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

[Brian E Carpenter]

I agree, a history thesis or two is lurking here.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 12-Jan-20 08:04, Jack Haverty wrote:
> [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
> 
> 
>