[9887] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
I must be stupid, or asleep.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Russell Nelson)
Tue Jan 25 17:31:07 1994
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 16:43:59 EST
From: "Russell Nelson" <nelson@crynwr.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
I must be stupid, or asleep, or just plain not-paying-attention.
Ittai says that the CIX-only non-NSF-AUP-signing crowd is shrinking,
and he thinks that's the CIX's fault. (Actually, the CIX's fault is
somewhere underneath their router in California).
That makes perfect sense to me, as I understand today's
state-of-the-art Internet routing. If I'm at a Research and/or
Education (R&|E) site, I'm not doing business (by definition) and so the AUP
is no problem. If anyone wants to do business with me, that's fine
because they're supporting me, and that's okay.
If I'm NOT at an R&|E site, and I want to talk to an R&|E site,
that's okay because I'm supporting them. So there's no problem if I
sign the AUP. If I'm NOT R&|E, and I want to talk to another
business who isn't, then the AUP doesn't apply because our traffic
isn't traversing the NSFNet. If the traffic does traverse the
NSFNet, then it's not our problem, because we've paid for AUP-free
Internet access.
So the only people who would NOT sign the AUP are those people who
are using the Internet as a replacement for a private network. That
is to say, they don't care about general IP connectivity. They've
just bought into a cheaper bit-pipe.
It only stands to reason that the people in the latter group would
shrink as they discover the advantages of Internet access. Would
someone please reassure me that I'm not stupid, asleep, or just plain
not-paying-attention?
