A History of Net 153 - Pacific Rim, British Columbia
By Gordon Lewicky, 1:153/307 N153C, 11 Aug/2003
Net 153 has it's home in Greater Vancouver, BC, Canada, but from the
start was meant to cover the vast expanses of the Province of British
Columbia.
It was formed in 1986, only a few years after Fidonet was born, with 3
lonely nodes, 2 in Vancouver City and 1 in Delta Municipality,
all part of what we consider Greater Vancouver.
By the following year, Net 153 had expanded to 6 hubs with 56 nodes. It
consisted of BBS's within most of Greater Vancouver, covering
Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Delta, Maple Ridge, White Rock, Port Moody,
Clearbrook and Cloverdale. Plus it covered further east up the Fraser
River Valley to Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Slowly over 1987 it added
nodes in the rest of the Province of BC, Port Mellon, Kamloops, Vernon,
Quesnel, Prince George and had a hub in Winnepeg, Manitoba with 5 nodes
there.
It was during this year, 1987, that Bob Satti started his BBS, Basic'ly
and with his "Mooing Right Along" became a major mail hub for Net 153
and Fidonet.
In 1988, Net 153 expanded to take in Vancouver Island, with a hub and
nodes in Nanaimo, which eventually became a Rhub for Region 17. Also in
1988-89, a satellite uplink node was created using Norsat and Net 153
never looked back from then on.
It rapidly increased in size, so that by 1994 it consisted of 11 hubs
with 345 nodes. Over the years it had nodes in the Yukon, and in most
major settlements within BC. Vancouver Island Nets were spawned from
Net 153.
As the Internet became more available in the Greater Vancouver Region,
the nodes and BBS scene started to fall off in 1995 and took a serious
hit in 1998/99 when cable internet was introduced, and parents readily
added it to their cable, just to free up their phone lines which most
of their kids had commandeered for their BBS use.
Below is a yearly summary of Net 153's nodelist history.
Year NC
Hubs Nodes
----
---------------- ----
-------
1986 Andy
Harper 0
3
1987 Bob
Satti
6 56
1988 Bob
Satti
8 103
1989 Len
Boscoe
8 72
1990 Dallas
Hinton
6 80
1991 Dallas
Hinton
7 157
1992 Dallas
Hinton
8 216
1993 Tony Bearman
10 322
1994 Tony Bearman
10 345
1995 Tony Bearman
11 284
1996 Tony Bearman
11 196
1997 Tony
Bearman
9 128
1998 Tony
Bearman
7 90
1999 Mary-Anne Wise 6
50
2000 Mary-Anne Wise
3 36
2001 Gordon Lewicky
3 32
2002 Gordon Lewicky
3 29
2003 Gordon Lewicky
3 32
Currently, Net 153 is expanding once again, from just Greater
Vancouver, to include nodes in the interior of BC, in Penticton
and Quesnel and also has a node in Anchorage, Alaska.
