[11057] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What is an "Internet reseller"?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Karl Denninger)
Sat Mar 19 02:05:01 1994
From: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
To: fair@apple.com (Erik E. Fair)
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 19:36:01 -0600 (CST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <12054.764025208@apple.com> from "Erik E. Fair" at Mar 18, 94 01:13:28 pm
> I'm sure everyone here has heard of America Online. They are selling
> Internet access too. It started with just E-mail, but (if they haven't
> already) they will be providing WAIS, Gopher, WWW, and FTP service to
> their customers, all umpty-thousand of them. Telnet to come later.
Yep.
> The amusing thing is that the customers will not be getting SLIP/PPP;
> these services will be delivered over a proprietary communications and
> graphical interface technology. Ping will not work.
Yep.
> Is America Online reselling Internet service?
Nope. They are reselling access to an Internet host. Admittedly a BIG one.
> How does this differ from shell access on a terminal dialup UNIX host?
It doesn't.
> Why do some of you persist in believing that handing out IP addresses
> makes it qualitatively different? Bandwidth is bandwidth.
>
> This whole mess comes about because NSP's will not engineer their
> networks to carry the total aggregate inputs - too expensive. So, they
> guess at an average usage per customer, and then frantically restrict
> anything that violates that assumption, with lots of handwaving.
This whole mess comes about because YOU, ERIC, would not like the bill if
NSPs engineered for full bandwidth.
--
Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.COM) | MCSNet - Full Internet Connectivity (shell,
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