[1675] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The WEIS/AUPPERLE letter
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Tue Dec 10 10:51:49 1991
To: rick@uunet.uu.net
Cc: members@farnet.org, regional-techs@merit.edu, com-priv@psi.com,
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 10:47:56 EST
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov>
->But isnt is legitimate for an R&E user to make use of a commercial
->service for R&E purposes?
Sure.
->E.g. if a researcher at MIT wanted to do a literature serach on Dialog
->fo his research, then there should be no problem with
->Dialog's "commericial" packets traveling on teh NSFnet backbone
->because they are for R&E purposes.
For whatever reason(s), Dialog would not commit to guaranteeing that all of
their traffic would adhere to NSFNET Acceptable Use; as an ANS customer,
apparently their alternative was to declare themselves "commercial".
->I guess I dont understand how someone can declare their information
->to be commercial without knowing how it will be used.
That's it; they can't - at least not at the current state of (non)development
of "policy-based routing"(!) The closest approximation is evidently to
declare the **network number** to be NSF-conformant or commercial. Yes, I
do understand that model's seriously broken; the approximation is terrible.
->The reason it matters is that this penalizes legitimate researchers whose
->midlevel networks chose not to deal with ANS.
Of course, without the "commercial" option, Dialog wouldn't have connected
to the Internet at all - so whatever penalty there is is relative, not
absolute. I.e., before they connected nobody had access; now some do, but
not all.
Note however that "The National Science Foundation (NSF) has requested that
ANS establish appropriate routing controls to ensure that federally
sponsored networks that do not wish to carry commercial traffic are not
burdened by commercial traffic...." Presumably a federally sponsored (or
any other) network may request that Dialog traffic not be blocked, and may
also aver that all its clients' Dialog access will be for R&E use, so as not
to violate its corporate charter or any agreements with its carriers.
Of course these restrictions are onerous in themselves, and, because of the
very imperfect technology available to us for their realisation, even more
so. But you must (and I know do) understand that Federal agencies have the
privilege of using taxpayer money only for purposes consistent with their
mission or enabling legislation, and the penalties for misuse of government
funds are severe enough that there is a forgivable tendency to err on the
side of conservatism.
In the end, it will take very much better policy-based routing, or an
Executive Order or OMB Circular relaxing usage restrictions for the NREN.
-s
