[322] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
CERFnet, PSI and Uunet Interconnection?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Fri Mar 8 08:26:00 1991
To: tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 91 08:07:36 EST
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@cise.nsf.gov>
Of course, UUNET, PSI and CERFNET have **always** been interconnected via
the NSFNET, and traffic flowed transparently among them; thus the principal
significance of their interconnecting without any intervening NSFNET (or
ESNET or NSI or...) links is that they can now exchange traffic that does
not meet NSFNET (or ESNET, or NSI, or...) acceptable use criteria.
Insofar as I am aware, the state of policy-based routing is such that this
significance is likely to be more potential than actual.
Nevertheless I applaud the interconnect because, as others have observed
before me, one of the greatest dangers of a privatized, multi-backbone NREN
is that the major backbone vendors will refuse to carry the traffic of each
others' clients (or will charge extortionate rates for doing so), thus
fragmenting the national user community and depriving it of those very
benefits the network is intended to promote.
-s
