[304] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Commercial institutions are welcome
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent England)
Tue Mar 5 14:42:53 1991
From: kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent England)
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 14:25:13 -0500
To: lws@capybara.comm.wang.com
In-Reply-To: Mail from 'lws@capybara.comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman)' dated Tue, 5 Mar 91 11:45:36 EST
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
> From: lws@capybara.comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman)
>
> There are several reasons why business has had so little visibility on
> the Internet.
> ...
> 2. Businesses have bean-counters, too...
>
> 3. Many people in the business environment ... don't push for new
> facilities.
> ...
> This is unfortunate. Much of the stagnation in high-tech industries
> and the overall economy could have been avoided if business and academia
> were encouraged to interact. IMO, very useful synergies can result
> from the cooperation of business and academia. It will be in all of
> our interests if business is encouraged to fully join the electronic
> community.
>
> Lyle Wang lws@wang.com
> 508 967 2322 Lowell, MA, USA uunet!wang!lws
It has been my experience in NEARnet, the New England Academic
and Research Network, that R&D labs in commercial enterprises have a
shorter budgetary response time than our compatriots in the smaller
academic institutions, resulting in significantly more commercial
membership at first than smaller academic membership. At the moment
commercial institutions outnumber academic institutions on the
membership roll of NEARnet. (But I point out that membership counts
or POP connections do not strongly correlate to user population, as
NEARnet interconnects with some other significant academic network
entities. I am not saying that users at commercial concerns outnumber
academic institutional users on NEARnet.)
There have been several key commercial people (including a
visionary real estate developer with an office park in a very
strategic geographic location) who have been extremely supportive of
NEARnet. One example is Thinking Machines, a very early and
supportive member of NEARnet, connecting to MIT via a 10Mbps microwave
Ethernet connection. Whenever I hear Danny Hillis speak publicly, as
he did recently at the dedication of the BU Center for Computational
Science, he talks of the strategic importance of networking. As
another example, I have found the input of concerned members of FTP
Software regarding commercialization issues to be most helpful and
constructive. Everyone knows or knows of jbvb, stev, and others from
FTP and their contributions to the Internet. And large institutions
like IBM and DEC are very supportive, sending representatives to our
Planning Committee meetings regularly. I feel very interconnected to
the commercial R&D establishments, large and small in the New England
area, through their participation in NEARnet.
NEARnet proves that academic and research networking is very
much for the commercial enterprises. NEARnet commercial and academic
members would eagerly welcome Wang into the fold of commercial/
academic partnership and internetworking, and all the more so if it
would help Wang to avoid high-tech stagnation.
--Kent
