[29] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: federal seed money for more bandwidth?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent England)
Tue Oct 23 10:34:52 1990
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 90 10:13:01 edt
From: kwe@buitb.bu.edu (Kent England)
To: com-priv@psi.com, tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net
> <<MESSAGE from>> Gordon Cook 20-OCT-90 13:51
> cook@tmn
> Supposing the congress were to appropriate $400,000,000 in seed money?
> How practical is it to attempt to tell the congress in an OTA
> [report?] in some
> general way what the expenditure of those funds would buy?
>
> To put it another way is there any conscensus out there as to exactly what
> the R&D development agenda is an how costly it will be?
>
> I have a lot of` questions that might flow from this, but await feed back
> as to whether this line of discussion is considered to be out of the
> subject range of this list.
>
> If I am off subject, would welcome email to tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net and /or
> a request for an id on the OTA NREN conference which baring a MAJOR
> problem should be fully operational before the end of this coming week.
>
>
I think your comment is appropriate to this list.
It would seem to me that the focus should be more on general
goals and objectives that match a funding objective and on a search
for a form for an agency/ organization/ coalition to manage the
project, rather than a focus on specifics and precise details of the
implementation plan.
So I would suggest you begin by looking at potential doers of
the NREN and goals and objectives that could be given to them. Of
course, there is no consensus at this point on who the candidates are
or should be. But three candidate groups are:
1) a commercial organization or coalition/consortium of
commercial entities
2) a noncommercial organization or coalition/consortium of
noncommercial entities
3) "end user institutions"
And we could consider some hybrid of parts of all three of the
above. Connectionless technology does not care. :-)
The chief problem, as I see it, with coalitions or end-user
funding is the central co-ordination of the Internet; the SRI, NNSC,
Merit-NOC, NOC-to-NOC, et al functionality. How do we assure
ourselves that the commercial entities and/or the noncommercial
entities will properly co-ordinate the configuration of the Internet
amongst themselves? What operational goals and objectives should be
set for the overall operation of the Internet?
Since it is unlikely (in my opinion) that one organization can
do the whole thing (Internet) anyway (although certainly one
organization would have no trouble spending the $400M), perhaps you
might want to start with the co-ordination problem. If Congress
approves $400M, how will it be disbursed to several (types of)
entities and how will Congress be assured that the Internet will work
under that situation, satisfying the program goals and objectives?
Ask for proposals from interested parties.
You also might want to tell us more about exactly how OTA is
going to advise Congress. One report? Testimony? Ie, what form will
this advice take?
Keep asking.
--Kent
