknesses in widely used systems.

Siggraphs

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Even before SIGGRAPH started, there was computer animation. Despite popular belief, computer animation was not created to do visual effects. The new-comer animators go to the SIGGRAPH conference to see the latest and greatest animations. However, there was a time when going to SIGGRAPH’s Film Show meant you waited with anticipation until the end of the show to see the one computer generated movie piece: like the Death Star from Star Wars done in 1977 by Larry Cuba or, the magnificent breakthrough piece, TRON done in 1982 by Magi Synthavision, Triple III, and Robert Abel & Associates.

One would go to SIGGRAPH to see work that one had never seen before, with people that were colleagues and collaborators. It was cool. You had to be there. In 1985, the short film Luxo Jr. by John Lasseter and William Reeves premiered at SIGGRAPH. The Academy followed the next year by nominating it for best Short Animated Film. One went to see Loren Carpenter’s Vol Libre premiere at SIGGRAPH in 1980, because it couldn’t be seen anywhere else. There was just no other market for showing a camera move around a snow-covered fractal mountain, except in academia.

Silicon Graphics

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sgibuilding From Silicon Graphics’  Company Info

SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is the world’s leader in high-performance computing, visualization, and the management of complex data. SGI’s vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it’s sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate, or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering, and creative users.