[27] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: Was a "big Internet" needed to make TCP/IP useful?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Tue Oct 23 08:57:53 1990
To: gnu@toad.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: Craig Partridge <craig@NNSC.NSF.NET>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 90 08:44:35 -0400
John:
You're entitled to your opinions, but I do want to quibble with your
history a bit (and one interpretation).
> I'm pleased that when the War Dept. hired people to build them networking
> technology, the hired people made it more generic than just for war.
It tweren't just the hired folks -- DARPA was interested in a general
solution to a problem.
> and (b) likely to make transition planning harder because
> by forcing the Feds to make explicit policy, you restrict their flexibility.
I see no transition plan. Everyone complains about the weather, but
nobody does anything about it. The plans I hear are all to spend more
money on more bandwidth for more people to slime in violation of the
rules, which get looser and looser. We seem to be in transition, but
somebody left the gearshift in forward, not reverse!
> I was speaking of a generic tendency in government; NSF may have it to
> a lesser degree, but note that the mere existence of tax-funded "national
> science" research demonstrates the point. After NSF made CSnet go
> self-sufficient, did it get back its investment, like any commercial
> investor would've done? No, it went back to the taxpayers' pockets to
> fund its next projects!
CSnet certainly could have paid back the govt in $$, if asked. However,
I think the Feds feel their payback came in the improved research and quality
at Comp. Science departments that resulted. The question is how do you
measure your return? As a govt, it is not unreasonable to measure return
in terms of communal return on your investment. On that score, I believe
CSnet was a winner.
> problem was, no
> one else existed in the early 1980s willing to fork over the $$ necessary
> to make a big Internet happen.
> While I'd credit their
> interaction with the usenet/internet news/mail system with ~5% of Sun's
> success, I don't think a big free net of high speed leased lines caused
> any more workstations to be sold.
Well, you were at SUN, but sitting on the customer side (SUN-1 serial #278
I believe) that's not my impression. As I recall, DARPA alone was
responsible for over 10% of Sun's sales in the early years. Those machines
were going on the Internet. Add purchases from Comp. Sci. depts and labs
that wanted Internet-ready machines and you've got a big market share.
Craig
