[11074] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What is an "Internet reseller"?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Mon Mar 21 18:15:50 1994
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 03:04:32 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
At 7:36 PM 3/18/94 -0600, Karl Denninger wrote:
>> 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.
>> 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.
>> 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.
So, if I have 10,000 or 100,000 or 500,000 users all telneting and ftping
etc., as long as they do it from my host machine(s) IP address, that's
ok... and I wouldn't have to (in your opinion) join the CIX?
Could you please tell me how many universities would not be 'reselling
Internet access'? Many provide full IP access to students, faculty,
contractors, etc. for a fee... Some are even not directly connected
(whatever that means).
What about a free network where no one is being charged for IP access? How
can they be reselling if nothin is being sold?
At one point you said that the CIX fee is not so bad, even for a small
operation. I'm curious Karl, when you first started MCS, did you
immediately go out and join the CIX, or did you wait until you could afford
it? I'm not trying to pry, nor am I trying to flame, I'm trying to point
out that for a small operation just getting started the $10K chunk of
change is a large amount. Of course, if I were pushing a business plan
around for funding, I'd add in the CIX fee -- but if I wanted to get
started on a shoestring with a 486 running BSDI, I would definitely not
want to hvae to pay CIX more than two times what my entire hardware cost
me.
>This whole mess comes about because YOU, ERIC, would not like the bill if
>NSPs engineered for full bandwidth.
No, I really think that this comes about because some NSPs simply didn't
want downstream customers reselling services cutting them out of the
revenue stream. Some of the NSPs that formed the CIX flat out would not
sell you IP access if you were going to resell or share it with anyone
(this was before the CIX was created -- I don't know if that's any
different now). The reason was NOT bandwidth, since they wouldn't do it
period. The reason was, I believe, strictly an attempt to get the money
that they missed out on.
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
(415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
