[ih] Politics behind the Internet

[Dave Crocker]

On 7/21/2024 7:38 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> You're right.  I had forgotten about CSNET.
>
> But even in CSNET the focus was internal - not necessarily on 
> government projects, but on whatever projects the computer science 
> departments were doing.

I've classed CSNet as market research for NSFNet.  From my own 
involvement, I don't think that was the intent from the start, but I 
think that its considerable success demonstrated the benefit of wider 
connectivity, that there was quite a lot of utility in very modest 
connectivity, and that a model of providing only startup-funding all 
worked quite well.

NSFNet, then was a scaling exercise, supporting both the learning and 
engineering needed to make the scaling work.

As for the officially constrained scope of the customer base, this is 
true.  Only CS departments were allowed to use the access.  No one else 
on the campus or organization could... oh, wait...

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social