[9942] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NSF AUP restrictions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Deutsch)
Fri Jan 28 17:46:55 1994
From: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 17:02:45 -0500
In-Reply-To: Lars Poulsen's message as of Jan 28, 21:11
To: lars@eskimo.cph.cmc.com (Lars Poulsen)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
[ You wrote: ]
> From: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>
> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 11:37:15 -0500
>
> FYI, I understand steps are afoot (if I may be terminally
> cute) to look into the possibility of a Canadian CIX.
>
> Unless this comes with a connection to THE CIX it will not necessarily
> solve anything. . . .
Well, as I wasn't at the meeting so I can't say what will
come of all this, but I'd presume that this is one of the
issues they should have on their agenda.
FYI, I was told in another piece of email that there is a
Canadian CIX mailing list on a listserv at fonorola (a
connectivity provider). Those interested should send email
to Tony McNeil ("tonym@fonorola.net") for more info.
> . . . For all I know, the Canadian backbone network may already
> be policy free. I still can't get to it without going through NSF
> territory.
I don't know if you can speak of "the" Canadian backbone,
any more than you can speak of "the" U.S. backbone.
There's certainly CA*net (which is the summation of
provincial regional academic/research oriented networks),
but there's also fonorola's commercial backbone (which has
links across the country and several connections down to
ANS in the U.S.) as well as a company I believe is
affiliated somehow with UUNET, plus various dialin
providers, some shell account providers and more. Things
finally seem to be taking off up here in the Great White
North...
In any event, I understand that the policies in place vary
from provider to provider. Nova Scotia's regional network
(NSTN) actually encourages commercial traffic to help share
costs for academics. Fonorola is clearing going to allow
and encourage commercial traffic, and so on. I trust that
the new effort to define a CIX will allow the rest of us
to stop worrying about such issues and get on with the job.
> By the way, BUNYIP.COM is another Canadian site which appears to be
> reachable only across NSF / ANS links.
Sigh, true. Our current link is into RISQ, which I gather
in turn connects to the U.S. through NSFnet. I look
forward to the day when such things really don't matter.
Meanwhile, Bunyip doesn't actually operate any services
directly from our site yet and wont until we can assure
ourselves that we wont be impacted by such issues.
I wonder how many other potential service providers are
making such decisions on a daily basis right now, and what
it's costing us in lost services and functionality? The
hardest loss to measure is the opportunity that was never
realized...
> For an Information Superhighway, it certainly seems to be
> taking me a long time to get through all this stuff each
> day!
>
> My in-laws in the LA basin tell me that superhighways attract a lot
> of traffic, and the more of them there are in a city, the worse
> the congestion and the longer the commute times. ;-)
I was once assured by a old farmer in the outback of
Australia that the winding dirt roads I had to traverse to
get to his place were "much safer than those American
highways". His argument was that all the winding kept you
awake and on your toes and since you couldn't go so fast,
accidents were less dangerous. I can't say I was
convinced, but then again, I did make it home in one
piece... :-)
- peterd
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My proposal for funding the Internet is pretty simple. I vote we institute
an "Information Superhighway" tax, the proceeds of which will be used to
fund network infrastructure. The way this would work is simple - every time
someone uses the words "Information Superhighway" or any of its derivatives
we strike them with a sharp object and make them pay a $10 fee (of course,
the sharp object is not actually needed to make this scheme work, it's just
in there because it seems an appropriate thing to do...)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
