[292] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
A few questions re current discussions...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel P Dern)
Tue Mar 5 10:56:33 1991
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 10:31:34 -0500
From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: ddern@world.std.com
1. Listserv
If LISTSERV is a Bitnet service (I'm asking, but it sure looks like
it), then saying the "Internet" should use it seems to miss the point,
as Bitnet (I believe) is a specific network, whereas our friend the
big I ain't. I think we're remarkably lucky to have a structure that
works as well as it does, all things considered...
2. Is anonymous FTP NSFnet abuse?
Only where the NSFnet backbone is used inappropriately, no? It's
unreasonable to expect people to remove this service, or not use it,
within their own nets, regionals, commercials, uucp-based and other
servers, etc. Hey, maybe policy based routing would help! Or more
of them unrestricted networks! Or we could install parking meter or
other coin collection boxes on the routers :-)
3. Is there life beyond FTP, Telnet, SMTP
What do folks have in mind, in terms of new services... I'm not arguing,
I'm asking. I'm inclined to suggest we put our heads together on
policy and management first ... because the bigger this network gets, the
more we need new ways to let users use. A few issues back in Data
Communications, Jack Haverty had a dead-one piece, "Internetworking: One
Step Forward and Two Steps Back," on related issues (Jack, could you/
would you post it to this list?) pointing out how _well_ a lot of what
the Internet has works, in its own fashion.
4. Back to our regularly scheduled program
Well, the recent bickfest has been interesting ... but I'm curious --
just what _is_ happening in the commercialization arena? Any new
networks? Any organizing among the local public access Unix hosts?
Any new carrier services? Any new push from commercial users?
I'm in the middle of writing the usual bunch of articles, so I'm
especially curious. What happened at the recent Harvard commercialization
meeting? What's news in the regionals? Do recent announcements of
(more) TCP/IP for VAX/VMS, Novell Netware, MS-DOS, routable SNA,
the TransArc RPC package, etc. have _any_ impact (positive?) on
the need for commercial networking?
