[10891] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
The FCC strikes the Internet (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sun Mar 13 22:57:17 1994
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 19:31:45 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: love@essential.org
Cc: amr@isoc.org, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: James Love's message of Sun, 13 Mar 1994 14:31:00 -0500 (EST) <Pine.3.85.9403131459.B29605-0100000@essential>
> I stand corrected on the number of NSF funded backbones. A question
>that you must know the answer to is this. What does the NSF funding have
>to do with the current pricing of the internet? That is to say, does the
>NSF funding that is available today have anything to do with the way that
>internet settlements are done, and will the withdrawal of the NSF funds
>remove not only the AUP, but also these directions (rules, incentives,
>etc, if any) on pricing policies?
>- jamie
At this point in time NSF funding of the backbone probably has very
little to do with the pricing of use of the net. If you can locate
some major backbone maps (NSF and non-NSF) I think you'd be able to
convince yourself of this fairly quickly (there's a lot of
redundancy.)
At this point in history the CIX is probably as critical to the
functioning of the net as the NSF backbone. And cost of membership to
the CIX is $10K/year plus connection costs, hardly prohibitive except
to the tiniest provider.
Many if not most of the original NSF regionals interconnect in one or
more places with commercial providers.
I think it's fair to say that in the big scheme of internet things the
NSF backbone is becoming a smallish fish in an ever-growing pond.
The NSF AUP of course only applies on the NSF backbone. I don't know
of any "rules, incentives, etc" from NSF other than that they have
helped bootstrap some colleges onto the net with NSF funds. I would
expect that sort of thing to continue as needed (i.e. be independent
of whether the connection was funded to a blessed provider or just
chosen via a bid process, the funds don't connect you to the NSF
backbone anyhow except indirectly as much as anyone is connected.)
Certainly just pulling the plug overnight and without warning would
cause some serious discomfort to someone. But I don't think that is
going to happen, and with some warning it would probably be a smooth
enough transition.
It wouldn't be difficult to argue that at some point some NSF funding
has had an adverse impact on internet connection pricing as commercial
providers matured. For example, if you are in a smallish town where
there are some university, govt, research or other non-commercial
sites who are connected via various NSF fundings then likely they've
(NSF) gotten all the critical mass in that town that might also
provide for public access. But NSF can't sell public access.
As a somewhat concrete example, and this may be unfair in the specific
but is a geography I know, consider Ithaca, NY. There are pretty much
two universities in Ithaca, Cornell and Ithaca College. We can
probably assume that Cornell and Ithaca College's connections are
ultimately derived from NSF funding. There's a lot of bandwidth at
Cornell (it's an ENSS site.) But from what I understand there's no way
for a person in the general Ithaca vicinity to get a direct connection
to the net except by hauling a leased line from a fairly distant
location, not sure where the nearest public access POP would be
(Buffalo? NYC?)
Now, in a purely commercial scenario a provider would probably have
used the connections from places like Cornell and IC to justify a POP
in Ithaca, and then would immediately sell more to any other comers in
the area. Why not? The hard part would be done, finding enough revenue
stream to justify opening a POP location in the first place. But
having lost access to the critical mass, the couple of large and
secure customers, why would a commercial provider go into a place like
Ithaca at all? There isn't a whole lot else there last I checked.
As I said, the specific scenario of Ithaca is probably completely
unfounded, but I have little doubt that the concept is sound. I can
think of other scenarios (e.g. the Springfield, MA area using the
examples of U. Mass Amherst and Amherst College.) Obviously as the
regionals spin off this scenario changes, but it's something to think
about and obviously needs more fleshing out.
-Barry Shein
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