<<< HISTORY >>>
In 1984, Dr. Tom Grundner and others at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine created a free medical bulletin board system designed to connect people with healthcare professionals. They named it St. Silicon's Hospital. Anybody with a computer and a modem could post questions free of charge and medical staff at CWRU would answer them.
When St. Silicon's Hospital proved to be a success, Dr. Grundner decided to expand the system; the virtual hospital grew into a virtual city. By 1986, St. Silicon's Hospital had evolved into the much larger Cleveland Free-Net. As with St. Silicon's, anybody with a computer and a modem was free to log in.
The Cleveland Free-Net system was built on top of proprietary software developed by the staff at CWRU. It was called FreePort, and was available for any institution to use for the fee of US $1.00. Many others picked up on the Free-Net idea and before long Free-Nets were popping up all over the place. The second Free-Net to come online was the Youngstown Free-Net (YFN), also in Ohio. Many others followed suit; I have personally logged into Free-Nets in places as far away as Finland!
Due to its restrictive nature, CFN was closer to being a BBS than it was to being an Internet provider. About the only thing that connected you to the Internet proper was Usenet and email. The SIGs (special interest groups), IRC (chat) and other features of CFN were internal, for CFN users only.
CFN was wildly popular in Cleveland and also had users from all over the US and the world. It was typical to make dozens of attempts to dial in with a modem only to be met with busy signals. Telnet access was slightly more hospitable (if you had Internet access already, that is), but even telnet would occasionally fill up and you'd have to wait a while for an opening. Coupled with the one hour limit on logins, it could be a real bear to spend much time on CFN. But users would login and relog religiously on the service, sessions sometimes lasting for several hours.
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
"Riddles in the Dark"
J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit"
As do all things, CFN fell victim to the slow decay of time. The years went by, and the Internet, formerly the realm of academics and government, came to the public's attention. The multimedia experience of the web and the increasing availability of commercial Internet providers greatly reduced the appeal that CFN had once held. For the first time, CFN started to lose users rather than gain them.
Around this time, mid-1995, Raymond Neff of CWRU's Information Services office posted this open letter to the Free-Net community.
In mid-1999, CWRU decided to discontinue the Cleveland Free-Net entirely. They cited Y2K compliance problems; however, a lot of former CFN users believe that was a convenient excuse (this author included). And on September 30, 1999, it was all over. The Cleveland Free-Net had closed its doors forever.