[1585] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
EINet - "The Business Internet" ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow)
Fri Nov 22 14:43:00 1991
To: com-priv@psi.com, nren-discuss@psi.com
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 11:35:20 MST
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
"MCC PLOTS BUSINESS INTERNET" and "GROUPS MULL PLAN FOR U.S. BUSINESS NET"
were both front page headlines in the November 18th, 1991 issues of
CommunicationsWeek and Network World this past week.
It would seem from reading both articles that MCC, based in Austin, TX
along with Enterprise Integration Technologies Corp of Palo Alto, CA,
is planning to design and offer a network service called EINet -
Enterprise Integration Information Network to support a range of
of commercial services to help companies interact electronically.
The CommunicationsWeek article stated that EINet will differ from
research oriented internetworks, such as the Internet, in that it is being
designed to spawn business-to-business transactions. "Think of EINet
as an industrial Internet," said EIT president Jay Tenenbaum.
What I cannot understand from reading both these articles is:
Why is this network needed, in light of the extant cadre of commercial
Internet service providers Alternet, ANS, CerfNet and PSI (aka "the Usual
Suspects") who are already providing excellent support for business-to-business
internetworking services?
What plans does EINet have to join the CIX?
The schedule for the EINet cutover is scheduled for March, according
to the Network World article and "that many details of the network
architecture will be finalized once a service provider is selected."
This sounds to me like they want to resell or buy services in bulk
from one of the Usual Suspects but package it to be "their network"(?).
Further, the CommunicationsWeek article states, "MCC will likely run its
commerce highway over the facilities of a commercial provider of
the Internet, which has not yet been chosen".
Do you think EIT or MCC will attempt to garnish any of the HPCC/NREN
funds for their efforts?
If we have networking services such as those provided by the extant
Usual Suspects and/or EIT "for hire" on a commercial basis, why do
we need NREN/HPCC? Seems the extant cadre of Usual Suspects are already
providing the "highway" for networking services to be built on and what
we need now is more money for marketing to make potential customers aware
of the benefits and to subscribe.
Geoff
