[1969] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Understanding COMBITs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Simmons)
Mon Jan 13 21:46:37 1992
From: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 92 20:55:58 EST
In-Reply-To: <CMM.0.90.2.695347132.becker@home.ans.net>; from "Jordan Becker" at Jan 13, 92 06:58:52 pm
>> Correct me if I am wrong (I'm sure someone will) but this measurement
>> implies that unsolicited traffic sent to a "commercial" network will generate
>> a charge from ANS to the intermediate network.
>
>Gary - let me clarify this. Most people go astray with this model as soon as
>they start thinking of "traffic" as being commercial or non-commercial, or
>worrying about the direction in which it flows. In this model, subscribers
>(based upon a subscriber network number) are self-classified as commercial or
>non-commercial (RE). Traffic flows between subscribers are always assumed to
>be bi-directional.
So it's not the traffic, it's the packets. But the rest of the answer
seems to be "yes, commercial sites are billed for unsolicted packets
from research sites".
One point not well addressed is the commercial firm doing business with
the research institution. Under the stock NSFNET conditions of use, it
seems to be perfectly acceptable for a commercial institution (say,
dialog) to do business with a university over NSFNET. Under the combits
as described in the earlier portions of this thread, it appears that if
either site is commercial (presumably that's what is meant by
'directionless') then commercial surcharges are assessed. Would I be
correct in saying only research-research traffic is not commercial?
What happens to sites which decline to catagorize themselves? Are
packets to/from those simply dropped? Or billed as commercial? There
would seem no way to impose self-categorization on international
sites.
