[2523] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
NSF Testimony
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Fri Mar 13 13:36:39 1992
To: members@farnet.org
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 13:33:15 EST
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@cise.cise.nsf.gov>
Testimony of
Dr. A. Nico Habermann and Dr. Stephen S. Wolff
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
Subcommittee on Science
March 12, 1992
Part 1: Testimony of Dr. A. Nico Habermann
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before your committee
today to provide information about the exciting program in networking
supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and several other
agencies of the U.S. government. I am privileged to serve as the Assistant
Director of the NSF for the Computer and Information Science and
Engineering Directorate, which has responsibility for broad national
research, infrastructure and facilities programs in computer,
communications, and information sciences and engineering. Included among my
responsibilities is leadership of the overall NSF High Performance
Computing and Communications(HPCC) Program with its important components in
national Supercomputer Centers and the NSFNET, the subject of our
discussion today.
In this latter respect, I am pleased to be accompanied by my colleague Dr.
Stephen S. Wolff, Director of the Division of Networking & Communications
Research & Infrastructure (NCRI). Dr. Wolff has provided leadership for
this division since its inception and in this capacity has lead the
creation and development of the NSFNET and the emerging NREN program.
Before turning to Dr. Wolff, to elaborate on the NSFNET, I would very much
like to place this activity in the larger context that it impacts.
Background
The President's High Performance Computing and Communications Program,
which was announced on February 5, 1991, consists of four components, one
of which is the National Research and Education Network (NREN). The NSFNET
activity is part of the NREN component. The NREN is also a major subject of
the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194) that was signed
by the President this past December. This Act, that your Committee was
instrumental in drafting, provides important impetus to the presidential
HPCC initiative.
Leadership and direction for the HPCC Program is provided by the Office of
Science and Technology Policy, through the FCCSET Committee on Physical,
Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences (PMES). The High Performance
Computing, Communications, and Information Technology (HPCCIT) subcommittee
is chartered under the PMES and is composed of an executive council and
four task groups to coordinate science and engineering computing, computer
research and development, Federal networking and communications, and
education. Since October 1991, I have
served as the Co-Chairman of this Networking activity.
As described in the Supplement to the President's FY 1993 Budget, "Grand
Challenges 1993: High Performance Computing and Communications", NSF is
designated as the coordinating agency for the NREN program. As the NREN
title indicates, to quote from the Grand Challenges report, "The NREN
program is both a goal of the HPCC Program and a key enabling technology
for success in the other components. The NREN is the future realization of
an interconnected gigabit computer network system supporting HPCC." If we
are successful in deploying this technology for the research and education
community, then aside from supporting current science and technology Grand
Challenge Applications that are important to federal mission agencies, it
will broadly influence communications technology development. However, it
is important to bear in mind, that the government program, as its name
implies, primarily supports computer and communications networking for
research and education, not general purpose usage. Nonetheless, the NREN
component incorporates important testbeds and research for new
communications technologies.
The NREN component is dedicated to promoting communications among
researchers, educators, and students in the U.S. The NREN activities
contribute directly to the goals of the High PerformanceComputing and
Communications Program in three ways:
1) by extending U.S. technological leadership in computer communications;
2) by enhancing the dissemination and application of computer and
communications technologies to enable advances on applications such as,
Grand Challenges; and
3) by demonstrating innovative new means of communication to spur gains in
U.S. productivity.
In order to achieve these goals, the NREN program consists of two
sub-components: one that supports the development and enhancement of
network backbone services, which serves the purpose of connecting a large
number of regional research and education networks - the Interagency
Interim NREN; and a second sub-component, which supports basic and
experimental research in the design of large-scale, high-speed networks for
future use (gigabit networks R&D).
The first NREN sub-component, developing connections between existing and
growing regional networks, includes three network backbones supported by
NSF, DOE and NASA. The backbone currently supported by NSF is the NSFNET,
which connects a large number of regional networks at a variety of
educational and research institutions throughout the U.S. The NSFNET
backbone, all of whose services are competitively procured from the private
sector, provides a networking superstructure that enables scientists and
educators to communicate across the boundaries of their regional networks.
