[1705] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: nsfnet as large-scale testbed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Simon Hackett)
Thu Dec 12 17:46:59 1991
From: Simon Hackett <simon@internode.com.au>
To: Charles_K._Kuhlman.MAN@rxg.xerox.com
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 91 9:12:56 CST
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <"12-Dec-91 12:55:26 +1".*.Charles_K._Kuhlman.MAN@RXG.Xerox.com>; from "Charles_K._Kuhlman.MAN@rxg.xerox.com" at Dec 12, 91 3:55 am
> There is no significant high speed-wide area networking (I'm talking about
> >19.2kbs, much less ANYTHING over 56kbs!) being done outside of the USA. End of
> story. There are always exceptions and I'm sure that this note will bring them
> out. But the old argument `losing the high-speed networking race to Japan and
> Europe' is nothing but crap. Got to find another way to justify the expense.
>
urm...in Australia, if you want to run anything up to 2Mbits/sec, you just go
buy the service from our (single, soon to be one of two) telecommunications
carrier. This is off-the-shelf technology. You're getting this mail via a login
at 9600 baud to a system that is connected over the Internet to Fix-West via a
2Mbit IP link feeding into a 256Kb satellite channel (512Kb next year).
Now, on the other hand, at least there appears to be federal funding for
networking in the USA. The AARNet network in Australia (a small part of which
is what I'm describing above) is funded mainly by all of the major Australian
tertiary education insitutions taking a hit off of the top of their budgets
explicitly to pay for it - it's done by mutual cooperation and this sort of
shared funding because $0.00 is forthcoming from the federal government here on
any sort of continuing basis to fund networking. Technology is easy, attitudes
aren't. Sigh.
Of course, one advantage of entering the wide area internetworking field
later than some other countries is that technically, it's excellent. AARNet
works really really well, with very high uptime. Most links are either 48Kbit or
2mb/sec (and many interconnects between Universities in a major city are done
with 10mbit fibre or microwave). There's only one network, so routing is
trivial.
Simon
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{ Simon Hackett, Internode Systems Pty Ltd }
{ E-mail: simon@internode.com.au }
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