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

Mon May 11 02:56:25 PDT 2026

I think that is wrong, Miles. We used the Defense Communications Agency to
order dedicated circuits to connect to Arpanet.

V

On Sun, May 10, 2026 at 10:42 PM Miles Fidelman <
mfidelman at protocoltechnologiesgroup.com> wrote:

> 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
>
> Sent from Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
> Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>
> ------------------------------
> *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> 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> on
> behalf of Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2026 5:02 PM
> To: 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...)
>
> 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> 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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