[11053] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Background and history of the CIX?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Cook)
Sat Mar 19 00:19:11 1994
From: cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 00:08:25 GMT
Apparently-To: <com-priv@psi.com>
The CIX was announced for the first time on by Bill Schrader and Susan
Estrada at my workshop on provider access to NREN on February 14 at the
US Congress Office of Technology Assessment in Washington DC. The third
founding member Rick Adams was supposed to be there but was ill.
The context was the "transfer" of the NSFnet backbone to ANS and Al Weis
who also attendedthis meeting along with Doug van Houwelling. At the
time it looked liked 3 players banding together to face the IBM
juggernaught.
In my view the 3 founders were also reacting to Weis' plan for
settlements which was unveiled in public only in august but which had
been discussed in private meetings almost since the time of ANS's
incorporation in Sept 1990. Weis on behalf of ANS had made it clear
that one reason for his imposition of settlements (aka combits) was to
extract the capital necessary to increase the ANS backbone to gigabit
speed ASAP.
The CIX effort was designed to thwart ANS's designs. By some point in
1992 it had succeeded. (At which point it was also in a position to
play the trade association role under discussion now.) From Feb 14 1991
on CIX's basic underlying principal was interconnection without settlements.
