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re: A Ridiculous Failure of Critical Infrastructure

From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 19:51:51 -0500




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 Infrastructure
UUNET'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 Policy 
to 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 NSFNET 

From: 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 Infrastructure
Reply-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 can 
ask 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.htm
Not 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 because
of 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 and
  factory.  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-computer
communication 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 the
Stage 3 NREN will include a specific, structured process resulting in 
  transition 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 and
  operated by the private sector.  The nonprofit regional networks of
  the NSFNET increasingly contract out routine operations, including
  network information centers, while retaining control of policy and
  planning functions.  This helps develop expertise, resources, and
competition in the private sector and so facilitates the development 
  of similar commercial services.

 "In the case of NSFNET, the annual federal investment covers only a
  minor part of the backbone and the regional networks.  Although the
  NSFNET 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 to 
  Merit, IBM and MCI."
The RFC goes on to note that the NSFNet regionals were even less supported 
by 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 that
goal, 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 was
still a smallish market, and there weren't all that many entrepeneurs
willing 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 from 
dialup 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 quit
their NSFNet regional and offer their services back to it, which was a 
rather 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 at 
great 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 all
these things. Most of the rest of the major players are on the net and 
answer 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

-jsq



John,
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 to
the US economy directly from those spinoffs. Looking back, the interesting
question is about timing. More PSI's did not spring up in 1989. UUNet comes
to mind, and some dial-up ISPs, but a lot less than I would later events 


would lead one to expect (albeit, with the benefit of hindsight). I



conjecture (as an outsider) that most waited until NSF privatization
plan was put into place, simply because doing anything before than was 


incredibly risky as a commercial proposition. Is that right?







Shane

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