[1309] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: I forgot one solution...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (stev knowles)
Fri Sep 6 11:13:19 1991
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 91 11:08:37 -0400
To: lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot)
From: stev@ftp.com (stev knowles)
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com
#4: Punt the whole problem to the end user networks. Let them sign
a piece of paper saying that they'll be good network citizens. Does
this work? Is it reasonable?
unfortunately, you have a simple view of "commercial traffic", not that it
makes the question easy to answer, but the full meaning of "commercial
traffic" needs to be addressed:
for traffic between MIT and FTP, as an example. (for completeness sake,
assume MIT is a "research site" and FTP is a "commercial site", even though
both have traits of both sites.)
if MIT orders software over the internet from FTP, for use on a government
sponsored project, it is not "commercial traffic" even though it is of a
commercial nature. if MIT places an order to FTP over the internet, and it
is for software for their admin people, then it IS commercial traffic, even
though one of the people in the transaction is not commercail. this traffic
is not allowed over the current NSFnet backbone.
allow another company, say PROTEON, to get in the circle. FTP and PROTEON
exchange information about OSPF over the internet. now, this can be
construed as commercial traffic, since the traffic may concern getting two
products to interoperate. *BUT*, if this is happening to assume
interoperation for government uses, the traffic is acceptable.
for the same reasons, one cannot assume that traffic between MIT and CMU is
non-commercial, since someone at CMU may be trying to sell a used car to
someone at MIT.
like you, i eagerly await an explanation, other than "we are trusting people
to do the right thing", to this complex problem.
