[1679] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Commercial traffic and what is what??
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Tue Dec 10 13:27:40 1991
To: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 13:23:22 EST
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov>
-> ... what has
->happened to the idea of stopping the subsidies of the networks
->themselves, having them charge back to their customers, and then the
->subsidy providers sending money to the particular organizations they
->wish to subsidize? It seems that this eliminates all of the trouble
->about identifying various categories of usage and how to deal with
->them.
That is and has been for a long time the NSF goal for the basic low-speed
(<155mb/s) service; however, based on a fairly exhaustive canvass of the
providers, the consensus was that the field is not yet ready to cope with
that method of operation just yet. There is no doubt that such a move would
be destabilizing in the short run, as market forces did worked their usual
wonders. As the primary carrier of inter-regional traffic, and primary
government funding agency for regional nets, NSF bears a responsibility to
its sister agencies who are customers of the NSFNET family of networks; they
have made very strong representations in favor of stability in the network.
Its absence would force them to install a number of dedicated point-to-point
links to meet their mission objectives - a clear lose for the nation. Write
to FARNET for a copy of their recent report for more.
->Of course, it means that the Internet will need to develop a
->good system for charging back usage, but we're going to have to
->develop that anyway (and soon!).
Say, what? We've got one already. It's based on the capacity of the
connection and is a predictable annual fee; it's wonderful for budgeting.
You seem to imply we need a charge-by-the-drink scheme. Well, there's one
in use by ANS that's fraught with surprising complexity and problems (more
than I ever dreamed of when I conceived the basic scheme some years ago).
Take the highway system as an analogy: Not all roads are toll roads; some
cost you the same however much you use them, until they become congested
through lack of capacity, whereupon there is a step increase in cost to
install and then maintain a higher-capacity road (or alternate routing).
