Interesting People mailing list archives

Re: NSF and the Birth of the Internet


From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:02:01 -0400



Begin forwarded message:

From: Robert Alberti <ip () sanction net>
Date: August 18, 2008 10:58:46 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, steve.goldstein () cox net, DeWayne Townsend <d-town () tc umn edu >
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    NSF and the Birth of the Internet
Reply-To: alberti () sanction net

Also the word "gopher" appears nowhere in the timeline, although for a
couple of years it WAS the Internet...

I basically read it as breathless NSF self-promotion and decided to pay
it no mind.

-Bob Alberti
RFC 1436

On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 19:20 -0400, David Farber wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: August 18, 2008 4:17:03 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] re: NSF and the Birth of the Internet

[Note:  This comment comes from friend Steve Goldstein.  DLH]

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein () cox net>
Date: August 18, 2008 12:15:01 PM PDT
To: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] NSF and the Birth of the Internet

All this somewhat overblown chest-thumping does not make up for the
way that NSF and the USA in general dropped the ball starting in the
late 1990's with regard to leadership in the Internet, or rather the
academic and research Internet.  I speak as one who was there (at NSF)
and part of the early withdrawal from leadership, and then a rueful on-
looker in the early years of this millennium as the NSF went AWOL.
They have been trying to play some catch-up ball, but with too little
money and a dearth of solid and original thought.  Compared to Canada,
the Netherlands, Japan and Korea (and maybe a few other countries of
which I am unaware), NSF and the US are pikers putting on a big front.

BTW, my job at NSF in the 1990's was, essentially, to spread Internet,
and then advanced Inernet around the world.  I have not found any
reference to STAR TAP or Starlight or the Internet Connections Manager
Project (yet another ICMP!) in that video.  And, the some of the
talking heads (e.g., Karen) just do not really understand what they
are talking about.  For example, running domain name registration into
the Mosaic browser support.  And, the domain name registration was
originally run under DARPA (or was it ARPA then?) supervision
(contracting?) and not by NSF.  NSF took it over after DARPA decided
that the Internet had grown to the point that it was beyond their
remit to handle.  And, then we handed it over to the Department of
Commerce, which led, eventually, to the formation of ICANN to
coordinate globally (disclosure: I am now about halfway through my
three-year term on the ICANN Board).  But, in the exuberance of chest-
thumping, and the others' roles seem to be overlooked or at least
short-changed.

Just my humble opinion, by the way.

--Steve, the curmudgeon
RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>




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