[12134] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
No Wonder they are calling it the Infobahn - VBNS & commercial use
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Cook)
Sat May 7 02:31:32 1994
From: cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
Date: Sat, 7 May 1994 04:21:45 GMT
To: com-priv@psi.com
Brock in his article tonight appears to defend Steve Wolff. brock says:
>It now appears that Wolff may have had little choice in the matter.
>There's not a chance in hell that MCI would have agreed to use its
>ATM network solely as a long haul megabit relay service for the
>pittance (by eventual commercial market standards) NSF was
>providing under the vBNS contract. To agree to provide ATM
>service to only NSF via the vBNS deal would have been commercial
>suicide. So MCI cut a deal with the NSF: Let us also use the ATM
>network for commercial purposes or it's no dice.
Some folk have argued in front of me that something about ATM
means that a single use can no longer be separated from the entire
network and that to barr a single use of the network from being
commercial would be tantamount to barring the whole network (ie
all of MCI's ATM switching nation wide from commercial use.)
I am not sure why this assumption is made . Since some
(all?) of ATM tends to be connection oriented using switched or
permanent virtual circuits, it would seem that the vBNS would be
easily segmented from the remainder of MCI's offering. And if this is
accurate I would argue that **Wolff had great choice** in the matter.
Consider the following statement which comes from a widely known
and respected internet technical guru who does not work for any of
the IXCs nor for any of the RBOCs. I published this text reviewed by
my source and approved for accuracy on April 22 [May COOK Report].
Quote: While I might not like quite how you have put a few things
about the dual use of the ANS backbone I do think you are basically
right. Not that I think you should be. However, I think that in 1990
Steve screwed up in defining what NSF was buying. Then he said
that it was T-3 service. As you have pointed out that left him open
to people asking how ANS could sell drinks from the same glass of
water so to speak without cheating the NSF. For Steve was buying all
45 mgbs from a glass or "pipe" that only held 45. If Steve had said
we are buying a guaranteed rate of service of 20 mgbs for example
and said that if ANS could deliver 30 mgbs it could sell the
difference, he'd have been on safer ground.
Still, even with the controversy at the T3 level, I think that the dual
use and the AUP were critical in getting multiple potential vendors to
be able to offer real national service. (For example one regional
service provider received multiple real bids for such service.)
I would not expect MCI to do any thing like combits. Combits was a
way to "pay" NSF for any non-NSF use of the shared infrastructure.
The new network design requires no such processes. Why? NSF is
buying a 155Mb service from MCI for the vBNS. This time NSF
should have learned its lesson. If that 155 mgbs is provided over a
155 mgbs backbone, there should be no other traffic on that
backbone. However, and note this carefully, if the backbone were to
be faster (622 mgbs for example) the backbone could then be shared
and still give NSF its full 155 mgbs (assuming the hardware is up to
the task).
But note that if you put an ATM Switch on the end of a SONET fiber
running ATM cells, that switch *could* demux the OC 12 into four OC
3s each of which could have a 155 mgbs router attached with *ONE*
such providing the NSF's service. [We asked our source if a Magellan
Switch from Northern Telecom would do this task. The answer was
yes.] The lesson to remember is that there should be no sharing of
the 155 mgbs. If MCI had commercial clients on another separate
155 mgbs pipe, it seems to me that we should not care whether or
not they talked to each other as well as to the supercomputer
centers.
And with an ATM network you should be talking about logical
infrastructure not physical. If a strand of fiber is demuxed from 622
to 155 then you have a 155 logical pipe that should not be used for
anything else. However you could also have, given the appropriate
equipment, a 622 pipe and allocate 155 mgbs of atm cells from the
SONET frames from that 622 pipe. In such a case the same logical
infrastructure could be used for both.
There is nothing about SONET or ATM which makes this sort of
division difficult. You can have 155 mgbs trunks coming into a
supercomputer center. If this is all you have, you can get only 155
mgbs for that center to use and there is no room left for commercial
resale. If on the other hand you have a 622 trunk coming in you
have plenty left over for commercial resale. And remember that out
of one physical infrastructure, you can get more than one logical
architecture. [End article excerpt from COOK Report.]
--------
My source notes also that it is unlikely that switching equipment will
be able to handle 622 (OC-12) on a network like this for another
year.
So I wonder if reality is not a little more complex than Brock
suggests. And besides, in saying that wolff has little choice, why was
Wolff BOUND to MCI if this really was something other than a sham
competition? Sprint was there with a functioning network. So I
hope that Conyers investigators will not be too quickly blown away
by NSF smoke and mirrors. Although I some times wonder why I
bother because Wolff obviously does what he pleases..... to hell not
only with the COOK report, but if Sprint gets pissed.... tough. And
Congress?? Conyers?? Do they matter? Well the deadline for NSF to
provide responses was April 27 5pm. As of 1pm on May 2, Conyers
had not received a reply....... Draw your own conclusions......
Wolff should be required by Conyers, under subpeona if need be, to
answer exactly what he means by commercial use. After all Wolff
*failed to document* his grant of commercial use to ANS. He FAILED
to do so on June 23 1993 in ammendment 2 to NSF 93-52 ignoring
questions asked by Advantis, Ameritech, Bellcore, NCAR and myself.
It took a FOIA lawsuit by UUNET to spring loose the questions that
were asked. Without this no one would have been the wiser to
Wolff's sleight of hand. And you know if he handn't rubbed salt in
Sprints wounds in that Feb 21 Network article by Messmer saying in
effect that MCI would have full commercial use, Sprint might never
have protested.
No wonder they are calling this the Infobahn.
