[899] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Byte Article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S. Quarterman)
Wed Jul 3 14:27:52 1991
From: jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman)
To: Jay Habegger <HABEGGER_J@bronze.Colorado.EDU>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, mids@tic.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 03 Jul 91 08:58:00 -0700.
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 91 09:25:17 -0500
>No, the box claiming to describe U.S. "Public Data Networks" didn't mention
>Alternet/PSInet/CERFnet/ANSnet, but it is even worse than that.
No, it's even worse than that. :-)
I've sent the appended letter to the editor of Byte.
I suggest that others with concerns over what they printed
do the same, preferably including some sort of praise for
their publishing of anything related to the Internet.
There's apparently something in the July Forbes, as well, by the way.
Message-Id: <9107031340.AA01645@longway.tic.com>
>From: jsq@tic.com (John Quarterman)
To: 250-0135@mcimail.com
Subject: the Internet and UUCP
Cc: mids@tic.com
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 91 08:40:51 -0500
Sender: jsq
2 July 1991
Editor
Byte Magazine
One Phoenix Mill Lane
Peterborough, NH 03458
250-0135@mcimail.com
603-924-9281
fax: 603-924-2550
The material about NREN and the Internet in the July 1991 Byte
provided a nice capsule summary of much of the current Internet
political situation, and it's good that your readers have seen
it. However, that material also confuses network boundaries
and protocols, and thereby obscures the services that may be
available to potential users.
The information about routing in the box ``Feeding the
Internet'' confuses TCP/IP with UUCP, the UNIX to UNIX Copy
Protocol. UUCP is the protocol that requires administrators to
have agreements for their machines to dial up each other. UUCP
is also the protocol that used to require all users to use
source routes of the form hosta!hostb!hostc!user. TCP/IP is
the protocol used in the Internet, with user mail addressing of
the form user@domain, e.g., mids@tic.com. TCP/IP has
traditionally been used exclusively over dedicated leased
lines. Most of the second half of the box is really about the
UUCP network (and to some extent about the USENET network), not
about the Internet.
The box also has a very strange explanation of what composes
the Internet. The size of a machine has little to do with it.
If you can FTP from your machine to a machine on one of the
Internet core networks, you are on the Internet; if you can't
you're not. Such machines include uu.psi.net and uunet.uu.net.
There are many small machines on the Internet and many large
ones that aren't. The limitation is most often the cost of the
connection. Fortunately, that is going down rapidly, with the
spread of the CIX networks and dialup IP services offered by
various networks around the country.
If you can't do file transfer with FTP, you usually also can't
do remote login with TELNET, nor any of the other interactive
Internet TCP/IP services. Mail and news are usually the only
services you can exchange with the Internet if you're not on it.
Many machines on the UUCP network have domain names, e.g.,
tic.com, so that people on them, e.g., jsq@tic.com, can be
reached by mail from the Internet, and the reverse. The
Internet also has direct and indirect mail connections to many
networks and mail services that use different addressing
conventions.
The big advantage of mail among machines that are directly
connected to the Internet is speed. It is common to get a
reply a few hours or even a few minutes after you send a
message. This leads to a very different feeling of
responsiveness than mail through dialup or other indirect
connections. News is similarly much faster on the Internet,
although USENET started on the UUCP network and still extends
far beyond the Internet.
Finally, there are a number of interesting recent Internet
services that provide information about the network itself, and
about its users. For example, the archie service from McGill
University in Montreal polls anonymous FTP hosts monthly and
collects indexes to their holdings. Through its interactive
and electronic mail interfaces, archie thus makes visible fifty
gigabytes of files on four continents.
John S. Quarterman
jsq@tic.com
Matrix Information and Directory Services, Inc. (MIDS)
mids@tic.com
701 Brazos Suite 500
Austin, TX 78701
512-320-9031
fax 512-320-5821
MIDS publishes the paper newsletter, Matrix News,
which includes further information on the above topics.
Subscriptions are $30 for twelve monthly issues,
plus $10 for overseas airmail.
