[9550] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Learning from the BBSs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (guthery@austin.slcs.slb.com)
Mon Jan 10 06:50:01 1994
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 94 05:47:30 CST
From: guthery@austin.slcs.slb.com
To: com-priv@psi.com
I've often wondered if there isn't a useful plateau somewhere between LAN and
WAN ... call it NAN ... Neighborhood Area Net. It would cover roughly the
area you drive on Saturday errands. As I watch the local FidoNet, most of the
traffic is local, covering a population patch of I'd guess 100,000. This
plateau seems to be where BBSs have a solid niche currently. A BBS patch is
constrained heavily by what defines a toll-free telephone call, to be sure.
Nevertheless without a community of interest there would be no traffic even if
it was free and what I think I see is that the patch is smaller than the
toll-free area.
I'm hard-pressed to believe that there are no plateaus between my sister's
bedroom and Moscow. Business opportunities? How about a neighborhood disk
farm with automatic backup services? By the way, do the Scouts have a Network
Management merit badge yet?
