[1716] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: nsfnet as large-scale testbed, pt. 2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent W. England)
Fri Dec 13 11:59:31 1991
From: "Kent W. England" <kwe2@BBN.COM>
To: sgou@seq1.loc.gov
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9112131618.AA13062@seq1.loc.gov>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 91 11:54:24 EDT
>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 unfortunately , this has already happened.
>
>I am not sure it is reasonable to expect NSF to underwrite a production
>network in addition to a large-scale testbed.
The NSFnet is *not* supposed to be a testbed, it is a vehicle for
research and education communication. There are other networks that do
network research and testing. It certainly is possible to have
production and research networks at the same time, but it's hard
(I know) to do experiments on a production network. My interpretation
of the situation is that the NREN will include both production and
experimentation components, so I think we can still have our testbed
cake while eating production pie. We do not have to have inferior
service on the NSFnet in order to do network research.
--Kent