The second NREN subcomponent, supporting networking research, includes a
collection of five gigabit testbed networks, connecting experimental sites
across the entire nation.
At each step of the development of the NSF NREN program, we must ask
ourselves why the government should continue to be involved with the
private sector in developing computer network infrastructure to support the
research and education community. Although the private sector plays an
increasingly important role, there are indeed cogent reasons why the
government should stay involved in important aspects of a host of
activities in network development and research. In order to put further
discussion regarding NSF's role in networking in perspective, it seems
proper to list here the main reasons, as we see them, for NSF's continued
involvement in support of technology development and deployment.
The proper and effective use of very high speed computer networks, and
the connection between networks will require innovative research across
various disciplines and technologies that government, industry, and
academia working together are uniquely capable of providing.
It is certain that the capabilities of networks can be increased at least
a hundred-fold to support a mode of interaction we can only dream of today.
(Imagine, for example, the impact of a hundred-fold increase in both
aircraft speed and passenger capacity on travel, military, and on airports,
etc!). To meet these challenges, industrial and academic R&D, coordinated
and focused by the Federal Government, will concentrate on the advanced
generic technologies required to realize a very high speed network.
Since there is practically no limit to further development of networking
technology, the research and education community should be stimulated to
find and explore innovative ways of communicating with each other and with
growing information sources. At this time, we think that the development
will lead to the use of networks for remote, interactive, real-time
computing. However, experience with the ARPANET, designed in the
mid-seventies, has shown that the outcome may well be both broader and
richer than our original expectations.
Networks help broaden the participation for the entire country by
providing equal access to advanced computer facilities, such as, the
supercomputer centers, for remote and relatively isolated parts of the
country and similarly help increase the involvement of minorities and
under-represented groups in the research and education enterprise. This
enables all scientists and students to more fully participate in
leading-edge research and education opportunities that otherwise might not
be affordable.
My final point supporting NSF involvement in this technology development
and deployment relates to the need to encourage all educational
institutions, including K-12, to explore the networking capabilities that
allow them to access and use the tools that researchers develop and utilize
in the work on the Grand Challenges. This can lead to more excitement in
education and may stimulate more students to enter science and engineering.
NSF welcomes the opportunity to work with the private sector on these and
all other aspects of networking to the benefit of our science and education
community in the interest of the Nation's future. And now with your
permission, I would like to turn to my colleague Dr. Stephen Wolff to
provide an overview of the current state of NSF's networking program and
summarize the management and development plan and associated policy issues.
Part 2: Testimony of Dr. Stephen S. Wolff
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to appear today before this
committee to discuss the NSFNET and related activities.
There are three parts to my testimony. I will discuss first the current
state of the NSFNET Backbone project, including its relationships to other
networks that actually, or potentially connect to it, and also the
management controls the NSF has in place with its awardee, Merit, Inc.
Second, I shall report on the progress we have made in implementing the
Project Development Plan for continuation and enhancement of NSFNET
Backbone services which was approved by the National Science Board in
November last. Finally, I shall briefly discuss the relationships between
the NSFNET and NREN programs, including the interagency management
structure now evolving for the NREN as an Administration program with a
legislative authority.
Current State, Other Networks, and Management Controls
a. Current State The five year cooperative agreement between the Foundation
and Merit, Inc. for management and operation of the NSFNET Backbone was
signed in November, 1987, after a five month period of competitive
announcement and merit review of proposals. Merit, and its partners IBM and
MCI, put in place a 1 3-node, 1.5 mb/s (million-bits-per-second), or T1,
network in a very short time. The new Backbone began to carry traffic in
August, 1988. In that month, traffic doubled over the July figure for the
original Backbone network that the new one supplanted.
Since August, 1988, traffic on the Backbone has increased more than
fifty-fold, from 200 million to 11 billion packets per month. This increase
in traffic has been accommodated by hundreds of minor engineering
improvements to the network and two major upgrades. The first upgrade
increased the number of links in the network from 14 to 19. This increased
the robustness of the Backbone by multiply connecting all 13 nodes, and it
increased capacity as well. The second upgrade increased the number of
Backbone nodes from 13 to 16 (the three new nodes were competitively
selected), and raised the transmission speed from T1 to T3 (1.5 to 45
mb/s).
