IP: more on 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dave Crocker <dhc2 () dcrocker net>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 07:34:27 -0700
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Cc: ip <ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com>
Subject: Re: IP: 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success

At 05:02 AM 9/13/2002 -0400, Dave Farber wrote:
> 6) CSNET, an early network used by universities, connects with the ARPANET,
> ...
> 7) The NSF requires users of the NSFNET to use TCP/IP, not competing


Dave,

There was a benefit from NSFNet that was fundamental, but is usually missed:

NSFNet was an additional "backbone" to the Internet.  And it broke the
existing Internet backbone routing protocol.

Until NSFNet, the backbone was a closed entity, run by BBN.  That is, the
Internet was a tree, not a mesh, in terms of formal routing.

With the advent of NSFNet, the technical community needed to develop a
backbone routing protocol that allowed arbitrary interconnections.

This was the technical change that permitted a fully competitive Internet
service.

We owe Steve Wolff, then at NSF, a particular vote of thanks for this
contribution.

(Interestingly, CSNet was the market research project for NSFNet.)


/Dave

CSNet email relay architect, software engineer, and co-principal
investigator.





----------
Dave Crocker <mailto:dave () tribalwise com>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850


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