Most Internet historians, while quick to acknowledge the early influence of JANET (the UK’s Joint Academic Network), are all too often slow to acknowledge the equally pioneering role that was played by YAHNET: a communications network that was set up in the mid 1980s by a consortium of many of the country’s leading public schools. Thanks to the generous levels of funding which these establishments enjoyed, a thriving community of scholars soon developed – complete with their own set of commonly used acronyms.
Keen to keep this knowledge safely hidden from their social inferiors (or LO, as they were known), YAHNET systems administrators went to great lengths to ensure that these acronyms never entered the public domain. Indeed, it has taken me many months of diligent sleuthing to track them down – finally tracing them to an old DEC VAX on a council tip on the outskirts of Winchester.
It therefore gives me great pleasure to publish the semi-legendary YAHNET acronyms for the first time ever on the World Wide Web – exclusively on Uborka.