[262] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: pointless bickering
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lee C. Varian)
Sat Mar 2 18:39:02 1991
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 91 18:11:01 EST
From: "Lee C. Varian" <LVARIAN@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
To: David Herron <david@TWG.COM>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 02 Mar 91 14:09:29 -0800 from <david@TWG.COM>
On Sat, 02 Mar 91 14:09:29 -0800 you said:
>Finally.. is this true: That the bickering is being caused because the
>various administrations want there to be only one network in place? It
>is certainly possible to have one network & push multiple protocols
>around on it. ...
>
>Or is it being caused by the old anti-IBM wars?
David, I think University administrations DO want there to be only one
(physical) network in place -- for reasons of cost and reduced
complexity. By the way, with the BITNET II protocols which encapsulate
the NJE protocol used by BITNET in TCP, major portions of the BITNET
network are already running on top of the Internet (and account for
something like 8% of the total bytes transmitted on the NSFnet backbone).
One of the reasons why BITNET has not simply disappeared as many (most?)
Universities gained direct Internet access has to do more with the
applications available on BITNET which are not (yet) natively available
on the Internet: LISTSERV for distributed mailing lists with archiving
and the ability to archive software; interactive messaging among users
and for requesting network services; and sender-initiated file transfer
(ala E-mail, but supporting 8-bit data and file characteristics).
Many wonderful facilities are already on the Internet (such as X-windows
and NFS) in addition to FTP, SMTP and netnews. Most of these facilities
have come from a Unix environment. Some of the good ideas from the
more IBM- and VAX-oriented BITNET world haven't yet moved into the
Internet. I personally think they need to if we are to build an NREN
which will serve a much broader constituency than is presently on the
Internet.
Lee Varian, Princeton University, lvarian@pucc.princeton.edu
