[215] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Bill S.'s paper
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Wed Feb 27 15:02:31 1991
To: "Miles R. Fidelman" <mfidelma@bbn.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 27 Feb 91 13:27:36 EST."
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 91 14:44:53 -0500
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
Both of your caveats are understood and would be in general agreement
but with some caveats:
1) the NIC is supplied not by the IAB but by the government
agencies "directly"
2) while the IAB provides protocol standards, there continued
slippage into making policy is not a good idea. On the specifics
of engineering (and operation), I definitely would not want them
to be involved for a number of reasons which are predominently
technical.
Marty
-----------
I generally agree with Bill's paper, with two caveats:
a. We still need to do a significant amount of research on global
issues. I believe the arguement that carriers will fund their own
research on such things as switching and transmission technology. I
don't believe that protocols (particularly routing protocols), and
global Internet architecture issues can be left to the individual
competing carriers to work out.
b. I see a continuing need for an overall Internet systems engineer /
architect role, and for a global NIC. Right now all of this comes to us
courtesy of the IAB/IETF with authority granted by the Federal agencies
that run the backbone networks, and through DoD sponsorship of the NIC.
As we move into a world where Federally sponsored networks are no longer
as central, we may need a new structure for handling all of this.
Bellcore comes to mind as one model. I'm sure NRI would like the job,
as would BBN.
Miles
