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

[Jack Haverty]

But when all these initial non-research-project ISPs and customers were
starting out, how were the legal issues framed?  Maybe the old contracts
or licenses or MOUs or whatever would shed some light.  /Jack


On Tue, 2010-10-12 at 16:10 -0400, 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.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Craig