[ih] NO "settlements" as part of Internet History

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

vis-a-vis "We weren't supposed to use NSFnet to access .com addresses..."
but what about .US addresses?

as a part of Internet History: yours truly registered the first host in the
.US domain (fernwood.mpk.ca.us) for Anterior Technology -- which was the
2nd commercial internet business connected to the Internet via BARRNET (our
local NSF regional network provider) a half half block away from SRI in
Menlo Park back in 1989 out of a spare bedroom on a MIPS M1000 computer.

prior to Anterior morphing into wireless email (RadioMail), Anterior
started it's commercial business providing moderated USENET feeds (the In
Moderation Network) as well as offering commercial dialup/dialout UUCP (for
mail and USENET) connections to local businesses viz.:
https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/news-track-QKpCn05nS0

ERGO, don't see how "policy" routing based on a domain name would
"guarantee" the non-commercialness of said traffic, especially In Those
Days when (via UUCP) email addresses could take the form of foo!
bar at fernwood.mpk.ca.us (or any other UUCP to net relay host).

geoff

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 10:58 AM Brian E Carpenter <
brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Vint,
>
> That sounds as if there was seen to be a distinction between email flows
> (human to human communication) and data flows (machine to machine). When
> we at CERN discussed connections and costs with Steve Goldstein at NSF,
> it was in the context of bulk scientific data transfer (for American
> physicists associated with CERN experiments). We weren't supposed to use
> NSFnet to access .com addresses, but prior to BGP4 that was a bit of a
> problem and "policy based routing" was a constant talking point.
>
> Harvey Newman (then and now at Caltech) used to say "Every grad student
> needs 64 kb/s" and that was how we calculated capacity requirements around
> 1990. We all knew that email was important, but we all knew that money
> was granted for scientific data transfer.
>
> Regards
>    Brian
>
> On 14-Sep-20 00:02, Vint Cerf wrote:
> > Brian,
> > in 1988 the then Federal Networking Council (or its predecessor, the
> FRICC) gave me permission to connect the commercial MCI Mail to the NSFNET
> backbone. This connection occurred in 1989, the same year that UUNET,
> PSINET and CERFNET came into operation and, I think, interconnected at the
> CIX. Other email services (Compuserve, OnTyme, Telemail) were also given
> permission to connect. In 1992 legislation was passed to allow this
> formally (Boucher Bill I thinik?).
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 11:12 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> wrote:
> >
> >     In my humble (non-American) opinion, some of the arguments made at
> that
> >     time were very self-serving. I think that Guy Almes and Steve
> Goldstein
> >     between them could explain better than me, but NSFnet always had an
> >     acceptable use policy that (since it was taxpayer-funded) only
> allowed
> >     "free" transit for traffic to or from a legitimate NSF user, i.e.
> one end
> >     or both ends of a flow had to be a research site. Clearly the
> taxpayer
> >     shouldn't pay for business-to-business traffic, and that fact was the
> >     business case for creating CIX.
> >
> >     Neither NSFnet nor CIX was free of course; they just had very
> different
> >     funding sources. It was my understanding at the time that ANS CO+RE
> was
> >     created precisely to avoid cross-subsidy from NSF money. They did
> have
> >     the advantage of knowledge transfer.
> >
> >     (All of this was of intense interest to us at CERN as we hosted a
> >     transatlantic link to NSFnet and we too had to ensure that the NSFnet
> >     AUP was respected. So we followed it pretty closely.)
> >
> >     Of course the idea that there are no settlements in the Internet is
> >     a bit ridiculous. There are no settlements per "call" but connections
> >     to transit providers and/or IXPs cost money.
> >
> >     Regards
> >        Brian Carpenter
> >
> >     On 11-Sep-20 12:21, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via
> Internet-history wrote:
> >     > On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 10:42 AM *Jack Haverty via Internet-history
> >     > <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>> wrote*
> >     > :
> >     >
> >     >> CCITT was working on X.25, and creating X.75, to interconnect
> their
> >     >> networks.  It was a natural evolution of the PTT's prior
> interconnection
> >     >> of their telephone networks.   Later, as DDN marched down the
> X.25 path,
> >     >> the subsequent government Internet might have ended up based on
> >     >> X.25/X.75.   If it worked.
> >     >>
> >     >
> >     > part and parcel of the X.25 and X.75 networking shibboleth was the
> notion
> >     > of "settlements" -- just like with the PTT's interconnection of
> their
> >     > telephone networks -- where The Fee for/of Transit was split along
> a
> >     > "calls" participants/networks transited.
> >     >
> >     > IIRC, Advanced Network and Services (ANS) tried to "imprint" the
> >     > settlements model on the fledgling Internet -- with them In The
> Middle
> >     > collecting a fee for transit (for commercial traffic) between
> networks as
> >     > well as for interconnection with The Budding commercial Internet
> upstarts
> >     > (PSI, ALTERNET, etc.) the resulting in the founding of the CIX,
> viz.:
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > *Data Network Raises Monopoly Fear*
> >     > By JOHN MARKOFF
> >     > The New York Times
> >     > December 19, 1991
> >     > http://www.nytimes.com/1991
