[695] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Let 100 Backbones Bloom!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net)
Wed May 15 23:39:48 1991
From: tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Wed May 15 23:34:00 1991
<<MESSAGE from>> Gordon Cook 15-MAY-91 23:34
cook@tmn
Phone call to someone involved with NREN policy today lead to interesting
discussion. Anyone willing to critique the following scenario?
1. NSFnet backbone not rebid. Al Weis and ANS introduce privatized
ANSnet effective November 1992. NSF no longer pays the backbone provider
for the costs of mid-levels connection to the backbone.
2. BUT NSF is NOT out of the business of monetarily supporting the NSFnet
now known as the interim interagency NREN. Their projected budget for
this task in FY92 is 32 million dollars - up from 13.5 million in FY 89.
3. NSF support now takes the form of paying the mid-level connect fees to
any backbone that a mid-level wishes to connect to. This could mean
ANSnet's soon-to-be 622 megabit superhighway backbone, or PSI's backbone,
or Uunet's backbone, or AT&T's (if some mid-levels could convince the
company to establish one) or a backbone made up of interconnected
mid-levels.
4. You know - let backbone providers differentiate among themselves.
Mid-levels with universities clamoring to use the ANS 622 megabit
racetrack would presumably be willing to pay a higher connect fee.
(Should the NSF say we will pay only a flate minimum and if you want the
high speed stuff you gotta pay the difference?) The other lower speed
backbones could presumably try to define their own market niches to
attract customers. This would be a free market - fair to all players game,
right?
5. And now we get to the good part: interoperability. To become an NSF
approved backbone provider, one must pledge contractually to maintain open
gateways with all other approved backbone providers. Pull the plug on a
gateway and loss your approved backbone provider eligibility and the money
that comes with it. Voila! An economic incentive to everyone not to try
to punish anyone by fragmenting network connectivity!
Question - under these conditions, since all the backbones are now
privatized, have we buried the old bugaboo of acceptable (non-commercial)
use policies?
Gordon Cook **Office of Technology Assessment**
PS: Under such conditions, would the network really be privatized? Has
anyone really DEFINED privatization yet?
