[11208] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Here a NAP, There a NAP, Everywhere A NAP, NAP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bob Weber)
Fri Mar 25 10:58:01 1994
From: weber@world.std.com (Bob Weber)
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 17:50:21 GMT
To: com-priv@psi.com
I've been following the CIX, NAP threads for some time. As a
non-combatant, I have learned some things from the discussion.
However, most of it strikes me as myopic.
By the end of the decade, according to one argument, the
Internet as we know it will become generally indistinguishable
from the general information infrastructure. It might be another
channel or two in the home or from the desktop in the enterprise,
a transparent source of information.
If these assumptions turn out to be true, then the architcture
that underlies this vision is probably NAPs everywhere. Well,
maybe not EVERYWHERE. But imagine that there is at least one
NAP in every major city over 100,000 population. SONET, ATM,
the necessary routing are all in place (or their successor
technologies).
Under these (possible) circumstances, the NSF funded NAPs seem
less important. By the end of the new funding period, perhaps the
key question (if anyone will care by then) might be: when do we
decomission or completely eliminate Federal funding in a way
that doesn't adversely affect service?
And the CIX? Maybe the carriers concerned with traffic exchange
just operate the NAPs much like traffic exchange in the telephony
world (but without settlements?).
Now on the way to these visions a lot of oxen can get gored (no,
not AL Gored), and perhaps some of the curent smoke and brimstone
is about exactly that: who wins and looses in the short term. But
it seems to me that these problems will get resolved relatively
easily because as Internet growth continues to accelerate, the
size of the dollars involved increases.
The Internet is, in my opinion, just beginning to emerge from the
early precommercial stage of business development and evolution.
As larger and larger sums of money are at stake, the transport
providers will not allow architectural questions such as the
number, location, and management of NAPs and internet-work traffic
exchange to get in the way of making money. Network stability
and a (evolving) evolution plan will be required as conditions
of major investments.
How these get done is not clear; however, I believe that when
enough players recognize the need to nail these issues, they
will get nailed in fairly short order. There may be causalties
(dare I say roadkill on the information highway?) along the
way. Not all of the current players will survive. There may be
new entrants that today no one has thought of. However the world
looks in a few years, the current controversies are unlikely
to be enduring ones.
Bob Weber
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