[2227] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Are We to Buy Speed for a Few or Connectivity for Many?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Fri Jan 31 19:38:55 1992
To: Jack Haverty <jhaverty@us.oracle.com>
Cc: steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 31 Jan 92 15:49:10 PST."
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 92 19:37:22 -0500
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
There seemed to be a common message coming from the vendors' booths and
conference sessions earlier this week at COMNET in DC. By 1993 there will be
lots of new equipment, for the mechanically inclined, or services, for those w
prefer someone else to do it, that will transport zillions of {packets, frames
cells, bytes} per second. Is that where your $1B -> $10M prediction comes fro
yes. along with other things/trends/discussions over the last N years. My
job is essentially engineering/technology analysis, don't you remember teaching
me that not so long ago?
I'm not sure if the vendors intended it, but I at least got the impression tha
it would be prudent to wait until the various products in their pipelines come
out in a year before doing anything.
Following up on some of the past threads, and reiterating them...
the sometimes termed "mis-management" of the nsfnet in 1991 was really
a battle between two idealogical camps
Camp#1: pr-win T3, political sell, a new techno-toy, product differentiation,
and free stuff with a real infinite cost
Camp#2: operational stability and utility, or "the Internet as a service"
Few users other than those rocket scientists that are always cited for
the need for gigabits, were probably in Camp#1.
While I have been personally confronted by many in the establishmental elite
(except Steve Wolfe) who's basic argument is "shut up, you are going to
hurt the effort by telling the truth", i think camp#1's execution has
immeasurably hurt the effort of extending the matrix. Certainly more
than little old Marty. And if the
focus continues to be there which at best I personally would define as
"short term focus", then we will continue to have the disasters of 91.
No commercial service provider without the uneven playing field and the
enormous federal subsidy would have gotten away with what happened last
year and continues into this year.
While there maybe "bad" regionals that need to be hardened (sorry Laura,
I can remember the new politically correct word, i'm not very good at
this politics stuff), there is a much larger need to harden the backbone
infrastructure through alternatives, the CIX being one. Its pretty
frightening what "the market" could do with a 1/8th of the funds being poured
into the current nsfnet. If you look at the upcoming solicitation from
NSF they say that implicitly - you can do the math yourself.
Marty
