[9690] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Telecommunications Competition Act of Washington State
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven K. Widmayer)
Sun Jan 16 18:30:14 1994
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 94 19:05:39 -0500
From: "Steven K. Widmayer" <skw@merit.edu>
To: adamfast@u.washington.edu, karl@mcs.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, communet@uvmvm.BITNET,
>The CIX is a great accomplishment in the marketplace. It formed as a
>response by the <free market> to what was perceived as a nascent monopoly
>position by ANS, in an attempt to prevent that from happening. From all
>appearances it seems to have worked. MCSNet's T1 came online last evening,
>and with it FULL CIX connectivity -- you know, it is really impressive when
>we can get universal connectivity with one T1 line from a national phone
>carrier. Seems that the wonderful word - "competition" - has done what all
>the Government regulators, and the NSF, utterly failed to do -- does it not?
>
>Or have I missed something?
>
>
Karl,
I don't think you can equate "universal connectivity" with a connection
to the CIX, at least not yet. For that I think you still need connections
to both the CIX and to the NSFNET/ANSnet. There are less than 1000 active
CIX-connected networks that are not known to the NSFNET service. On the
other hand, there are probably multiple thousands of networks known to
the NSFNET which are not CIX members, and thus not reachable to those
fewer than 1000 non-NSFNET CIX-connected networks.
--Steve Widmayer
