The internet’s past. St. Louis’s part.
A story that’s still being written.
Move over a point.
See the story come into view.
A network became a world.
This is how it reached ours.
The internet began as a way for distant computers to share resources. Shared protocols let networks join together. The web made information easier to explore. Then people gave all that technology a purpose.
In St. Louis, that story includes a university archive, fantasy-sports communities, internet providers, and the work of keeping people online. US.net brings those chapters together, with Ken Cox’s perspective woven into the wider history.
In 1969, ARPANET connected its first four sites. A research experiment began a much larger idea: computers could share information across a network.
Explore the source ↗Distance no longer had to keep computers apart. The next challenge was helping different networks work together.
This is the global starting point. St. Louis enters our story later, as networks become useful to researchers, businesses, and communities.
Follow the local story ↓New technology created possibilities. People in St. Louis turned some of those possibilities into places to share, play, and build.
Before most people had seen a web page, Washington University’s wuarchive was helping them find software and information. The archive began in 1989 and grew into an international resource.
It shows an early internet idea in practice: make something useful available, and people far beyond your city can use it.
Inside WashU’s 1995 account ↗CDM’s fantasy-sports contests began in 1992. When it took games online in 1995, the partners built an internet service provider rather than pay another one to host them, according to Sports Business Journal.
That operation grew into Primary Network. A reason to go online had become a business helping others get there.
Read how the stories connect ↗Websites also needed somewhere to live. Primary Network began hosting websites in 1995. Hostirian was created in 2001 as that hosting business grew.
The story moves from gaining access to providing infrastructure: the services behind the sites people visit and the messages they send.
Follow the hosting chapter ↗Share something useful.
Give people a reason to connect.
Build what keeps them connected.
Mpower Communications was a publicly traded telecommunications company from Buffalo, New York. Its 2000 acquisition of the earlier Primary business connected the company to the St. Louis internet story.
In 2001, RCIG purchased assets back from Mpower, including the primary.net name and all business-class customers. The rebuilt Primary Network joined Hostirian and PrimaryClick within River City Internet Group.
Explore the sale and the return ↗These are connected local stories, not a claim that all the organizations shared ownership. Company histories and contemporary reporting are linked at each step.
Start with Primary Network Communications, follow the Mpower handoff, then the rebuilt Primary Network inside RCIG. The US.net–RCIG.net merger brings another defining connection into the story.
Primary Network Communications was the predecessor to the later Primary Network within River City Internet Group. The Mpower transaction in 2000 and the return of customers and name rights in 2001 connect those two chapters.
Explore the 2000 handoff ↗Explore the 2001 return ↗Explore the US.net × RCIG.net merger ↗Open a record. Follow a transaction.
Solid arrows represent the transaction described beside them. A customer-base purchase is not a purchase of the whole seller. The US.net–RCIG.net merger has its own chapter. Its date and terms are not inferred from the separate 2002 management purchase.
Month and year are used where filings disagree on the precise day or distinguish an agreement date, closing date, and effective date. The legal name “Q-Networks Inc.” is preserved; an archived contemporary report also names it QNI. The literal qni.net domain attribution is not established here. The records reviewed do not yet establish a 1997–1998 acquisition sequence.
The predecessor relationship, asset sale, and buyback are part of this operating history. Corporate filings are linked separately so readers can follow the legal entities and transaction records. The 2000 regulatory filing identifies BroadSpan as doing business as Primary Network Communications and names Primary Network Holdings as its parent.
The SEC record identifies the company as CySource. Archived RCIG pages preserve the original company announcements and profiles.
The story goes beyond the company names. Explore the software people used, the infrastructure that kept them connected, and a court case about what they could build.
In a September 3, 1996 advertisement in UMSL’s The Current, Primary Network included Netscape Navigator for browsing, news, and mail with its service. The ad also promoted 28.8 kbps dial-up access and a DS-3 backbone.
This is a concrete snapshot of the early customer experience: connection and software arrived together. It documents what Primary offered, not a strategic Netscape partnership.
See the original ad, page 12 ↗PERIOD ADVERTISEMENTOn September 13, 1999, EDN reported that Primary Network Communications was testing Lucent’s Stinger DSL platform. It named Primary as one of the two publicly identified trial customers.
That establishes a place in the early DSL story. The stronger claim that Primary reached the market before Southwestern Bell remains unverified, so this chapter does not present it as settled fact.
Read the contemporary DSL report ↗CONTEMPORARY REPORT / COMPETITIVE-FIRST CLAIM OPENThe catalog entry does not itself name Gentry or prove an award-category win. The actual recognized projects and the second award have not yet been independently verified. These records also do not establish a 1999 award date or a first-to-market victory over Southwestern Bell.
2000 filing: Gentry’s role, PDF page 38 ↗BroadSpan / Primary Network Communications identity ↗View the Smithsonian collection entry ↗Read Gentry’s Next Level biography ↗REGULATORY FILING + COLLECTION RECORD + ATTRIBUTED BIOGRAPHYThe story has specific project records, not only a list of company names.
The Primary and USNet milestones have dated announcements. The later Netscape client refers to its consumer dial-up service, distinct from Primary’s 1996 Navigator browser bundle. AOL/Netscape’s exact deployment timing and scope remain to be documented.
Primary / IntraISP 3.0 announcement ↗USNet / IntraISP 4.0 announcement ↗Archived 2004 IntraISP client history ↗2005 Netscape dial-up client profile ↗ORIGINAL PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENTS + COMPANY CLIENT LISTIn 2006, Hostirian built Peabody Energy’s new data-center environment. RCIG designed, built, and managed the data-center space, and the migration followed more than a year of planning. Over 100 devices moved, including servers, mainframes, and legacy printers.
Peabody’s data-center operations moved from Market Street to the Bandwidth Exchange Building at 900 Walnut. Managed colocation and network monitoring kept the new environment supported after the move.
Read the archived Peabody announcement ↗See the contemporary 900 Walnut facility page ↗COMPANY RELEASE + FACILITY RECORD + OPERATING HISTORYC.B.C. Distribution and Marketing, operating as CDM Fantasy Sports, won a federal ruling protecting its use of MLB player names and playing records in fantasy games. The Eighth Circuit affirmed on First Amendment grounds in 2007.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. It did not issue a ruling on the merits. This account concerns the fantasy-game use at issue, not unrestricted use of all MLB intellectual property.
District court opinion ↗Eighth Circuit opinion ↗Supreme Court docket ↗OFFICIAL COURT RECORDSThe merger. A shared chapter in internet history.
US.net and RCIG.net merged. The merger connects US.net’s history with River City Internet Group and takes a central place in this timeline.
US.net’s 2002 management purchase from Millennium Digital is a separate recorded transaction. The merger is presented here without an assigned date or deal terms.
Follow the company connection ↗The US.net–RCIG.net merger connects this living service to River City Internet Group’s history. Today, US.net’s story includes people who still use its email service. The address is more than a place to display history. For those users, it remains part of everyday life. Explore the company history ↗
US.net gives that living connection a larger context: the internet that made it possible, the St. Louis people and businesses that helped shape it, and the choices that shape what follows.
We learned to connect machines, share knowledge, and build communities. The next question is what we want those connections to make possible.
A LIVING ARCHIVE. AN OPEN QUESTION.CDM’s story began with people who shared an interest. The next chapter asks the same question at a new scale: how can a connection become a community worth belonging to?