It's an interesting story anyway, kind of fun how the early days of the internet people just decided to build stuff and that random little tool from decades ago continue to be the backbone of much of the world. Imagine if all that stuff was proprietary...
True of many things we take for granted now. It would be a different world entirely. Another non-computer example would be the 3-point seat belt that Volvo left as an open patent, saving countless lives over the past decades.
What a strange article. The reasoning for why 22 is interesting though very straightforward, and the rest of the article is essentially “I asked for port 22, and they gave it to me”. Little fanfare, little in way of storytelling conflict.
Not an issue in and of itself, but strange with a title of the form “This is the story of…” That sort of titling usually begets intrigue and triumph over adversity, dunnit?
Back then, the internet was a thing of trust and cooperation. We got an assigned port number the same way. Current problem: Our company changed over the decades, and I no longer have the email address that would identify me to the IANA as the one who requested that number reservation.
Actually, I have my public facing servers configured to listen to 443 as well. Why? Because many corporate and public space wifi spots like libraries, will block 22, but allow 443 for https, so on my shell servers, I also listen to 443.