> >     > /12/19/business/data-network-raises-monopoly-fear.html
> >     >
> >     > Soon after President Bush signed legislation calling for the
> creation of a
> >     > nationwide computer data "superhighway," a debate has erupted over
> whether
> >     > the Government gave an unfair advantage to a joint venture of
> I.B.M. MCI
> >     > that built and manages a key part of the network.
> >     >
> >     > The venture, known as Advanced Network and Services, manages a
> network
> >     > called NSFnet, which connects hundreds of research centers and
> >     > universities. NSFnet also manages links to dozens of other
> countries. All
> >     > these networks are collectively known as Internet.
> >     >
> >     > Some private competitors say Advanced Network and Services uses
> its favored
> >     > position to squeeze them out of the data-transmission market by
> >     > establishing rules that make it difficult to connect to NSFnet.
> >     >
> >     > *Traffic Has Doubled*
> >     >
> >     > NSFnet was founded by the National Science Foundation, a Federal
> agency,
> >     > and is composed of leased telephone lines that link special
> computers
> >     > called routers, which transmit packages of data to three million
> users in
> >     > 33 countries. Data traffic over the NSFnet backbone has doubled in
> the last
> >     > year.
> >     >
> >     > The Government wants to develop a national data highway for
> electronic
> >     > commerce, digital video transmissions to homes and vast electronic
> >     > libraries that could be drawn on by the nation's schools.
> >     >
> >     > Advanced Network and Services, based in Elmsford, N.Y., was set up
> last
> >     > year as a nonprofit corporation with $10 million from the
> International
> >     > Business Machines Corporation and the MCI Communications
> Corporation.
> >     > Earlier this year it set up a for-profit subsidiary, called ANS
> CO+RE
> >     > (pronounced core), to sell computer network services. That led some
> >     > competitors to complain that Advanced Network and Services would
> be able to
> >     > compete unfairly because of its arrangement with the Government.
> >     >
> >     > *Fear Loss of Innovation*
> >     >
> >     > People involved in planning for a national data network say it is
> essential
> >     > to provide for fair competition, which will lead rival companies
> to offer
> >     > creative and entrepreneurial services in the hope of building
> market share.
> >     > Without competiton, they say, the Government will have created a
> monopoly
> >     > that has little incentive to innovate.
> >     >
> >     > "This is the first major communication business to be born under
> the
> >     > deregulation era," said David Farber, a computer scientist at the
> >     > University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in data networking. "This
> hasn't
> >     > happened since the growth of the telephone industry. You want it
> to be a
> >     > business that doesn't repeat the errors of the past."
> >     >
> >     > In recent years, the National Science Foundation has tried to
> shift its
> >     > operations and ownership of NSFnet to Advanced Network and
> Services. And it
> >     > will try to establish competition through contracts for networks
> to compete
> >     > with NSFnet next year.
> >     >
> >     > But there is no level playing field, complained William L.
> Schrader,
> >     > president of Performance Systems International Inc., a Reston,
> Va., company
> >     > that provides commercial data connections to Internet. He made
> public two
> >     > letters between officials of Advanced Network and Services and the
> National
> >     > Science Foundation that he said gave the company unfair control
> over access
> >     > to the network. The result, he added, was that the Government
> turned over
> >     > valuable public property to a private company.
> >     >
> >     > "It's like taking a Federal park and giving it to K Mart," Mr.
> Schrader
> >     > said. "It's not right, and it isn't going to stand."
> >     >
> >     > Performance Systems and several other companies have set up an
> alternative
> >     > to NSFnet, known as a CIX. Mr. Schrader said his company and the
> venture of
> >     > I.B.M. and MCI were competing for the same customers but unlike
> his rival
> >     > he lacked a Federal subsidy. He said he might ask the Internal
> Revenue
> >     > Service to look at the business relationship between Advanced
> Network's
> >     > nonprofit and for-profit operations.
> >     >
> >     > *'Very Competitive Environment'*
> >     >
> >     > Allan Weis, the president of Advanced Network, disputed that his
> company
> >     > had an unfair advantage. "It's a very competitive environment
> right now,"
> >     > he said.
> >     >
> >     > At the National Science Foundation, Stephen Wolff, director of its
> >     > networking division, said I.B.M. and MCI had overbuilt the network
> and were
> >     > selling commercial service based on the excess capacity that was
> available.
> >     >
> >     > A number of organizations are working informally to settle the
> dispute.
> >     >
> >     > "I think it's a mess," said Mitchell D. Kapor, the founder of the
> Lotus
> >     > Development Corporation and now head of the Electronic Frontier
> Foundation,
> >     > a public-interest group focusing on public policy issues
> surrounding data
> >     > networks. "Nobody should have an unfair advantage."
> >     >
> >     >
> >     --
> >     Internet-history mailing list
> >     Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> >     https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> > Vint Cerf
> > 1435 Woodhurst Blvd
> > McLean, VA 22102
> > 703-448-0965
> >
> > until further notice
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True