You young sproggins don't go back far enough ...
My first networking experience was in 1968 or 1969, with a an IBM stand-alone tape drive with a built-in modem (which Gemini, in its infinite wisdom, denies ever existed. Fuck you, AI dolt).
We the IBM Newman Street London data centre had customers far away who sent in work over the phone line, for the 7094 or the 360. We ran it on the appropriate machine, and then transmitted the results back over the line.
To get the transmission started, we had to talk to the operator at the other end, agree the speed and parity, set the switches on the drive, switch the phone from TALK to DATA, and press start.
Which is where my very first "networking protocol problem" started. One of the customers was Whessoe, in Glasgow. I could not understand one word that the operator at the other end said.
Now that's a PROPER networking problem.