[376] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: A NIC for the Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Thu Mar 14 16:18:21 1991
To: Stephen Wolff <steve@cise.nsf.gov>
Cc: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern), com-priv@psi.com, jcavines@nsf.gov,
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 14 Mar 91 14:52:40 EST."
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 14:39:54 -0500
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
Steve,
Is it not true that SRI has protested this in a formal manner?
Marty
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NSF's agreement for the NNSC is about to expire.
The DCA contract with SRI to run the SRI NIC is expiring, has been
recompeted and won by somebody else.
The Internet will no longer be able to live off DCA largesse; we need to
provide a NIC For The Rest Of Us. We would like to initiate a structure
that can grow into one that will serve the NREN.
Towards the end of this year, NSF will issue one or more competitive
solicitation(s) for the provision of user services to the Internet
community. This activity is under the direction of Jane Caviness of NSF;
the action officer is Doug Gale who is even now at IETF, speaking with the
several Working Groups concerned. There are of course numerous other
interested parties whom we shall contact before going on the street.
Until a new NIC can be fielded, DCA and NSF have agreed to collaborate in
attempting to continue current essential services.
It is clear, as several have pointed out already, that the SRI-NIC model is
broken - only partly because it doesn't scale to the NREN. We need a new
paradigm that will obviously have to be distributed and participative, with
Federal money highly leveraged. User charges are of course one (but only
one) way of achieving this and are not excluded from consideration.
In fact, we're starting from a clean slate. All ideas are welcome. Send
to dgale@nsf.gov with copies where you will.
-s
