[11040] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: ANS and the CIX - have they really connected?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matthew Kaufman)
Fri Mar 18 17:03:31 1994
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 09:26:28 -0800
From: matthew@echo.com (Matthew Kaufman)
To: karl@mcs.com, matthew@echo.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, cook@path.net, fair@apple.com, stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
>From karl@mcs.com Fri Mar 18 07:59:22 1994:
>
> I, and others, have construed the agreement to say that "customer" is more
> than a sham arrangement where you hand money from one place to another. It
> involves the provision of some kind of service as is generally accepted in
> the industry.
>
So why, exactly, is selling "CIX Routing" to someone who's downstream
of me NOT "some kind of service"?
They give me money, I arrange to route packets to them, and DO route
packets to them. If it weren't for me, they wouldn't get any packets at
ALL, because they're downstream of me. Why should anybody care whether
they've got a line directly to me, or if they've got a line to someone
who's directly connected to me?
How is that any different than what, for instance, BARRNet does... they
sell service to a university, and then put a router at that university
and then use that as a new POP for providing service. Why is "random-company
pays barrnet ($12000/year) who provides service (and CIX routing) through
a router at the university who also pays barrnet ($5000/year because they
get a discount for being a POP)" any different from "random-company pays
barrnet ($1/year) who provides service (CIX routing) through a router at
the university who also pays barrnet ($12000/year, because they're just
a customer who's doing resale now)" ?
There is NO definition of why one's a "sham arragement" and the other is
"accepted industry practice" anywhere, except that which is made up by
the various members of CIX on their own.
And why _should_ there be? Artificial differences have no point.
Why should there be a distinction between "I let my users log in to
my hosts, where I run proxy software that lets them use X windows,
Mosaic, etc" and "I let me users appear to be one of the hosts on my
class C network, and give them full routing so they can use X windows,
Mosaic, etc" ?
The only reason to make up differences like this is to increase the
number of times CIX gets $10,000. And reduce the number of people who
can be helping to expand the scope of the internet, by providing a
nice, healthy, $10k barrier to entry.... keeping people who want to
get a connection to their rural neighborhood and then let their neighbors
hook up (for just enough $$$ to cover the cost of the connection)
from being able to. Both because they can't get CIX routing without
coming up with an extra $10k/year, and because almost every IP provider
in existance today, when asked about resale, says "Oh No. You Can't Do
That. The CIX won't let us let you resell, unless you become a CIX member."
(If they don't say "Oh No. We're greedy and want to maximize the number
of people who are forced to connect to us.")
-matthew
