[332] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
A NIC for the Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel P Dern)
Sun Mar 10 01:18:02 1991
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 91 01:03:26 -0500
From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: ddern@world.std.com
Having seen several messages on the subject of NIC and competitive
bidding, I feel like I have come in during the middle of a
conversation.... is there a bidding process going on for the NIC?
Based on the messages I read, a few questions do come to mind?
1) The Internet and the NSFnet seem to be strongly equated, NIC-wise.
Are we then talking about an "NSFnet NIC," serving NSF clients and
perhaps connected nets, e.g., regionals and commercials? What about
all them internationals and so on? The DDN NIC seems to be providing
a fair amount of general help, understandably and to what I perceive
as good effect. But an "Internet NIC" (InterNIC?) raises the same
roster of questions as NREN, NSFnet and privitization does for
transport, e.g., access, authorization, policy, commercial traffic/
content... Do regionals currently send any money to the NIC(s)? I'm
not saying they should, or shouldn't?
2) The NNSC (NSFnet Network Service Center) .... does winning a
NIC contract include this? If so, why isn't the NNSC part of the
current NIC?
This does raise an interesting question, namely, where _does_ one
go to get information re the Internet? The answer(s) I got some
months ago boiled down to: "Call the NIC|NNSC|Merit|FARRnet|other
and you'll probably find, or be referred to, the right person
within two calls." (With the exception of the DDN, where I had
a remarkably difficult time getting a well defined single point of
contact who a) agreed they were this point AND b) other people agreed
were this point. I'd be happy to be corrected, but I stand by the
results of several dozen frustrating phone calls.) What's Catch-22
in hex?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect these questions are getting
more important as we see new classes of network information, like
the "Big Directory" for use by X.400/X.500, encryption public key
repositories, and routing/name server table mechanisms.
Coming back to Topic B (the NIC -- privitization q's remaining
Topic A), one might argue that the NIC(s) as currently stand no
longer match the paradigm they were created to serve. Perhaps a
commercially run InterNIC with clear charge-back mechanisms would
be of some use, working in coordination with the extent and coming
NICs and NOCs (DDN NOC and NIC, NNSC, and for all I know, UUnic,
AlterNOC and PSINicNoc). At which point, we have to ask, exactly
what services are we looking to have provided? And how much are
we willing to pay?
Daniel Dern
ddern@world.std.com
