[1929] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
A Little Bit on Infolan
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Abe)
Thu Jan 9 01:28:28 1992
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 92 00:07 GMT
From: George Abe <0004247140@mcimail.com>
To: com-priv <com-priv@psi.com>
Thanks to Mr. Jack Haverty of Oracle in pointing out that Infolan
represents a non-ANS, non-CIX option for commercial connectivity.
Infonet's IP service is merchandised under the product name of
Infolan and is sold worldwide. We have cisco routers in Hong
Kong, US, Canada and Europe fully meshed under common network
management. Infolan was featured as a Leading Technology Product
in the December issue of Data Communications magazine. There's
nothing else like it.
[Apologies if this paragraph is construed as commercial traffic].
We are not yet a member of CIX and do not yet have a connection
to ANS. We are friendly with both ANS and PSI and wish them both
well. After having discussions with both, I can say that
Infonet's market perspective is different from both and therefore
coexistence with either is possible.
We at Infonet have kept out of the to-ing and fro-ing on
COM-PRIV because we don't understand it. Thus our low profile.
We are outsiders, not immersed in the Internet tradition. So the
deliberations in COM-PRIV are enlightening, and, at times,
entertaining, especially when people talk politics, industrial
policy and the common good.
Infonet is owned 25% by MCI. The other 75% is owned by foreign
telecom authorities. The fact that MCI has interests in Infonet
and ANS is irrelevant. Neither MCI nor ANS has had any impact on
Infolan, except that I have an MCIMail userid to read COM-PRIV.
BTW, there will be a panel at Comnet whose speakers include Rick
Adams, Vint Cerf, Robert Aiken, myself and others to discuss
Federal Internetworking and the Internet. Thursday, Jan 30,
13:00 at the Ramada.
George Abe
Program Director
Infonet Network Services
------- Forwarded Message #1
>From: Jack Haverty <jhaverty@us.oracle.com>
To: perry@mcl.unisys.com
Cc: bob@morningstar.com, com-priv@psi.com, perry@mcl.unisys.com
Subject: CIX questions
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 92 13:21:55 PST
"... There are thus two disjoint sets of commercial
connectivity: ANS and the CIX. ..."
InfoLan is offering a commercial Lan-interconnect service
which supports IP and/or DECNet. It's especially
interesting (to us at least) because it covers quite a few
countries around the world, not just the US.
This would seem to be a third (at least) "set of commercial
connectivity". Can anyone comment on ANS/CIX/InfoLan
interconnection?
I must admit to not following the play-by-play in great
detail recently, but I seem to remember that InfoLan is part
of Infonet, which is owned by a consortium of carriers
including MCI, which has an association with IBM and Merit
for NSFNET, which has a (rather controversial it seems)
connection to ANS, CIX, et al. So I'm kind of surprised not
to have noticed any discussion of InfoLan yet.
Jack
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