[1714] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
nsfnet as large-scale testbed, pt. 2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Gould)
Fri Dec 13 11:22:33 1991
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 91 11:18:18 -0500
From: sgou@seq1.loc.gov (Stephen Gould)
To: com-priv@psi.com
As the HPCC bill quote supplied by Laura Breeden highlights, the mandate
from Congress has not shifted--Congress wants both a production network and
a research testbed. Congress is not always aware that there may be problems
associated with having your cake and eating it too.
It might be folly, as Edward Vielmetti suggests, to make a large-scale testbed
the #1 core network through which people from all over the world route their
packets by default. But as pointed out by Vinton Cerf in his recent article,
HPCC legislation does not mandate that the NREN be built (or even entirely
paid for) by government--it leaves open the method and means. As I understand
it, PSI (to name just one vendor) would welcome having its reliable system
become the #1 core network. To the extent that people cannot bring themselves
to pass up the economic benefits of using the nsfnet backbone, they are
voluntarily offering themselves as guinea pigs for experimentation with what
may prove to be unreliable communications technology (and at the mercy of
whichever technology providers are currently participating in the testbed).
I am not sure it is reasonable to expect NSF to underwrite a production
network in addition to a large-scale testbed. It's hard enough on the private
internet venders that have emerged to have such a large community of users
irresistably attracted to using the testbed. If experimentation were
sacrificed for reliability and "naughty bits" heartily welcomed, nsfnet would
truly be an anticompetitive force in the internet marketplace. Sec. 102(c)(3)
mandates that the network "be designed, developed, and operated in a manner
which fosters and maintains competition and private sector investment in
high-speed data networking within the telecommunications industry."
As comments regularly posted to this discussion show, doing that to
everyone's satisfaction is a thankless and perhaps impossible job. But that,
like it or not, is now public policy.
