[ih] birth of the Internet?

[Vint Cerf]

Louis is correct. the CIX (commercial Internet eXchange) came into
being about 1989.

MAE-EAST/MAE-WEST arrived a bit later - perhaps somewhere in the 1992
time frame????

NAPS were "slope-funded" by NSF in the 1995-1998 (later?) period to
assure connectivity that had been provided by NSFNET that was retired
in 1995.

vint


On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Louis Mamakos <louie at transsys.com> wrote:
> The reverse actually happened.  Carrier neutral, commercial
> interconnects were already well in operation by the time the
> NAP concept came along.
>
> There were carrier neutral exchange points in existence which at
> least UUNET, Sprint, PSI and other had in use; these were operated
> as a service by MFS Datanet and instigated by some of those initially
> connected.  Initial interconnects were 10Mb/s Ethernet and various
> other things followed.  For example, MAE-EAST, MAE-WEST.
>
> Later, the NSF instigated these NAP interconnects, which were of
> moderate success, depending on who you asked, and the particular
> NAP exchange point in question.  MFS expanded the scope of their
> interconnection solution and that mostly worked OK.  There was
> the NY NAP in New Jersey operated by Sprint and I believe a Chicago
> NAP operated by Ameritech at the time.  The latter was ATM based
> and I suspect many lessons were learned from that experience.
>
> To some extent, the NAPs were a bit redundant given some public
> exchanges that were already in operation.  One of the other drivers
> was as a funding source for some of the NSF regional networks for
> connections.
>
> There was also another federally funded exchange point or two,
> the "FIX" that existed at around this time.  Various agency
> networks (DoE, NASA, etc.) were interconnected here and at least
> the FIX interconnect on the east coast in Washington was generally
> aligned with the MAE-EAST interconnect fabric.
>
> Louis Mamakos
>
> On Oct 28, 2010, at 3:08 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>
>> They actually funded the NAPs, as I recall.  It didn't take long for the NAPs to be replaced by the carrier-neutral IXs.
>>
>> RB
>>
>> On 10/28/2010 11:26 AM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>>> NSF program managers also espoused and supported the Network Access
>>> Points for interconnection in place of the NSFNET as it was retired in
>>> 1995.
>>>
>>> v
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:00 PM, Dave CROCKER<dhc2 at dcrocker.net>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 10/28/2010 10:33 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>>>> Larry Press wrote:
>>>>>> Would it be fair to say that NSFNet grew up to be The Internet, where
>>>>>> some of
>>>>>> the other things being mentioned were experiments or developments in
>>>>>> internetworking?
>>>>> I think you have to review your timing. The Internet predates the NSFnet
>>>>> by
>>>>> several years.
>>>>
>>>> Right.
>>>>
>>>> NSFNet really qualifies as the /final/ stage of development of the Internet,
>>>> before fully commercial adoption.
>>>>
>>>> It's introduction of an additional backbone forced core changes to the
>>>> routing technology, but otherwise it had to do with expanding the Internet
>>>> operationally, rather than in 'creating' the Internet.
>>>>
>>>> Besides the forcing function on BGP, it's 'innovation' was to seed
>>>> organizations that created a commercial core to the public Internet.
>>>>
>>>> d/
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>>  Dave Crocker
>>>>  Brandenburg InternetWorking
>>>>  bbiw.net
>>>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>> Richard Bennett
>>
>
>
>