[471] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: ANS Acceptable Use Policy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Edward Vielmetti)
Fri Mar 29 01:45:45 1991
To: Joe Ragland <jrr@concert.net>
Cc: bzs@world.std.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 28 Mar 91 23:07:11 -0500.
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 00:14:21 EST
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>
to save a few bits and for posterity's sake, the CONCERT policy statement
is ftp'able from
ncnoc.concert.net:/doc/CONCERT.policy (ascii)
ncnoc.concert.net:/doc/CONCERT.policy.ps (postscript)
its edit date is fairly recent (feb 6), there may be older policy
statements from CONCERT floating around in other places; I don't know
what changed recently.
Some pieces of the CONCERT acceptable use statement (here from
section 1 of it) are far out of line with what I think is
a reasonable attitude towards the Internet as a whole.
It portrays the internet as a hostile, forbidding place, with
lots of things that you can do wrong that will attract the attention
and ire of powers elsewhere.
"What appears on the local ethernet can and may be transmitted across
the country and may do immense damage along the way."
Immense damage? If so, please fill in the details so these deficiencies
in the internet protocols can be repaired. though, for that matter,
the same thing could be said about picking up your telephone, dialing,
and saying something to the person on the other end -- it could cause
immense damage I suppose.
"When an offending node or network is identified, various Network
Operations Centers (NOCs) start a defined procedure to solve the
problem. Procedures range from advising the local administrator
to fix the problem to immediate disconnect of the offending node.
In no case are problems ignored for very long and the severity of
the action is in relation to the seriousness of the event."
In my reading of NOC trouble tickets (the ones I can get my hands on),
most of the things they are concerned with are network level issues --
a circuit is bobbling, a router is flaky, a tornado took out the
building. Rarely is there an "offending node" to blame where the
source of the trouble is user error, and even more rare in my experience
is the reaction "off with their heads!"
"Because we (network 128.109) must be responsible participants in the
Internet and because we have had serious problems, it is necessary
that we maintain policies and procedures in the operation of our
network."
I am curious as to what these serious problems were (or are), when they
occurred, and why they need to be brought up in your policy statement?
Not something that I would broadcast to the world, though it might
be useful for keeping local troublemakers in line.
Not a policy statement which I would use as a model, and not a network
with which I would hope to have free and unfettered commerce.
--
Msen Edward Vielmetti
/|--- moderator, comp.archives
emv@msen.com
