The Internet Adapter (TIA)
A program that ran on the provider's Unix box and made an ordinary shell account look like a SLIP connection — the graphical web for the price of a terminal login.
In the early nineties a shell account cost a fraction of a real SLIP or PPP connection, but all it gave you was a text terminal. TIA, released in 1993 by Cyberspace Development of Colorado, attacked the problem from the wrong end. You logged in as usual, started TIA in your shell, then switched your home computer into SLIP mode. The program picked up the IP packets coming over the modem line and forwarded them onto the network from the provider's machine, using its address.
Suddenly Mosaic and Netscape ran at home without the provider changing anything, or even knowing about it. Not every provider was pleased about that last part. The free successor SLiRP did the same job, and both faded once PPP plans got cheap.