[ih] A revolution in Internet point-of-view - Was Re: Internet analyses (Was Re: IPv8...)

Sun May 10 19:42:30 PDT 2026

I seem to recall that researchers were getting line items to pay for leased lines & such - and that ARPA pretty much said "now you're going to spend that on ARPANET connections - and that a primary driver of the net was to save ARPA some coin on telecom bills.

Or do I have that wrong?

Miles

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________________________________
From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2026 8:49:20 PM
To: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at protocoltechnologiesgroup.com>
Cc: internet-history at elists.isoc.org <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
Subject: Re: [ih] A revolution in Internet point-of-view - Was Re: Internet analyses (Was Re: IPv8...)

"From the earliest days, the ARPANET & Internet were self-funding from revenue - yes ARPA & then NSF provided funds for researchers to purchase telecom, but then came the regionals (notably NEARnet) that started accepting commercial traffic, and then the whole infrastructure was opened to the public in 1992."

Miles, that's not quite right. ARPANET was paid for directly by ARPA - funcing BBN to build and operate, funding universities and research labs to develop host level protocols and applications. The Internet development initially consisted of ARPA-funded Arpanet, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite Net. The came NSFNET, paid for by NSF and implemented by IBM, MCI and Merit. NASA Science Internet linking NASA labs. -paid for by NASA. ESNET linking DOE leaps, paid for by DOE. The regional networks were partially funded by NSF but were required to become self- supporting over a 5 year period (initially 3). It was only in 1989 that UUNET, PSINET and CERFNET were commercial operators that were formally allowed to connect to the USG networks in 1992 (although permission was given to connect commercial MCI Mail to NSFNET in 1989 as an experiment undertaken by CNRI.

v

On Sun, May 10, 2026 at 8:10 PM Miles Fidelman via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org<mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
Re. "give away:"

  1.
Those were the days when, if the government paid for something, the IP went into the public domain.
  2.
The Internet grew a lot like the airlines & aerospace industry.  Between war & airmail, early government spending - for goods & services - paid for infrastructure & an industrial ecosystem that then took off on its own.  (The phrase "primed the pump" comes to mind.)
  3.
From the earliest days, the ARPANET & Internet were self-funding from revenue - yes ARPA & then NSF provided funds for researchers to purchase telecom, but then came the regionals (notably NEARnet) that started accepting commercial traffic, and then the whole infrastructure was opened to the public in 1992.

Miles

________________________________
From: Internet-history <internet-history-bounces at elists.isoc.org<mailto:internet-history-bounces at elists.isoc.org>> on behalf of Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org<mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2026 5:02 PM
To: 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>>
Subject: Re: [ih] A revolution in Internet point-of-view - Was Re: Internet analyses (Was Re: IPv8...)

There was a different climate in the 1960s/1970s.  That was the era of
the Vietnam War and associated protests and events such as Kent State.
Lots of pushback especially from young folks.  Even the resignation of a
POTUS, under threat of removal from office.  Lots of distrust of
government.  Lots of anger.

Is it so different now?

But I don't recall that as the dominating factor in the 60s/70s/80s.
The USG did not "give away" the Internet.  The Internet (and previously
the ARPANET) was always considered an Experiment.  That followed the
charter of ARPA - "Advanced" Research projects Agency.  Research
produces ideas.  Experiments build prototypes to test theories.
Research produces knowledge.  Freely sharing that knowledge would be
beneficial to the "real systems" that followed.  Artifacts, such as
protocols, algorithms, equipment designs, software, and such concrete
items are at best prototypes for the real systems of the future.

The "real system" was expected to be OSI.  Of course that didn't
happen.   But it was The Plan.  Even the USG had a program called GOSIP
(Government OSI Profile?) to plan for the use of OSI throughout USG.  As
long as The Internet was considered just a research experiment, it had
no long-term value and giving it away didn't raise significant
objections.  It might even help OSI development.  OSI was the target.

Instead, what happened was an explosion of industry-led alternatives to
both The Internet and the OSI promises.  In the "multiprotocol router"
stage of the late 1980s and 1990s, all sorts of other schemes were
produced by companies, each hoping that their technology would be the
winner to create the communications infrastructure of the future, and
all the others would just fade away.  Most of them had some ambition of
global domination, e.g., by offering products to create a "global LAN".
But the users were impatient, and selected the only technology which was
available to them at the time to tie all their IT into a cohesive
infrastructure - The Internet and TCP/IP.   Its adoption by the USG
established confidence that The Internet would live long and prosper.

It was straightforward for a corporation to build its own clone of The
Internet, separate from but perhaps connected to The Internet for
electronic mail service.   So lots of corporations did just that.  The
IT industry noticed, and itself adopted The Internet as its product
architecture.   A similar history might be told of Unix and Linux,
becoming the base IT environment for all those servers on The Internet.

So, ... is it so different today?

The Internet has clearly won at the levels of datagrams and web. TCP/IP
and HTTP and their friends are the de facto standard.

But a similar war is now happening at levels where AI and Social Media
live, on top of The Internet.  I see lots of corporations creating
competing AI services or social media platforms, each hoping to be the
winner and become the infrastructure of the future.  Even electronic
mail has fragmented into a blizzard of ways for people to communicate.

But unlike the situation 50 or 60 years ago, I haven't noticed any
ARPA-like effort to do the research and "give away" the results for
others to use.  Such things are what The Internet considers "apps" and
outside their scope?   Perhaps such research organizations exist, other
than in corporate walled gardens, and I just haven't been looking hard
enough.    There may be no technology "waiting in the wings" for users
to embrace until one of them becomes the clear winner.

Is that an "attitude of society"?

/Jack Haverty

It seems to me that today's

On 5/10/26 11:36, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
> On Apr 29, 2026, at 6:13 AM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org<mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> Tempted as I am to editorialize about what this might mean for the Internet (I am profoundly depressed about it), I wonder whether those who where involved in the Internet's earliest developments have any reflections on the attitudes of the societies at the time.  For instance, kc claffy once observed to me that it was an inspired bit of industrial policy that led the USG (partly it seems to me at the prodding of Al Gore, despite all the grief he gets about the topic) to give away the Internet rather than lock it into any particular corporate ownership.  I know there is another thread that has discussed the BSD-TCP/IP importance, but I guess I'm asking for something different: was there a different _social_ environment, in your estimation and upon reflection, than there is (say) today such that the USG could give such a technology away as they did?  I find it impossible to imagine that happening today, when every organization either public or private seems to be orieted entirely towards maximum short-term financial return on investment, ignoring the longer term benefits.  (And, to avoid any doubt, let me be clear that this is not a particular swipe at the current USG or any people in charge of it.  This has seemed obvious to me for a decade or more.)
>>
> I would also include the Linux importance. [1] [2] Quite a bit of TCP/IP became available via open source due to Linux.
>
> --gregbo
>
> [1] https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/
> [2] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
>

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