[1680] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
A minor correction to Bill Schrader's communique
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (alison@oar.net)
Tue Dec 10 14:30:44 1991
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 14:06:52 -0500
From: alison@oar.net
To: com-priv@psi.com, members@farnet.org
In looking over carefully the material Bill obtained from the NSF
and so thoughtfully shared with all of us, I would like to make a
correction (or perhaps just a modification) to what he said. The
second document in his communique, a memo from Steve to Eric
outlining the terms under which the NSF would allow commercial traffic
to flow across NSFNET gateways, bears a remarkable resemblance to the
recommendations that came out of a meeting between NSF, ANS, Merit and
quite a large number of FARNET members, of which I was one. While I
don't know that Steve took the advice of that group, it certainly is
a remarkable coincidence if he arrived at the same terms himself.
It was in that (in)famous meeting that COMBITS were invented, and
that network number was chosen to be the determinant of whether traffic
was commercial or not, and the National Infrastructure Pool and the
mechanisms for is disbursement were suggested. So I, and the others
at that meeting whom I shall not name, all bear some share of the
blame, if blame there be, for all these things. ANS took our advice,
and we have ever since reminded ourselves that you have to be very
very careful what you wish for, because you might get it. What ANS
got was a bucket of you-know-what on their heads for taking our
advice and I notice they have been more careful about asking for
advice since. It was a very lively meeting, and while I could
characterize it in a number of ways, I don't think "subtle" would be
among them, and if NSF and ANS went off in a corner and plotted at
least the things named above, they were not alone in the corner and
a very large segment of the NSFNET community was in on the plot.
So having seen what kind of trouble ANS got into by taking advice,
let me be the last to give Bill any advice on how to conduct himself
toward potential customers like the NSF - I assume PSI does intend
to respond to the new Solicitation for NSFNET services?
