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re: A Ridiculous Failure of Critical Infrastructure
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 12:50:01 -0500
Begin forwarded message:
From: Chuck Brownstein <charles.brownstein () verizon net> Date: December 3, 2009 11:04:39 AM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] re: A Ridiculous Failure of Critical Infrastructure Reply-To: charles.brownstein () verizon net
Rick,I believe the formal approval in 1991 was to link NSF and MCI mail which also linked commercial and federal data networks. Vint and Steve can fill in details.My point of view at the time was that it was not so much as a change of acceptable use policy (a slippery construct that was mostly a prophylactic against political mischief) but a positive federal declaration of the linking of commercial and research networks- on the road to moving out the the infrastructure supply business.Contrary to what some believed would happen, the world did not come to an end when the memo was signed. Instead, we moved forward on what had been intended for NSFNET from the time CISE was created at NSF.There were a mixture of intentions. The obvious most easily justifiable (if not totally uncontroversial ) one from inside of NSF was to drive down the cost of S&T data communications by promoting technical progress and the scale economies that could only come from a commercial Internet so that it would be more accessable to researchers .But S&T data comunications was also thought of as an entry point for other beneficial uses of networking apart from profit per se. Hence there was as much support as the budget would allow for international networking, research projects into technology and applications apart form scientific communications, and lots of joint effort with allied agencies (DARPA, DOE, NASA in particular) where there were equally motivated people.Chuck Dec 2, 2009 07:53:44 PM, dave () farber net wrote: Begin forwarded message:From: Rick Adams <Rick.Adams () Cello Net> Date: December 2, 2009 7:26:01 PM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: RE: [IP] A Ridiculous Failure of Critical InfrastructureUUNET's first commercial TCP/IP service over leased lines was running in November 1988. AUP (Appropriate Use Policy) compliant traffic was exchanged with NSFNET. Non-AUP compliant traffic was not.Much of Europe's email came over this link for years.UUNET and PSINet both started actively selling TCP/IP in January 1990.I don't understand the reference to "Why 1991? That's when NSFNet modified its Acceptable Use Policyto permit commercial TCP/IP services to interconnect with NSFNet".As I remember, NSF cared if the entity abided by the AUP, not the legal status of the corporate entity or its service provider.UUNET was certainly exchanging packets between NSFNET and AUP compliant research groups in 1988 (with the explicit approval of Steve Wolff. His guideline was "is it to support research and scholarly pursuits?" but he personally approved each organization.)It really ramped up in 1989 and UUNET was frequently asking NSF to clarify what was and wasn't appropriate use. A key question in 1989 was if UUNET could gateway email between CompuServe and the NSFNET.I believe that in early 1990 NSF stopped explicitly approving each US network, but continued closely monitoring international connections (I don't want to put words into Steve Wolff's mouth) Export control issues were still a concern.In March 1991, NSFNET began permitting "Eastern Bloc" countries (Soviet Union, Hungary and Czechoslovakia as they were know at the time) to connect to the NSFNETFrom: Dave Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 5:43 PM To: ip Subject: [IP] A Ridiculous Failure of Critical Infrastructure Begin forwarded message:From: "John S. Quarterman" <jsq () QUARTERMAN COM> Date: December 2, 2009 5:12:17 PM EST To: CYBERTELECOM-L () LISTSERV AOL COM Subject: Re: A Ridiculous Failure of Critical InfrastructureReply-To: Telecom Regulation & the Internet <CYBERTELECOM-L () LISTSERV AOL COM >Shane, UUNET dates to 1987 as a dialup provider.The World was the first commercial dialup ISP to offer Internet access,in 1989. CERFNet and NEARNet already existed in their NSFNet regional forms by around 1989.UUNET and PSINet started offering commercial Internet access in 1991.If I've got any of those dates wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me, and all the principals are still alive and on the Internet, so you canask them. Why 1991? That's when NSFNet modified its Acceptable Use Policy to permit commercial TCP/IP services to interconnect with NSFNet. http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_nsfnet.htmNot that UUNET (AlterNet) and PSINet waited for the official starting pistol.I think the only point on which you and I differ is that if I understand you correctly you seem to think NSFNet did nothing to promote privatization before that date. It's my memory that NSF insisted on technology transfer long before then, because Congress insisted on it. It wasn't an accident that CERFNet, NEARNet, and other commercial entitites forked off from NSFNet regionals. That was always one of the likely outcomes becauseof technology transfer. "The networks of Stages 2 and 3 will be implemented and operated so that they can become commercialized; industry will then be able to supplant the government in supplying these network services." -- Federal Research Internet Coordinating Committee, Program Plan for the National Research and Education Network, May 23, 1989, pp. 4-5. