The Internet Adapter

The Internet Adapter (TIA) was software created by Cyberspace Development in 1993 to allow SLIP connections over a shell account. PPP was added in 1995, by which time the software was marketed and sold by Intermind of Seattle. Shell accounts normally only allow the use of command line or text-based software, but by logging into a shell account and starting the TIA daemon, a user could then run any TCP/IP-based application, including standard GUI software such as the then-popular Netscape Navigator on their computer. This was especially useful at the time because simple shell accounts were much less expensive than full SLIP/PPP accounts. TIA was ported to a large number of unix or unix-like systems.