What is the oldest publically accessible internet server online today?

There have been discussions here and elsewhere about the oldest website still up. What is the physically oldest server that is

  1. Online
  2. Publically accessible via the Internet (e.g. not hidden behind a corporate firewall, not on a classified network, etc.) The protocol doesn’t matter - it doesn’t have to host any websites. It could be a telnet-accessible unix box or an FTP server.
  3. Oldest in terms of hardware. There is a reasonableness test here. Don’t get too bogged down on upgrades and Ship of Theseus arguments. If a server was installed in 1982, but it’s network card was replaced or updated in 1995, it got an extra 8MB RAM in 1996, and the fan was replaced in 2001, I would say it is fundamentally the same server. If a MicroVAX case was gutted completely and replaced with a Pentium II motherboard and parts, it is a casemodded new server.

Even if not the oldest, I am interested in servers that are notably old. I’d say that anything before 1990 counts as notably old, but servers from the 90’s decade could still be in scope if they are notable in some way.

Oldest website thread:

There is at least one Commodore 64 built in 1982 that serves a web server. It is hard to actually get a connection to it because of its limited capabilities but it is a real one. It hasn’t been a web server for all that long though. It was one of those retro-computing experiments that someone did just to prove it could be done.

http://cbm8bit.com/

That’s great, thanks! I was, though, thinking more along the lines of servers that had pretty much always been servers in some capacity or another (given due allowance to downtime, resurrection from surplus, etc.), e.g. “Hey, if you go to http://johnny.mit.edu, you’ll find a messageboard for coordinating MIT study groups. What’s interesting is that the server it’s hosted on is the same box that hosted MIT’s online class registration system in 1982.” (That’s a made up example).

You should probably add:

  1. In continuous service.

Retro computing enthusiasts can simply restore old machines and place them on the network - something that then simply comes down to winning by finding the oldest machine. (We have a Sun 1, serial number 350 odd, in storage, that would be very easy to get back running. But it shouldn’t count.)

It is a great pity that VAX135 got replaced. Restoring that would be a proper exercise in computer history.

As I mentioned above. I don’t want to set too many hard and fast conditions. So, obviously in scope would be machines that have pretty much always been online since a long-past date, or machines that did serve as a server at some sufficiently early date, but were resurrected later in a more-or-less pristine state and put back online.

I know that there are modern boxes out there on the public internet that emulate older machines (e.g. I think there is at least one version of MIT’s ITS operating system that is running on an emulator and is accessible online).

A claim;

www.TheWorld.com

“Since 1989, we were the first public dialup Internet Service Provider (ISP) on the planet. And we’re still proud to be the best.”

AKA “Software Tool and Die”.

My original email domain with them was “@world.std.com

With a domain name like that, I wonder why they didn’t dominate the world? Please tell me your real name isn’t Alfred Ignatious Davenport Senior.

Correction - It may have been “@std.com” which still bothered me a little because “STD” can stand for some other things.

No, Bolivar, it isn’t. Happy?

Subscriber Trunk Dialling? India is full of “STD Booths” that, to the unaware, look slightly suspicious.

What can I get you today, sir? Chlamydia with a side of HPV? Very good!