[11665] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: public funds to help ANS develop VPN Services????
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Hans-Werner Braun)
Wed Apr 13 04:32:12 1994
From: hwb@upeksa.sdsc.edu (Hans-Werner Braun)
To: nettech@crl.com (Joseph W. Stroup)
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 94 17:31:24 PDT
Cc: cook@path.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9404121752.A2652-0100000@crl.crl.com>; from "Joseph W. Stroup" at Apr 12, 94 5:07 pm
Ok, ok, I give up. Before more rumors fly.
The Mitre location was incidental, had nothing to do with Mitre as a
corporation. Mitre was (is) one of the six DISA/DCA/ARPA mailbridge
locations and the logical interface point for the Milnet/Arpanet
connection to NSFNET at the east coast; i.e., for FIX-East. Just like
NASA-Ames was/is for FIX-West. Whether the east coast mailbridge was at
Mitre or anywhere else was irrelevant, we just needed a solid
Arpanet/Milnet connection, as per the agreement with NSF. I think I
provided more details about Mailbridge/Butterfly connections in some
earlier posting some while ago (I think related to NAPs). The Merit
cooperative agreement included extremely little equipment budget.
Merit is not a corporation that can easily come up with money for
adding equipment, as they are a network consortium of universities in
Michigan, and most of the NSF award was spent on staffing. When over
time the interagency interconnection paradigms changed to using the
FIX-based interconnection, NSF provided some small amount of additional
funds to cover the cost for the equipment needed. In return this was a
critical step towards the creation of interagency interconnection
points, including their miscellaneous fallouts to the overall
infrastructure. Nuttin magic here. Not even a smoke filled room.
Hans-Werner
