[9966] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NSF AUP restrictions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Doran)
Mon Jan 31 13:08:13 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 28 Jan 1994 08:37:15 PST."
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 10:07:04 -0800
From: Sean Doran <smd@cesium.clock.org>
In msg <9401281637.AA09954@expresso.bunyip.com> you write:
| although I'm not sure how involved CANARIE is/will be in
| this effort.
Probably not very much.
With all due respect to Bill St. Arnaud, whose organizational skills I
admire, CANARIE is simply a waste of tax and private money.
It is too closely associated with Andy Bjerring, who with his disciple
Warren C Jackson (who is apparently in charge of CA*Net), is too firm
a believer in the strange One Network concept.
Bjerring and Jackson are quite incapable of thinking of anything but
the CA*Net structure and only the CA*Net structure as being good for
Canadians. They are both on record (publically, no less) stating that
they believe that competition is bad for Canadian networking, and that
interconnectivity between CA*Net and anyone else, except on a
customer-service-provider level, is unthinkable.
UUNET Canada tried for two years to persuade the pair of them that a
DMZ along the lines of the CIX or MAE-East, or a direct peer-peer
arrangment (as along the lines of those involving AlterNet-BARRNet/
SesquiNet/SURANet/NearNet) would be good for both CA*Net members and
UUNET Canada customers. They rejected the offer even when UUNET
Canada offered to pick up all costs associated with the peering.
Some of the discussions are on record on ftp.cs.toronto.edu in
lists/onet-discussion, including some comments by Andy Bjerring that
com-priv readers might find rather interesting.
One interesting comment made by Warren Jackson was that an arrangement
between ONET or CA*Net and UUNET Canada would be possible *if* UUNET
Canada became an ONET customer (as opposed to member, as is the case
for everyone else; current cost roughly $17000/year), *and* if UUNET
Canada paid a fee of about triple their highest rate for membership
(because of the bandwidth involved, presumably), *and* if each of
UUNET Canada's customers a/ became ONET members and b/ agreed to abide
by the ONET AUP *at all times*.
Given that these two distinguished gentlemen are closely tied to
CANARIE, I wouldn't expect that organization to be particularly
helpful when it comes to anything other than expanding their baby,
CA*Net. And even there, they have this strange tendency not to listen
all that closely to their technical staff when it comes to policy or
budgeting matters.
I am pleased to note, though, that the central Bjerring et al. tenet of
CA*Net is disintegrating even as I type this: that there be one
regional network in each province, and that none of the provincial
networks poaches on another's territory.
NSTN (the provincial network in Nova Scotia) has opened offices in
Ottawa, and is actively attracting members away from ONET, and
competing with Hookup, UUNET Canada and the other providers operating
in the area. More power to them! With a little luck, this will force
CA*Net types to rethink the design and implementation of CA*Net and
the One Network philosophy, and that really would be a good thing for
networking in Canada.
Sean.
