[11475] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Mon Apr 4 02:23:42 1994
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 94 19:19:53 -0500
From: Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
"Joseph W. Stroup" <nettech@crl.com> writes:
>protection money ? I thought I had a good imagination. If you had
>anything more than a small connection I would be very surprised.
Argument by handwaving doesn't work. People have dismissed the analogy
without offering *any* way in which it breaks down. If the analogy doesn't
work, fine, *explain* EXACTLY how it breaks down. Whether you emotionally
don't want to accept the analogy is different from pointing out rationally
the flaw in the analogy. Whether the racket is necessary or not is also
seperate from the accuracy of the analogy. Stand behind your words as
someone put it, in the only meaningful way, by logically arguing the point.
No one has demonstrated how the analogy doesn't map. Its fine to be
surprised at it, but it can't be dismissed out of hand. Others have begun
to express some of the same concerns.
One person has again gone into a diatribe about if the CIX didn't exist
where would commercial internet stuff be. People seem to get sidetracked by
the interconnection point aspects of the CIX, where customers are actually
paying directly for physical connectivity which wouldn't exist otherwise,
and avoiding the question of this routing, having customers of customers
of the CIX pay double dipping. Someone said that if the CIX didn't exist,
referring to the interconnection, we would be forced to invent it. Which is
true in that the market niche was there and it would have been filled
regardless of wether it was CIX or some other organization, the question is
what we do now.
How do things scale up, and how does the industry deal with mom and pop
ISPs? Someone asked how they could compete when the corner grocery store
can't compete with national food chains. The answer is that obiously there
are many corner grocery stores because they compete on different things, as
will the small ISPs. In this case however many of them will be run part
time, or bootstrapped off other businesses with connections anyway, etc.,
in ways that cut down on all the overhead. Many of the people in this
industry now seem to be those who have been involved in networks in large
companies and government, who are used to large budgets and think nothing
of spending $10k. Whereas these competitors won't have the big company
mentality, they are used to doing things on a shoe string and consider even
$10k something that they need to spend well. How do smaller companies
underprice IBM? Why can't defense contractors compete in real private
sector? Because they are overbloated with buearocracy and inefficient, as
are many of the RBOCs still.
There are bulletin boards, etc. already getting into the ISP business.
Someone asked about my motivations, and I can say that I am not from ANS or
anything, my concern is the small ISPs, grassroots entrepreneurs who are
concerned with bringing internet to the masses. In any case, my background
is scientific rather than political, I think what matters is the
reasonability (or not) of what I'm saying, not motivations, identity, etc.
My motivation for saying 2+2=4 has nothing to do with the validity (or not
depending on the meaning of the operators) of the statement. It can be
examined independently.
My concern is more the future of these ISPs, I'm only peripherally
connected with one, my main concern is the principle of the thing.
Part of my motivation is trying to understand an industry that I am new to
(as anything but a user, I've been on the Net quite a while), and which
really didn't appear to make sense to me. And I haven't been convinced that
this model is the right model, even if it is the one that exists now.
Perhaps its been useful, perhaps things wouldn't have been where they were
without it. This doesn't matter, the question is whether it makes sense now
or in the future, and if not what is done about it.
