This comment is accurate. Without TCP/IP, there would be no internet -- that was the whole point of TCP/IP.

Back before Jan 1st 1983, the ARPANET used a host protocol called NCP that didn't allow for transparent routing of host traffic between networks. On that date, the network operators for the ARPANET in the Network Operations Center at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) changed a configuration option that disallowed hosts to use NCP anymore and required TCP/IP. At that point, internetworking was possible throughout the ARPANET and connected networks. At the time of the switch there were already ARPANET inter-connected networks using using TCP/IP, mostly government networks. And was all before there were any regional networks.

The BBN operators in the NOC also monitored and controlled that network of networks that what we called the internet back then.

In 1986, NSFNET came online and connected to the ARPANET becoming (the first? one of the first?) regional networks allowing commercial traffic.

While BBSes felt similar to what some apps are like on today's internet, it did not use any of the technology that the internet uses today. It has it's place in internet history, but is not on the direct line to development of today's network.

You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.