Introduction

Computing at academic institutions in the early eighties was still determined by large hosts, department computers and computers in laboratories. The installations of local area networks and personal computers or workstations was just at its beginning. Many universities had a pilot project for a local area network and a plan for a campus network. The interconnection of distributed computing systems was no longer a question of economy. Thus connectivity at the physical level was in sight. Also, at about the same time, ISO published the standards necessary for the exchange of data between heterogeneous computers.