[ih] Commercial ISPs (Re: Some Questions over IPv4 Ownership)

[Miles Fidelman]

Craig Partridge wrote:
>> On 10/12/2010 15:00 EDT, Ofer Inbar wrote:
>>      
>>> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 08:03:49PM -0700,
>>> jfh<jack at 3kitty.org>  wrote:
>>>        
>>>> Somewhere along the line, commercial ISPs popped into being.  I'm
>>>> not sure who was first, but my recollection is that this happened as
>>>> spinoffs from NSFNet and/or CSNet.  Again, there must have been some
>>>> kind of agreements between those commercial entities and a piece of
>>>> the government, detailing the rules about ownership.  These first
>>>> ISPs were different because they were not research collaborators.
>>>> They were in business simply to make money selling Internet service.
>>>>          
>>> Software Tool&  Die's (aka "the World") was the first commercial
>>> consumer ISP, and UUNET was the first commercial IP network provider -
>>> who sold IP service to STD.
>>>        
>> The way I remember it:
>>
>> STD provided Internet services but they were not a network.
>>
>> UUNET was a non-profit exchange, not a network, until 1990 (?)
>>
>> PSINet was started as a network, with NYSERNet members as an instant
>> installed base, in 1989.
>>      
> CSNET started in 1981 with a goal of achieving profitability within a few
> years (which it achieved).  NSFNET modeled the NSF regional networks, in
> part, on the CSNET model.
>    
And then there was NEARnet, that had commercial members almost from day 
one.  As I recall, since NEARnet didn't have any NSF funding, it didn't 
have to follow the limit on commercial users (except at the gateway to 
the NSFnet backbone).

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In<fnord>  practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra