[588] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
At What Price Will TCP/IP Connections Gain Wide Market Appeal?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bob Sutterfield)
Mon Apr 15 09:39:37 1991
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 09:31:51 -0400
From: Bob Sutterfield <bob@morningstar.com>
To: Will@cup.portal.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Will@cup.portal.com's message of Sun, 14 Apr 91 19:45:51 PDT <9104141945.2.23668@cup.portal.com>
From: Will@cup.portal.com
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 91 19:45:51 PDT
What might hold up that market is the perception that it is not
secure... being addressed by privacy enhanced mail...
If there's any perception of insecurity I don't think it's a charge
specifically against SMTP, rather against some vague notion of the
network itself, which for many users happens to be embodied by mail
since that's their only use of a network. Remember, most mortals got
their first impression of the Internet when they saw us on TV trying
to explain the Worm a couple of Novembers ago. The overriding
attitude I heard was relief that they weren't connected to all those
universities. Some local companies' network managers actually claimed
credit for having had the foresight not to be connected! Though other
security efforts are under way, PEM itself won't actually address
general network or system insecurity, and it wouldn't have stopped the
Worm.
There's a fine line for the marketeers to tread between truthfully
agreeing that mail is insecure, and pointing out that mail and the
network itself have proven to be generally secure enough for
productive and profitable day-to-day use by thousands of
organizations.
...and that commercial use is forbidden ... being addressed by the
CIX agreement.
The existence of the CIX won't do it, good marketing will. If three
power-suited sales rep clones show up on a company's doorstep with
viewgraphs and color glossies trying to sell a service, that will go a
long way toward dispelling any "ivory tower" or "academic and research
only" perception that might be lingering. If I show up in my jeans
and Nikes to solve a problem for the hackers and describe the joys of
the network over beer at lunch, not much credibility is gained. I
suspect (without hard evidence, and I'd love to be refuted) that much
of the demand so far has been generated by students who remember the
network from their school days. Sad to say, if there are any real
bucks to be mined out there, real marketeers (the type who look
natural wearing ties) will have to be involved in the digging. The
CIX is just an enabling link.
Perception is everything unfortunately, and I understand the
bureaucratic mind well enough to know that if there is even the
possibility that a CIX-connected company could misuse the Internet,
many larger companies will stay away from even CIX.
Nobody's worried that another company would abuse the network, they're
worried about all those herds of wild-eyed undergrads out there
"hacking" their way into their billing systems and wreaking random
havoc. Maybe they should be more worried about industrial sabotage,
but that's not the popular thing to worry about concerning the
Internet.
[H]ow do you convince those same companies to use a commercial
TCP/IP network as the backbone for all of the company's commercial
electronic mail?
Show a cost benefit over running their own wide-area NOC. Once
they're hooked, the rest of the services will trickle in the door.
