Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman Building the Internet with sendmail's Eric Allman
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Mar 19, 2026 Eric Allman, creator of sendmail and early internet engineer who also built syslog, shares stories about the origins of email and the messy realities of building software at planetary scale. He recounts designing sendmail’s rule-based glue, watching the internet evolve from ARPANET roots, and his perspective on early AI versus today’s models.
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Utopian Internet Dreams Versus Reality
- Early internet builders imagined a utopian network that would reduce conflict by connecting everyone directly.
- That optimism faded; Eric Allman notes the reality is less utopian than early fantasies once the network became global.
The ARPANET Phone Book Memory
- Eric Allman kept an early network phone book listing every ARPANET user with name, address, and phone number.
- The early community felt small and personal, resembling ham radio or FIDOnet address books Scott described.
Sendmail Was Built To Be Glue
- Sendmail was designed as glue to connect heterogeneous systems like Berknet, UUCP, and ARPANET with differing address syntaxes.
- Its heavy configurability (rules engine inspired by production systems) let it translate and route between networks internationally.