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1192.html And it would appear the feds knew some of the likely effects of what they were doing: "The NREN should be the prototype of a new national information infrastructure which could be available to every home, office andfactory. Wherever information is used, from manufacturing to high-definition home video entertainment, and most particularly in education, the country will benefit from deployment of this technology.... The corresponding ease of inter-computercommunication will then provide the benefits associated with the NREN to the entire nation, improving the productivity of all information-handling activities. To achieve this end, the deployment of theStage 3 NREN will include a specific, structured process resulting intransition of the network from a government operation a commercial service." -- Office of Science and Technology Policy, The Federal High Performance Computing Program, September 8, 1989, pp. 32, 35. This was the formalization of technology transfer resulting in commercialization and privatization. As RFC1192 (see above URL) notes, much privatization had already occured by November 1990: "In some respects, the Internet is already substantially privatized. The physical circuits are owned by the private sector, and the logical networks are usually managed andoperated by the private sector. The nonprofit regional networks ofthe NSFNET increasingly contract out routine operations, including network information centers, while retaining control of policy and planning functions. This helps develop expertise, resources, andcompetition in the private sector and so facilitates the developmentof similar commercial services. "In the case of NSFNET, the annual federal investment covers only aminor part of the backbone and the regional networks. Although theNSFNET backbone is operated as a cooperative agreement between NSF and Merit, the Michigan higher education network, NSF contributes less than $3 million of approximately $10 million in annual costs.The State of Michigan Strategic Fund contributes $1 million and the balance is covered by contributed services from the subcontractors toMerit, IBM and MCI."The RFC goes on to note that the NSFNet regionals were even less supportedby the feds. The participants in the workshop that RFC writes up included Rick Adams (UUNET), Bill Schrader (PSI), and Stephen Wolff (NSF).The existing commercial outfits weren't waiting for the feds to change their policies: they were actively working with the feds towards thatgoal, and already selling commercial services at the same time. You wonder why more such outfits didn't spring up? First of all, remember how much smaller the Internet community was back then. I can dig up the numbers, if you like, but it wasn't until DNS was deployed that exponential growth of the Internet really took off, and that wasn't until the last 1980s. In 1991 there were only a few million Internet users in the entire world. It wasstill a smallish market, and there weren't all that many entrepeneurswilling to bet on it. 1995 was the year the Internet became trendy, because of Mosaic fronting the brand-new World Wide Web. Pictures! And soon, banner ads! That there were even two companies willing to make a successful go at commercial Internet access back in the tiny and antique world of the late 1980s is the surprising part.Risky as a commerical proposition? UUNET was a commercial success fromdialup access. PSI had a captive market in NYSerNet.UUNET and PSI originally occupied relatively small niches. Once UUNET got going it was harder for competitors to go head to head with them,and the PSI protagonists were the only ones who were willing to quittheir NSFNet regional and offer their services back to it, which was arather controversial move at the time. I don't find it so surprising that there were only two. I find it more surprising that there were as many as two, each finding a different approach to commercial viability.Back in the 1980s commercialization of the Internet was not a certain outcome. There were vociferous opponents of any commercial use of the Internet, some of them in very influential positions. And there were commercial private gardens that considered the academic networks more or less irrelevant(remember CompuServe? Prodigy?). Plus the dialup BBS community.This is why I brought up com-priv: all these issues were hashed out atgreat length on that list. Probably somebody has archives of it. Other countries had their own peculiar policies. France had Minitel and thought it was best. Japan didn't allow private commercial data interconnections until 1994. Etc. Interestingly, although there are quite a few books about the early days of the ARPANET and of the Internet (I wrote one of them), so far as I know nobody has yet written a book about this critical period of commercialization and privatization. It's not clear to me there'd be much of a market for such a book, unfortunately. Anyway, there are people on Cybertelecom-L who were involved in allthese things. Most of the rest of the major players are on the net andanswer their mail. Many of them are on Facebook, for that matter. I know you know some of them. And you've probably noticed that everybody has a point of view.... As far as the idea of renationalizing the Internet, I think it would be even more useful to look at the state of commercialization and privatization in those countries that have fast, affordable, ubiquitous Internet access, such as Japan, Korea, Finland, etc. They all have multiple competing private providers. Multiple as in multiple in any given location, unlike the U.S. duopoly of cableco and telco. And they all have government regulations of that competition. "Robust open access policies", as this report calls them: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5751#penetration -jsqJohn,A very fair point. And well taken. There were spinoffs, you are quite right,and from some very smart people. And it is possible to trace some benefits tothe US economy directly from those spinoffs. Looking back, the interestingquestion is about timing. More PSI's did not spring up in 1989. UUNet comesto mind, and some dial-up ISPs, but a lot less than I would later eventswould lead one to expect (albeit, with the benefit of hindsight). Iconjecture (as an outsider) that most waited until NSF privatizationplan was put into place, simply because doing anything before than wasincredibly risky as a commercial proposition. Is that right?ShaneArchivesArchives
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