[2038] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Violation of the NSF AUP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Mandelbaum)
Mon Jan 20 08:29:24 1992
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 92 08:27:56 -0500
From: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
I have seen a lot of discussion about the NSF AUP and the consequences
of violation lately and have a fundamental question which is bothering
me. As far as I can understand the NSF is buying a virtual network
service from ANS, which has to meet certain NSF conditions on traffic
etc. The NSF is buying this service on behalf of a certain subset of
the R & E community. All of the NSF traffic runs on the ANS network
some of which also carries other traffic for ANS customers. If I send
traffic out over the network, which doesn't meet NSF criteria why are
we assuming that I am taking or using NSF bandwidth. On a physical level
I am in fact using ANS bandwidth and if I haven't paid ANS CO+RE rates
I am probably guilty of theft of services from ANS, not misuse of NSF
resources. The only way I can think of misusing NSF bandwidth is if you do
something which would prevent ANS from delivering to NSF the bandwidth
that NSF has contracted for. That would require , I think, an extremely
bandwidth intensive illegal activity. I can't think of any normal use
of the network that would lead to such a situation.
