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Internet Economics and Dynamics
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 11:19:21 -0400
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 10:56:04 -0400 From: Tony Rutkowski <amr () cnri reston va us> The following letter to the editor may prove useful in dealing with an oft misunderstood subject. The Internet Society deals with this subject constantly in public dialogue and relations with other organizations. The intent is not to denigrate the valuable role NSF and other public bodies worldwide play in assisting Internet development and connectivity to sectors of end-users, but to set the record straight on the current economics and dynamics. ========================================================= Denis Gilhooly Publishing Director Communications Week International Paris Dear Denis, In one your recent excellent editorials, in dealing with the subject of National Information Infrastructure, you made reference to the Internet as a development paradigm for technologies. Inadvertently, I'm afraid you replicated some outdated information. You said: "A case in point: Because the National Science Foundation/Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency picks up Internet costs, usage is exploding." Certainly it IS true that usage is exploding. Based on current connectivity rates, another TCP/IP internetwork now attaches to the Internet every ten minutes; and the just-released measurement of computers reachable via the Internet exceeds two million. However, the amount of costs the NSF now picks up is a minor part of the Internet, essentially irrelevant compared to other factors, and disappearing in a few months as NSFNet goes away and the U.S. backbone traffic shifts to the existing commercial internet backbone providers. Internet use is exploding because: 1) institutions (commercial, academic, and governmental) purchase the connectivity for their staff - making the per user cost very low; 2) commercial providers - ranging from local access Internet kiosks to 800 dialup services - are offering mass market connectivity at low flat rates; 3) a "Sender Keep All" accounting practice where customers and providers purchase by flat-rate bandwidths at all levels of the providing chain; 4) inherent very low cost of the technologies employed; 5) flexibility, scalability, and robustness of the architecture and connectivity so that remote and "infrastructure disadvantaged" people and countries can be part of the Internet matrix. 6) an extraordinary good global developmental process that is user driven, fast, innovative, and produces workable standards, code, and services; 7) the basic software is bundled with virtually every computer operating system; and good, very user-friendly, third party software for Internet services is now available; 8) sheer size and dynamics - encompassing an estimated 20 million users, more than 8 trillion bytes of traffic a month, access to several trillion bytes of public information, and collaboration among active professionals and institutions in virtually every business, educational and governmental sector. Nearly every messaging network that exists, now has an Internet gateway. cordially, (Tony) Vice-President Internet Society Reston VA USA
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