All the engineering improvements and both major upgrades were clearly
foreseen and discussed in Merit's original farsighted proposal to the NSF.
Such are the economies of scale in telecommunications that the upgrades to
accommodate a fifty-fold traffic increase have been achieved with only a
doubling in cost to the Foundation - from the original $14 Million over
five years to the present five-year project cost of $28 Million.
The NSFNET Backbone is the linchpin of the overall NSFNET project, which
includes establishment of and assistance to regional networks that deliver
Backbone service to every state in the union. Other significant measures of
the size and success of the NSFNET project include:
More than 600 of the 3-to-4,000 two-year and four-year colleges and
universities in the nation are interconnected, including all the schools in
the top two categories of the Carnegie Foundation classification of major
research universities.
Several hundred high schools are also connected, but the exact number is
difficult to determine since regional networks have widely leveraged NSF
funds to connect the smaller institutions without NSF's direct involvement.
Many industrial research organizations and commercial establishments that
support the nation's scholarly enterprise are connected; indeed, the
so-called ".COM" domain is the fastest growing segment of the network.
The NSFNET Backbone is the default infrastructure for the nation's
research and education community. It carries, for example, ten times the
traffic of the Department of Energy's ESnet Backbone which interconnects
many NSFNET client sites with national laboratories and other DoE
facilities.
By selecting a proven set of open communication protocols ("TCP/IP") and
mandating their use in the NSFNET, the Foundation catalyzed an entire
industry in which there are now upwards of a half dozen US manufacturers.
US made packet switches and gateways dominate the world market, and a T1
packet switch can now be bought for well under $10,000. (By contrast,
before NSFNET, the most widely used network packet switch operated at a
speed of only 56,000 bits per second and was priced at $120,000. A further
effect has been to substantially increase the connectedness of the
scientific community as several other large networks, e.g., MFENET, the
forerunner to ESnet, and European HEPNET, the European High Energy Physics
network, have switched in recent years from their own proprietary
communication protocols to those (TCP/IP) compatible with the NSFNET.)
NSFNET's selection of TCP/IP has led to it becoming the most widely used
set of open communication protocols in the world. Procedures for
transporting these protocols over emerging telecommunications services,
such as the Switched Multi-megabit Data Services (SMDS) and Frame Relay
have recently advanced to Draft Standard status. Because of this, NSFNET
and the Internet will be able to benefit from whatever economies may be
available fromusing the new offerings of the telecommunications carriers.
Scientists and educators on NSFNET can now collaborate over the network
with their peers in 39 countries on 7 continents, and every month brings
new requests for connection to the US network of which the NSFNET and its
Backbone is the principal component.
b. Other Networks Another measure of the success and influence of the
NSFNET project has been the emergence and rapid growth of private sector
offerors of TCP/IP network services. These include: UUNET Technologies,
which indeed predated the NSFNET, but has grown rapidly in recent years;
Performance Systems International (PSI), a spinoff from the NSF funded
regional network NYSERNET; Advanced Networks and Systems (ANS), who provide
NSFNET Backbone Services under contract to Merit; US Sprint; InfoNet, a
multinational
TCP/IP provider; and CERFnet, which functions as a regional network in
Southern California. Several of these private providers have formed a
cooperative for interchanging traffic known as the Commercial Internet
Exchange, or CIX, of which Mitch Kapor is Chair.
The NSFNET Backbone is limited to uses compatible with the NSF enabling
legislation, as amended. There is an "NSFNET Backbone Services Acceptable
Use Policy" (the "AUP", a copy of which is attached to this testimony)
which was developed in consultation with an NSF Advisory Committee and the
NSF General Counsel and expresses this limitation. The general principle is
worth stating, "NSFNET Backbone services are provided to support open
research and education in and among U.S. research and instructional
institutions, plus research arms of for-profit firms when engaged in open
scholarly communication and research"
By contrast, the private providers, have no such limitations. Although much
of the traffic on their networks need not conform to the AUP, it is NSF
policy to allow the private providers to use NSFNET Backbone services to
exchange AUP-conformant traffic between their customers and NSFNET clients.
