[357] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: a strategic plan for farnet (and you)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Thu Mar 14 08:46:03 1991
To: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com, nren-discuss@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 14 Mar 91 01:04:53 EST."
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 07:53:36 -0500
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
Edward,
> Who is FARNET, and what have they ever done? What's their list of
> projects, accomplishments, papers, software, etc ? My personal
> favorite approach is their #5 future, "FARNET is Caput [sic]":
FARNET are the owners of most of the US Internet at the retail service level
(the important service level). Other "retail service" components would
be some US agency networks, the Milnet etc, but these others probably represent
much less than 10% of the "market", and are decreasing. So they are pretty
big. At least two of the commercial providers (CERFNet, PSINet) are
members of FARNET.
> In all this (and in a general sense from reading the document) I
> get an uneasy sense that these are not the kinds of networks that I
> want to see. Each of the views has quite a monolithic approach to
> how things will be; there's no visible signs of competition, marketplace,
> or healthy disagreement on how things will be done. Success is dependent
> solely on the ability to win government grants; small enterpreneruial
> efforts are written off as "heroic efforts of a few individuals".
> Organizations which are flourishing today (regional nets, Alternet,
> PSI) just disappear somehow.
While I think this paper represents some amount of wishful thinking,
it does represent some significant philosphical beliefs and an active
action plan which is in operation (actually one scenario).
As I posted throughout 1990, during the ANS pre-announcement, and
secret negotiations (still going on to my knowledge), FARNET gave
all appearances of immediately folding to the large marketing
and lobbying organization: ANS. The immediate assumption was that ANS
was going to bury everything in existance including the commercial
and non-commercial networks, and innumerable FARNET working groups were
formed to work with various ANS staff on the transition to ANS
"support", "service", etc... Their dream is that ANS sells to the
current regional networks similiarly to how NSFNet gives access
to its bit dump, their nightmare is that ANS goes retail or divides
and conquers.
>From what I have heard is that their nightmare appears to be here, consider the
following:
- when ANS was pre-announced one of the active opponents of this was
SURANET
- within a few months ANS appeared to have removed a large portion of
SURANET's membership in North Carolina (Concert), I actually
have a draft press release somewhere
- and a few months later SURANET is negotiating a co-marketing agreement
with ANS
Now I'm not saying that these are related in anyway I'm simply giving
the chronological order.
Another case comes to mind, Exxon research in NJ:
- JVNCNet appears to have "won" this important customer due to the
long established relationships with Princeton (that is what
we were told)
- within a few months JVNCNet is dumped and Exxon is going to ANS since
they can supply (through IBM Yorktown Heights) speciality software
for their IBM machine.
Now in both cases to my knowledge ANS hasn't actually delivered anything,
but that really isn't important (right?), it is the possible intentions
that they reflect, according to some.
For those of you not familiar with the way a few very large companies
are pruported to work, a lot of this sounds like the standard
carrot and stick method: they can cut you a GOOD DEAL, but if you
don't buy, your going to lose your job.
ANS's advantage is through perceived power/money/backing over what are
really tiny organizations, the monopoly that effectively NSF has
provided them inside the US and outside the US by the control
of various international links, and one world class individual.
Currently the US Internet at the retail level is broken up into
a couple of dozen providers none of which have any significant size
advantage over the others, the top ten probably all own 5-7% of
the market, the difference between them is insignificant. If October 92
brings a situation where one organization owns or controls 70+%
then things will change dramatically, short and long term.
Under some scenarios, the NREN could seal that kind of future, when
you consider how government likes to reward big science and big
companies it doesn't seem impossible, remember we've already heard
on this mailing list that "it is hard to fund the individual
institutions".
It is hard to educate 20+ million kids in America, it is hard
for most parents to make sure that food is on the table, and
that they are there everyday for them in all that they need.
Some hard things are worth doing.
Marty
Marty
