The interest of the internet may have killed packed, but the speed of the internet killed it first. We never saw affordable gear that would run 9600+ in the early days.
Here in East Ohio a bunch of us ran NOS variants and ran TCP/IP over AX25. If you thought 1200 baud simplex was slow, encapsulating TCP/IP over AX25 just added to the problem. A couple 1200 baud nodes with full IP capabilities, connected from Carrollton up to Brookefield @9600 RF, then from Brookfield to Poland OH @56K RF and then from Poland OH to YSU @56K RF. But it was fun. We would then access other internet gateways that were scattered across the US and elsewhere. UAKRON had a nice gateway as well. A nice NETROM network was up and running as well - I wish I could remember all the names of the involved people.
The guys over at WB3BOI over in WPA ran a chat gateway out of Duquesne U physics lab. I used to dial up into a LInux box there at 9600 baud and download floppies for Linux (back when kernel patchlevels were 0.99pl14 rofl).
The early to mid 90s were the heyday of packet. It was a great time.
Mike
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