[8529] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: ANS and the CIX
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Cook)
Sun Nov 21 21:42:53 1993
From: cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 02:42:17 GMT
Apparently-To: <com-priv@psi.com>
Miles Fidelman raises excellent concabout the role of the NAP manager.
There is nothing in the solicitation to prevent the winner of the VBNS
from being the nap manager. There is nothing in the solicitation to prevent a
carrier from being the NAP manager.
Now perhaps we will be told that there can be as many NAPs as carriers
want to install? And that, that independent miracle the routing authority, will
have the power to force the NAP manager to connect independent NAPs to where?
The VBNS? But why should independent NAPs want to connect to the VBNS which
is to be limited to OC3c tr fro supercomputer centers and will have a
restrictive AUP? The parody of all this written by the man at Xerox
Parc last march is looking better and better.
By all means give the control of NAPs to the FCC. Only problem is that
I don't think FCC would accept them without a strong push from eithe white house
or congress.
The NSF has put out the word that it is getting out of the subsidized
internet business. If this were true why does it propose under the new
solicitation to INCREASE its annual expenditures on the Net from 12 to $18 million?
It would be nice if somebody mounted a legal challenge to what is
continuing to go on. The backbones of sprint, uunet and psi are moving
rapidly to 45 megabits. If the CIX weren't ready and able to replace the ANSnet bon
May first when the NSF is supposed to stop paying for it, want to bet
that they couldn't be ready to do so before the end of next year? Which
should be no problem since NSF will bestow another extension on MERIT/ANS
well before May 1.
If no one can go to court to end the current foolishness, then the CIX
shoulmove to impliment its own replacement of ANSNET/NSFNet. What if
the NSF tried to give a vBNS and no one came? Of course the only problem
with this argument is that there will be millions of dollars per year of
continued NSF subsidies to the regionals which I imagine the regionals
will find to be irresistable.
