[8481] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: CIX connectivity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Sat Nov 20 14:03:32 1993
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 93 13:56:50 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: lars@eskimo.cph.cmc.com, bmanning@is.rice.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
> From: bmanning@is.rice.edu (William Manning)
> --== There is NO such thing as AUP-free ==--
>
> Does not exist. Period. Recent readings of Martys followups seem to identify
> the CIX AUP. To paraphrase; "Everyone -MUST- peer with everyone else".
> Sounds like an AUP to me.
>
> Countries have AUPs. Regions have AUPs. It sounds like you need to get
> the AUPs for EUnet, Alternet, CIX, ANS, and others, since we are becoming
> encumbered with policy. Dick may be right. The global structure may melt
> in front of us due to greed, power, and private/public ambition.
For the record, I wasn't so much predicting a meltdown as reporting
that I frequently hear it predicted. I had been sure the prediction
was absurd, but I was suddenly worried it might be correct.
I have no fear of AUPs - they are not the problem; hell, I'd say they
even have a place. A university that gets a subsidized NSFNET connection
shouldn't be using it for commerce - shouldn't be making money using it.
But an AUP, the one for NSFNET at least, is an Acceptable *Use*
Policy. It is not an Acceptable *Routing* Policy. The NSFNET AUP
explicitly allows commercial use in support of R&E, which is equivalent
to implicitly allowing routing between NSFNET nodes and commercial nets.
The AUP imposes no restrictions at all on routing. Why some people
have claimed it does can only be guessed at, but one can note that such
a view is convenient for adherents to some political philosophies about
the role of government.
The why does not matter though. Whether it was part of a war with ANS
or part of a campaign for worms' rights vs. fishermen, what counts is
that supposedly responsible businesses used their customers as pawns,
putting their agendas ahead of their business responsibilities.
So what have we really learned from all this ? That a couple of
vendors will sacrifice their customers for their own purposes and that
ANS will yield on its own agenda when its customers are being hurt by
the actions of others.
The ironic thing is that earlier this week before this blew up I was
part of a discussion about a (large) new venture being formed that
involves a lot of networking. I was the Internet advocate (vs. a
private-network shop), facing skeptics who want to deal with
established responsible businesses. No problem, I said, and I listed
several commercial providers. Guess which two I listed first ...
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
