[488] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
CIX Implications
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Fri Mar 29 14:14:31 1991
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent England), jdr@mlb.semi.harris.com (Jim Ray)
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 14:01:47 EST
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@cise.nsf.gov>
Kent's right: "The CIX is not the answer to the problem of how one net sends
and receives both restricted and unrestricted traffic over multiple
backbones. That problem still remains unaddressed by currently deployed
technology." On the other hand ---
When I was very young in suburban Philadelphia, we had two telephones in the
house. One belonged to and hooked up to Bell of Pa.'s network; the other
was wired to the Keystone Telephone Company's system. We had to have both
because neither Keystone nor Bell would give the other system the competitive
advantage of an interconnect *at any price*, and my parents had friends on
both systems. (Keystone eventually went belly-up and its assets and
subscribers were acquired by Bell of Pa. who did not, however, buy back
anyone's (now redundant) second instrument.)
So when Jim Ray writes: "I would imagine that the NREN and NSFnet folks
aren't at all too happy with the CIX arrangement ( I could be wrong here )"
he's right: he's wrong.
I am absolutely delighted at the CIX announcement. As is well known, the
benefits of the network *to its subscribers* scales as the power set of the
number of subscribers. The CIX participants realize that and have made the
policy decision to exchange traffic freely; it was a statespersonlike (??)
move on the part of all concerned and they have my sincere congratulations.
Since there's plenty of urgent things to work on just now in the NREN/Internet
arena, I'm also glad that the CIX participants have agreed to forego exchange
payments.
In the fullness of time, of course, they will wish to revisit that topic.
-s
