Sneakernet

Significant advances are occurring to race past sneakernet. But the ideal computer interconnect solution will always be just around the next bend.

Before complicated networks and E-mail and special-interest bulletin boards, there was Sneakernet. Sneakernet required no special protocol, no special cables and terminal software. To communicate on Sneakernet, all you needed to do was take a disk from your computer to someone else's, stick the disk in that remote drive, and copy some files—instant data transfer. Well, almost instant.

Before computer networks came into existence, sneakernet was the only method of file sharing available. Sneakernet is the generally accepted term for the act of loading files that you want to share on removable media (tape, CD, or floppy disk) at one computer, carrying the media to a second computer, and reading the files from that media onto that second computer. [...] Sneakernet is the lowest-tech form of file sharing that has ever been available, and it is still practiced at some sites today.

NSA feels there is no reason to use sneakernet anymore when you can distribute software to users through the network. (Sneakernet is the network created by physically walking from location to location to deliver software to users.)

Some companies were able to coerce one department's application to read data files written by another's. These lucky organizations often resorted to sneakernets—transferring data on magnetic tape or floppy disks—to avoid the re-keying process. With the advent of LANs and WANs, electronic file transfers replaced most sneakernets.

Before the days of Internets and intranets, there were sneakernets—users would save files on a floppy disk and simply walk them over to another PC!

Czechoslovak sneakernets were structured around the geopolitical barriers and foreign trade regulations, but without any direct intervention from the authorities. The networks were improvisational and unruly, but also robust and reliable. [...] Sneakernets were experienced as movement rather than as a service or a set of formalized transactions.