However, the NSFNET Backbone may NOT be used by the private providers as a
"transit network" - i.e., to interconnect their fee paying customers.
In this traffic sharing environment, ANS occupies an especially sensitive
position since NSF indirectly, through Merit, is one of its customers.
Accordingly, NSF has made special arrangements with Merit to monitor the
quality of service afforded to NSFNET and to ensure that the traffic of
ANS' private customers does not adversely impact NSFNET Backbone services.
c. Management Controls The NSF participates with Merit, IBM, MCI, the State
of Michigan, and (since its formation in 1990) ANS in three series of
regular meetings which collectively form the primary means of oversight and
control. There is a biweekly "Partner Conference Call" which functions at
the tactical level, a monthly "Engineering Meeting" for technical
desiderata, and a quarterly Executive Committee meeting which considers
strategic issues. During the transition from the T1 Backbone to T3, the
Executive Committee also scheduled weekly conference calls. As provided for
in the Cooperative Agreement with Merit, NSF convened a blue ribbon review
panel of academic and industry experts and conducted a two day long review
of Merit's Backbone performance at the eighteen month anniversary. The
panel rated Merit's performance "excellent".
The Project Development Plan
In November, 1991, the National Science Board (NSB) approved a plan for
continuation and enhancement of NSFNET Backbone Services beyond the
expiration of the current cooperative agreement with Merit in November,
1992. The NSB also approved an extension of the agreement for a period not
to exceed eighteen months in order to allow new providers to be
competitively selected and to provide for an orderly transition. A copy of
the Plan is attached to this testimony.
The Plan was developed after more than a year of external consultation.
During this year of consulting the external community, NSF supported two
workshops at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard - one in March
1990 and the second in November, 1990. These workshops involved university
networkers, economists, specialists in public policy (especially
telecommunications policy), telecommunications carriers, and others. NSF's
sister Federal agencies involved in the NREN were consulted at a meeting
convened for this purpose in July, 1991, since the NSFNET Backbone is the
most heavily used Backbone network among the several agency networks that
are developing the NREN. The Foundation sponsored a workshop in August,
1991, by the Federation of American Research Networks (FARNET), a trade
association that was inaugurated in 1987 to act as the voice of the
regional networks, the "users" of Backbone services. The workshop was also
attended by all the private providers of Backbone services, as well as
telephone company representatives.
In addition, the Networking & Communications Research & Infrastructure
Division Advisory Committee was consulted at its meeting in November 1991.
That Committee includes leading researchers in the communications and
networking field, private network providers, and telephone company
representatives. Moreover, NCRI staff participated at public meetings of
the networking community, such as meetings of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (sponsored by industry), Net '90 and Net '91 (sponsored by the
academic and user community), and others. The Plan has a schedule that
includes release of a draft Solicitation in February 1992, a three month
period for public comment, followed by release of the final solicitation in
May.
Owing to unexpected delays in releasing a separate but related
solicitation, and the technical complexity of the proposed new NSFNET
Backbone architecture, it has not been possible to adhere to the original
schedule. The other solicitation has been released, NSF's engineering
experts have been consulted, and it now appears the draft solicitation will
be ready at the end of March, so the schedule has slipped by about eight
weeks. We believe there is still adequate time to accomplish the
solicitation-review-award-transition process within the eighteen month
extension authorized by the NSB. The technology permits a planned, gradual,
and orderly transition of traffic from one provider's facilities to
another's.
The transition, now in progress, of moving traffic from the T1 Backbone to
T3 provides practical experience for the future. The Plan provides for a
degree of continuing competition among two or more TCP/IP service providers
in furnishing NSFNET Backbone Services. There will however be no
significant changes in the rules for access to NSFNET Backbone Services by
commercial service providers. The Acceptable Use Policy, developed in
consultation with the NCRI Division Advisory Committee and the NSF General
Counsel represents, in the opinion of Counsel, the most liberal
interpretation possible under the NSF enabling legislation, as amended.
