[11532] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What's an ISP again...?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Simon Poole)
Wed Apr 6 04:34:27 1994
To: ittai@ans.net (Ittai Hershman)
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 07:38:32 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: poole@magnolia.eunet.ch, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <CMM.0.90.2.765605923.ittai@shemesh.ans.net> from "Ittai Hershman" at Apr 6, 94 00:18:43 am
From: Simon Poole <poole@magnolia.eunet.ch>
Ittai writes:
>
> Where would I find these minutes? I am very interested in reading them.
I assume you should be able to get them from CIX (where else?).
> - EUnet is substantially older than the CIX (so there is no question
> of it being a device to circumvent CIX membership requirements).
>
> Really. Well, ANSNet is older than the CIX and the NSFNET program is
> substantially older that the CIX as well, so by your reasoning I guess
> we can all feel comforted that we have not tried to circumvent CIX
> membership requirements.
Substantially older like in -10 years-? In any case this is an apples
and oranges comparision, unless you are claiming that organisations
purchasing transit from ANSnet are actually part of ANSnet (like in
"subsidiaries" or "franchise operations"), which would probably amaze
most people here.
> I see. So you rationalize that the rules should be bent for EUnet. I
I am not rationalizing anything nor am I advocating bending the rules,
I'm just reporting the current situation. In fact I can not see anything
in the current solution that is contrary to the spirit and intent of
the CIX.
Note that I would have no problems with ANS subsidiaries or franchise
operations being covered by a single ANS membership (not allowing this
would obviously cause a severe imbalance between the larger and smaller
members of the CIX). However I'm not aware of this being a problem in
the first place, the whole discussion has been about -independent-
organisations selling there own products without any other ties than
purchasing bandwidth from a current CIX member.
I would suspect that Karl would not particular relish the idea of being
called a Sprint subsidiary (which would naturally require corresponding
financial ties) or a Sprint franchise (is he selling anything under the
Sprint name and are there corresponding payments to Sprint?).
> have no problem with that, if this is administered equitably for
> similiar situations and properly documented. It would be interesting
> to understand the rationale for permiting EUnet that which is the CIX
> Association has not permitted to the NSFNET Regionals...
[The following is hypothetical, because it is clear that this does not
fit the operating and funding model of the NSF, nor probably of most
of the NSFnet regionals.]
Now if NSF came to CIX and showed that the NSFnet regionals had purchased
a franchise of the NSFnet backbone service and this was their essential
product offering, I (again personally) would not see any problems with
having them covered by a single CIX membership of NSF.
[Back to the real world.]
However what this has to do with ANS manoeuvering for position with
respect to customers it has sold transit to, and you have not claimed
anything else up to now, is really unclear.
Simon
