[8999] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Your Question about Sprint
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Tue Dec 14 16:53:47 1993
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 93 16:38:52 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: joseph@path.net
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
> If you purchase from Sprint with the intent to re-sell they are going to
> tell you you need to join the CIX. Now so I don't get beat up let me clarify
> that. Re-sale in what way ? To end users ? Or as Pagesat.com does. If you sell
> to your 56k customers and they re-sell, someone is going to be joining the CIX.
> I guess that it will depend on how strict they enforce it. No I am not just
> going to single out ANS. Suppose we put that question to the CIX director &
> the CIX members that read com-priv. Again its a great time for PR.
I have put that question to the CIX and received no answer, because it
is an impossible question to answer. The CIX model is broken. There
is no nice clean boundary between end users and resellers that makes
any sense.
Near here three families have houses in the woods. They set up a
corporation to own and maintain the common driveway, put in a water
line, etc. The corp. buys water service and resells it to the
families, making it a tiny water company. If the corp buys an Internet
pipe and resells it to the families, by CIX rules they have to cough up
$10K/yr to the CIX to put three families on the Internet. Does
*anybody* on the list think that makes sense?
My wife's family's summer home is at the end of a 4-mile dead-end
road. They and about 25 other families have a similar corporation that
again owns and maintains a road. Same issue: if that corp buys a pipe
and resells to the families that want a piece, it is a reseller by CIX
rules.
When you buy a pipe, what you do with it should be between you and your
provider, not between you and some distant organization. If your
provider, or your provider's provider, or your provider's provider's
provider ... , is a CIX member, then your packets should be passed up
to the CIX and accepted for routing. Membership should be required
only to attach to the CIX/CIXs, and where these members get the packets
they exchange and what they do with them should be none of the CIX's
business.
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