This current policy allows access to commercial services for the support of
open scholarly research and education under the General AUP Principle
stated above.
NSF believes the next award will clarify the issues in free and open
competition for the provision of Backbone services, and will conclude with
at least two fully qualified and experienced providers of bulk services. It
is likely, therefore, that NSFNET Backbone funds may - after the end of the
next award (i.e., by FY 1996) - be distributed competitively to those
organizations (currently the regional networks) who require Backbone
services so that they may procure them competitively on the open market and
free of Federal intervention. NSF had wished to employ this model at the
expiration of the Merit award, but was advised at the FARNET workshop that
the regional networks (the "users") were unprepared for that degree of
operational complexity on their part. Moreover, sister Federal agencies
felt in addition that such a procedure would, at the current state of
technology, result in serious routing instability in the network,
prejudicial to the accomplishment of their missions, since they depend
heavily on the NSFNET to reach many of their grantees and contractors. NSF
will continue working with the regional networks and the sister Federal
agencies to overcome these obstacles.
In a separate, but closely related activity, the NSF has just released a
competitive solicitation for Network Information and Registration Services.
These are services which have traditionally been provided for the worldwide
Internet by Network Information Centers (NlCs) associated with the major US
Backbone networks (i.e., ARPANET, NSFNET, ESnet, and the NASA Science
Internet) as well as by Centers operated by NSF regional networks, by
campus network organizations, and by the private TCP/IP network providers.
The principal NIC, however, was for many years operated by SRI
International under contract to the Defense Communications Agency (now the
Defense Information Systems Agency, DISA). In a recent re-competition held
by DISA, SRI lost the contract to another firm. DISA is funding the new
contractor, GSI, to serve only the Defense Data Network; accordingly, NSF
is funding GSI on a month-to-month basis for service to the rest of the
Internet (including, of course, its largest component, the NSFNET) until
NSF's recently released solicitation can result in a new Network
Information Center. During the month-to-month funding, NSF is closely
monitoring GSl's operation. It is interesting to note that the commercial
users of the Internet, many of whom are clients of the private TCP/IP
providers, form the largest single user class of GSl's services.
Relation to NREN
Finally, I would like to turn briefly to the relation of the NSFNET to the
overall NREN program that is part of the HPCC Program described earlier by
Dr. Habermann. The planning process for the HPCC Program is coordinated by
the HPCCIT Subcommittee. This subcommittee meets regularly to coordinate
agencies' HPCC programs through information exchange, common development of
interagency initiatives, and review of individual agency HPCC proposals and
budgets. This process provides for agency participation through agency
proposal development and review, budget crosscut development and review,
and interagency program coordination. Agency programs are reviewed against
a set of evaluation criteria for merit, contribution, readiness, linkages
to industry, and other factors.
During 1990, in order to provide for broader and more inclusive
coordination of research and education communities, the NSF, as part of its
HPCCIT network task group activities, created the Federal Networking
Council (FNC) and initiated the creation of an FNC Advisory Committee
(FNCAC) as an NSF advisory committee.
The FNC consists of representatives from Federal agencies that have
requirements for operating and using networking facilities, mainly in
support of research and education, and for advancing the evolution of the
Federal portion of the Internet. Membership lists of the FNC and FNCAC are
attached to this testimony. Achieving the goals of the NREN will require
close coordination of the NSFNET, NASA Science Internet (NSI) and Energy
Sciences Network (ESNet) programs to meet the expectations of scientists
working on the Grand Challenge problems. At the same time, however, the
NSFNET program will vigorously pursue wider NREN goals of developing the
technologies that will enable access by libraries, use for lifelong
education, and connection to health care systems, etc. The NSF will
continue to involve the private sector to the greatest extent possible for
meeting the goals of public policy in this arena in the most cost-effective
and technically responsive way. NSF is participating with the other
agencies in the FNC in the drafting of the NREN report required of the
Office of Science and Technology Policy by the High Performance Computing
Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194.)
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