[1390] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Clarification Requested About Use of NSF-Funded Facilities
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mitch Kapor)
Sat Sep 21 10:10:40 1991
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1991 10:09:32 -0400
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: mkapor@eff.org (Mitch Kapor)
On Friday, September 20, Stephen Wolff <steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov> mentioned:
"the NSF agreement with ANS to permit commercial traffic on NSF-funded
facilities on a reimbursable-in-kind and non-interfering basis".
I'm not sure how to parse this. I thought that ANS commercial traffic
would run only on ANS-funded facilities (ANSNET). This same T-3 backbone,
which ANS was/is constructing, would also be used to carry NSFNET traffic.
If this is correct, then strictly speaking, it would be better to say that
the NSF agreement is with ANS to permit commercial traffic over
NSF-supported facilities (as opposed to NSF-funded facilities). That is,
if NFSNET traffic runs over ANSNET, and NSF is paying ANS for this through
their arrangement, then they are helping support the facilities, but they
are not funding them in the sense of paying for the capital costs. This is
the explanation I hope is the case.
The only other explanation I can think of, which is where the ambiguity
arises, is that, somehow, part of the NSF-ANS agreement which has not been
disclosed or discussed to date would permit ANS to run its commercial
traffic over the pre-existing NSF-funded NSFNET T-1 backbone. That is, a
private, for-profit party, ANS/CO+RE, would be given unique, preferential
access to a network paid for by taxpayers. If this is the case, and I've
got my facts straight, this would represent an extremely problematic
situation, the consequences of which are so unappetizing that I'd prefer
not to even speculate until we get a clarification from Steve Wolff or any
other knowledgeable party.
Mitchell Kapor, Electronic Frontier Foundation
mkapor@eff.org
