To each their own, I suppose, but I enjoyed this story quite a bit. A bit like the Fast inverse square root story, or the Control-Alt-Delete stories, it's fun to see the origin of interesting and neat things, even if they are somewhat predictable.

I've been using this server as a ping and DNS test for at least 5-6 years, so it's great to hear more about it.

Do you have links to any of those other stories? (I'm thinking specifically of the cntrl-alt-del story but anything else interesting would be neat)

Great Thanks!

Agreed, I was hoping for more dramatic/unexpected/insightful story than 'we picked an easy to remember number and it turned out to be too much effort to restrict access to the public'.

We're sorry that this reality is not dramatic enough for your tastes.

The style in which it was written can only be described as "infuriatingly circumspect".