[ih] Who Paid for the Internet? (was Re: sad news: Peter Kirstein)

[Jack Haverty]

[Changed the subject to reflect where the discussion seems to be going....]

On 1/10/20 5:43 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> For proof that Peter was aware of the X.25 cost issue before too long, see the bottom of page 10 at http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/kirstein-arpanet.pdf
> "The access control was because we were
> incurring IPSS traffic charges on out-going traffic; the logging was because the
> funding agencies wanted to know how to allocate costs."

Interesting paper, thanks.  I'm sure that Peter and the EU bureaucracy
were very aware of the X.25-related costs and struggling with how to
allocate them (moving expenses into someone else's budget...).  But I
see no indication that they were aware of the asymmetry introduced by
our cost-avoidance algorithm.  E.g., did they ever compare notes with
the ARPA billing department?   Or did each side just pay its bill and
perhaps figure out how to allocate costs among the users on their side.

It also appears that they might not have understood how the costs
depended on who initiated each X.25/X.75 circuit setup - which was not
necessarily related in any consistent way with the TCP connections or
source of packet traffic.

Given all of the other usage of X.25 in Internet-related worlds (CSNET
etc.), there's likely a fascinating bit of Internet History in how
different systems dealt with the intersection between the Internet-style
"it's all free if you're approved to use it at all" and the X.25 "if you
initiate a conversation with someone, you pay by the minute and by the
packet" attitudes.   Did anyone else implement "move your expenses"
schemes at organizational boundaries?

There's probably a PhD thesis or two to be done in that early-Internet
arena - Who Paid For The Internet?

/Jack Haverty